Satire Saturday | New Zealand don’t deserve to be in the World Test Championship final

Satire Saturday | New Zealand don’t deserve to be in the World Test Championship final

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New Zealand's entry into the final isn't all about cricket

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SportsCafe

It isn’t any more a debate, not any more an opinion but a fact unilaterally accepted by the Twitter universe, united by the Australian and Indian fans. New Zealand really doesn’t deserve an opportunity to play a Test in India, forget them deserving to play in the World Test Championship final.

When Greg Barclay was appointed as the Chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), there were a few raised eyebrows, not because of his name or his name-like association with the English Premier League but because he was part of the New Zealand cricketing board before this stint. 

How dare the ICC appoint someone who is not part of the Big Three and more importantly, from a country that has just 49.2 lakh population? The rage was surreal, the emotion was raw but widely accepted by the social media reporters (also called delusional fans). Now if that wasn’t enough to hurt them, the fact that New Zealand qualified for the final of the World Test Championship acts as the salt to the open wound. 

Leave the politics aside, think of it logically, or illogically here - how many games have New Zealand played away from home in the last year? None you say, see that’s the point if India and England have to struggle for points away from home, why should New Zealand just walk into the final on the easiest of ropes? Either Barclay has indeed lived up to his name or New Zealand have bribed the other teams to visit them. 

They are not even the Big Three, wasn’t that the whole point of the World Test Championship, with the final in England. The whole point of the ICC having this entire tournament organized is so that India and England can play in the final but first Australia ruined that and to make it worse, there were their Trans-Tasman rivals, New Zealand. For fudge’s sake, can’t we just have a grand event where there is rivalry instead of bromance? 

If you really need Test cricket to grow, you need the best batsmen and bowlers taking on each other, what’s this stupid battle between Trent Boult and Virat Kohli, who cares (Well, it’s a secret between us - Boult has dismissed Kohli many times) but who is Boult really? A failure for Delhi in a star-studded lineup while Kohli has single-handedly carried Bangalore into the final. Forget that, who’s Kane Williamson, he doesn’t even deserve to be the best Test batsmen in the ICC rankings, that’s robbery. If you wonder the reason, please make the effort to go and read the above paragraph, will you? 

In 2020 and 21, look at his record, 498 runs in 2020, at an average of 83 and a high score of 251 but the same batsmen struggled in Australia. Okay, my bad, it might not have been just struggling, it was like he didn’t know how to bat. How can that kind of a batsman be the best in the world? Even Tim Paine had a better record than him, against their own country. They lost horribly against Australia, a small team, so it should head-to-head which should decide their fate right? 

Leave that, he has just played at home and scored runs against tier-two teams in Pakistan and West Indies, if they are making it to the final, then cricket has gone horribly wrong, they are the worst ambassadors of the game. Move over gentlemen’s game, they are just bad examples for the game, why be a Williamson when you can be a Dickwella or a Paine in someone else’s Virat? That team doesn’t even have a spinner and Mitchell Santner can’t even get to Chennai Super Kings’ squad, forget him being one of the world’s best spinners. 

And that tall guy, their so-called giant who blows batsmen away, Kyle Jamieson, he might have an impressive record but all of that is in New Zealand. Ravichandran Ashwin has so many wickets in just Chennai and have you ever seen the Indian fans hailing him as the best spinner just because he bowls well at home? Never, see that’s where you have to understand the standards of the longest format. A guy makes his debut and becomes an overnight sensation, that only happens in India (Jasprit Bumrah), so you can’t really compare Jamieson to Bumrah, that fellow won’t even be as sought after as Bumrah would be. 

What’s this home record that you are talking about? Look at India, they have played just Bangladesh and South Africa at home. Have you ever seen the Indian lot talking so much about the runs that Rohit scored in that series or the wickets the pacers took with the pink-ball? Never, that’s the level of Test cricket. A team that required an Indian-import to open the innings doesn’t even deserve to play Test away from home, leave play in the final. It’s highly unfair on the other teams, who have to toil home and away to be part of the illustrious event at the Lord’s. 

The last time they played at Lord’s, they couldn’t even hold on to their catches, what will they really do this time around? If this was a competition for being nice guys probably, they might qualify but this is a World Test Championship, why is a country with a population as much as Mumbai doing in the final? Come on, understand that they are nice and cosy but they don’t really deserve to be in the final of the World Test Championship. 

Just because Australia got points docked for the slow-over rate, New Zealand are in the final. Just because they played their last three series at home, they can’t qualify over Australia, who struggled in away conditions. Just because they have wins over Pakistan, India and West Indies, they can’t qualify for the final. And more importantly, just because they have a better win ratio, they can’t qualify, who even sets these rules? ICC? Greg Barclay?

PS: This is a satire narrative of some of the expert sporting opinions on the platform of Twitter. If offended by it, please look up at the social media platform for more such opinions.

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