Sports

Netball has been a pretty interesting sport to follow over the last couple of months. A drawn two test series against Aussie in September provided some really good spectator sport, and the recent series against England has been one of few sports to actually crack the political shell surrounding news media. The ridiculous premise of a two-test series was canned for the England tour, a smart move based on the fact that a one-all draw is the most useless result imaginable. After a huge win a few weeks back and a narrow loss two weekends ago, the Silver Ferns will no doubt have turned up on Saturday with all guns blazing, and I definitely favour our girls to take it out, even though England turned up in the second test with ruthless determination, we’re just better. If we lost on the weekend, take back what I said so I don’t sound like an idiot.

The Black Caps managed to defeat Bangladesh last week in a three-match ODI series. Despite the fact that the Bangladeshi’s lost 14 of their top players (14 isn’t a typo) they managed to beat us in the first ODI at Dhaka by an embarrassing 7 wickets. Our boys would have been happy about the media missing that one, but after what was one of the most pathetic batting efforts of recent seasons, the boys turned up to win the second and third matches, restoring some sort of pride back into Kiwi cricket fans. Kind of. The batting this year has been woeful. The ICC’s batting rankings place our best batsman, Scott Styris, at a measly 27^th place, with Brendon McCullum and Ross Taylor following in 28^th and 29^th respectively. With only a few standout performances (Jacob Oram’s man of the series effort of 135 at 67.5 and taking four wickets, Ross Taylor’s 103) in a series where you’d expect us to dominate, there could be trouble ahead as we head to Aussie for test matches in November.

After Manly gang-banged Melbourne in the dark, the league focus has shifted now to the international stuff. If you’re reading this on any day after Saturday then the Kiwi’s have already (presumably) beaten Tonga at Mt Smart. The one-off test is build-up for the League World Cup, which is becoming identifiable as a pretty low quality event. There have already been big talks about the financial aspect of the competition, as the prize money for all ten finalists has been announced at A$2m, a pretty rubbish effort for an international competition. Even the website (www.worldcup.leagueunlimited.com) is crap. Essentially the competition is just the Gillette Tri-Nations with some other teams trying to win some shit on the side. Aussie will win again no doubt.

Really there isn’t much else going on. TheV8s came down to an awesome finish at Bathurst, with Kiwi boys Greg Murphy and Jason Richards placing second behind Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup (who have now won ((hey that’s a palindrome)) the last three). Richie McCaw will have started for Canterbury on the weekend, which would have been a decent win for them over Hawke’s Bay; they should be through to play Wellington who should have beaten Southland on Friday. Should have...