messy. messier. new zealand cricket.

It's been a while. Since I last updated, and since what I'm about to write about actually took place. Regarding the former, I just didn't feel too particularly inspired to write, and regarding the latter, I must admit that it took me the better part of a week to calm down enough to not just end up randomly stringing profanities together when it came to the matter of the quite spectacular omnishambles that is New Zealand Cricket.

When rumours of Ross Taylor's imminent demotion and Brendon McCullum's promotion started making the rounds, I wasn't as surprised as I probably should've been, given that this was still NZC we were dealing with, the very same think tank full of geniuses who was responsible for the John Wright Cock-Up, and who were never held accountable for it. If anybody would find a way to humiliate the captain after winning a Test in Sri Lanka, including a man of the match performance by Taylor himself, and make the situation so unbearable for him he'd end up taking a break from cricket, it would have to be New Zealand Cricket.

The end result itself, Brendon McCullum being the captain now, doesn't really bother me (though one could argue that his recent performances don't necessarily warrant his continued selection as a specialist batsman, let alone a specialist top order batsman), but the way we've got there was utterly disrespectful towards Taylor and simply horrendous. Taylor's position in the team and inside the NZC setup was never a strong one to begin with, not only because of his rather obvious shortcomings as a leader, motivator, tactician and slip fielder, but also because of the well-known fact that the majority of the team didn't want him but McCullum as captain.

My opinion on Ross Taylor as a captain was obviously never the best, to put it very mildly. Back then, when NZC ran New Zealand's Next Top Model, err, I mean NZC's Search For The Next Test Captain, I did not only not rate him as a leader, but also took into account that they were forcing a captain upon a team that was used to having way too much power, and therefore expected this ~experiment to not work out in the long run. That it shouldn't be the team's, let alone only certain parts of the team's, decision who's being made captain and who succeeds as captain, well, that's an entirely different matter. But the Boys Club members tend to get their way, and the current, frustratingly incompetent administration wasn't going to change that.

Even if I were only thinking the very best of Brendon McCullum, even if he didn't actively contribute to what happened to Ross Taylor, there will always be a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths when they see him in his new role. Personally, I do wonder why he didn't refuse the captaincy, and forced Hesson to look elsewhere (Williamson or, more left-field, Ryder). No matter how badly he may have wanted it, and we all remember how devastated he was when he was overlooked last year, he shouldn't have accepted it given what went down leading up to it, given how badly Taylor was treated (and clearly undeservedly so), because now, regardless of how often and vehemently he denies any involvement, McCullum seems like a war profiteer, and I'm fairly certain that that's not the look he was going for.

When Mike Hesson took over as headcoach from John Wright (which in itself was another disaster altogether), was there an opportunity for him to hand the captaincy to Brendon McCullum, and riding out the calls of nepotism or favouritism or partisanship or whatever fancy words the Kiwi press would've come up with? I don't think it's illegitimate for a new coach to look at the captain and a possible leadership group upon his arrival and make changes if he sees fit, and Hesson should've just made that decision and dealt with it, instead of letting this simmer on for as long as it did. It always seemed like he just inherited Taylor from John Wright, and was never that willing to find common ground and a way to work together for the good of the team and the good of cricket in New Zealand.

I criticised Ross Taylor very heavily for having brought up Hesson's relationship with McCullum during their first meetings, when they were still trying to get to know each other, trying to find out if and how they could work together, and also accused him of showing a good dose of paranoia by focusing too much on an existing relationship between the new coach and his team-mate, instead of focusing on building one of his own with him. Looking at what happened since then - was he really paranoid? Or did he simply know what was coming?

That's probably the most depressing thing about this whole mess, the inevitability of it all. From the day Hesson arrived, something like this was bound to happen. Actually, from the day Ross Taylor was handed the captaincy, it was bound to end in tears. Or earlier, when Pie Chart MC™ John Buchanan was hired on a four-year-contract and brought along Lawn Bowls Nobody™ Kim Littlejohn to play selector for the Blackcaps, his philosophy (or lack thereof) was bound to lead to conflicts with John Wright - and his subsequent departure, because apparently pie charts are more important than a promising and widely accepted headcoach. Or even earlier than that, when somebody decided to hand windbag clowns like Justin Vaughan & Co. the power to make decisions on behalf of the future of cricket in New Zealand.


And the saddest part is, those who are solely responsible for the situation the Blackcaps have found themselves in now - heading to South Africa without their captain and best player, and also still without Jesse Ryder (and who can blame him, who would want to return to an environment as toxic as this) - are still sitting happily in their ergonomic office chairs, running a sports federation they clearly have no clue about nor any passion for, and people who may have made mistakes or have had their individual weaknesses to deal with but whose commitment you could never question, are being hung out to dry, like John Wright earlier in the year and now Ross Taylor. Cricket is struggling enough as it is in New Zealand, ugly displays like these are only going to drive more fans further away from the game. Shame.

~~~

That said, hopefully someone somewhere is close enough to Ross Taylor to tell him to shut the hell up now. He's got the public on his side, enough people couldn't stand Brendon McCullum already before all of this went down, enough people weren't behind the appointment of Mike Hesson, and pretty much everyone has called for the heads of NZC chairman Chris Moller and CEO David White - he really doesn't need to convince anyone of how badly he was shafted. He should do what he announced last week, spending time with his young family, clearing his head and preparing himself for facing England home and away in the new year. Airing more dirty laundry isn't going to do him nor his team-mates who've just arrived in South Africa to face one of their toughest challenges of recent times any favours whatsoever.