With cricket on the mind,the first feel of a local dollar at the airport foreign exchange counter triggers a thought: New Zealand crickets present status in world cricket is perfectly represented by the bird that lends them their identity and sits peacefully on their currency. Like the flightless,shy,nocturnal bird,the cricket-playing Kiwis too are unassuming revered at home,little-known away. Limited travel and geographical isolation have given them relative anonymity,proof of which is provided by a co-passenger,one of those omnipresent,inquisitive travelling Indian cricket fans,on the Kuala Lumpur-Auckland flight. Jamie Who? he asks,referring to the Kiwi opener. No,Jamie How. He nods along to names such as Vettori and McCullum,but opts to concentrate on the in-flight entertainment when you rattle off Guptill,Butler,Diamanti and,uh,Broom. With India all set to take on New Zealand in two T20 games,five one-dayers and three Tests over the next month-and-a-half,this anonymity may be short-lived. The contrast between the two sides is disconcerting. Though they sit in third place,India are within striking distance of the top Test spot in the ICC rankings; New Zealand are at eighth,just one step above Bangladesh. Sachin Tendulkar has about 4,000 more Test runs than the aggregate career run-count of the playing XI that represented the Kiwis in their last Test. Rahul Dravid has more Test runs in New Zealand than their top five. Hypothetically,if Suresh Raina was part of the New Zealand ODI squad that toured Australia recently,the 23-year-old with 60 one-dayers under his belt would have been their third most-capped player. More such believe-it-or-not statistical data is available to dupe the uninitiated into believing that a black-out of the Black Caps is a mere formality. The numbers relating to their own home record,however,paint a different picture. If you leave Richard Hadlee out of the equation,jaw-dropping individual feats arent quite a Kiwi trait. But New Zealand,especially at home,epitomise the fact that cricket is,in fact,a team sport. During the Hadlee era,they went undefeated at home all through the 80s,and theyve slipped marginally. They have lost just nine Tests in the last nine years,and only two of the last 13 ODI series. The last time India won a Test series here,as weve been reminded over and over,was back in 1967-68,while an ODI series triumph is still awaited. Despite being a unit of lesser-known players,the Kiwis have the knack of discovering stars who used the visiting Indians as their stepping-stones. Paceman Simon Doull in 1998-99 or seamer Daryl Tuffy in 2002-03 were players Indians fans were not familiar with at the start of those tours. That said,this trip might not be as much of a nightmare as ones in the past as there is something distinctly different about this bunch of touring Indians. Apart from the confident strut that has been acquired through a very successful year,they too have been playing as a unit,with individual brilliance propping up the parts rather than pulling the team along. Will that be enough for Dhoni & Co to push New Zealand in alien conditions? While making predictions can be hazardous,there should be more of a contest this time around.
