Doubling Down
The Blackcaps leave Pakistan & Tai Webster leaves the Breakers
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 32
The Niche Cast: Heading The Mafia
Reading Menu
Learning About Kiwi-NRL Recruitment Through Deine Mariner's Journey (NRL)
Flying Kiwis – September 14 (Football)
Sean Marks Has Quietly Had Yet Another Fantastic Offseason With The Brooklyn Nets (Basketball)
Blackcaps In Bangladesh: Finn Allen's Aotearoa's Best Slugger (Cricket)
White Ferns In England: T20I Series Wrap / ODI Preview (Cricket)
Joseph Parker’s Next Opponent Is His Last Opponent: Prepare for Parker vs Chisora II (Boxing)
Scotty’s Word
Blackcaps wiggle out of Pakistan…
Bit of a change in Blackcaps narrative here everyone’s second favourite cricket team quickly became hated. All of Pakistan’s hope in being a trusted destination for touring cricket teams apparently vanished when NZC yanked the Blackcaps out of Pakistan and while it goes without saying that such matters are incredibly complex, some boiling down can still be done.
The thing for kiwis to understand is that this is more about Pakistan’s situation and less about Aotearoa specifically. Cricket is of great importance in Pakistan and they have been working hard to build out their security measures to host touring nations for a long time, recently ramping this up with teams like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka touring Pakistan. I’m not sure if Pakistan made it extra attractive to tour Pakistan for these nations, however I do suspect that Pakistan would have had to offer something along with rigid security measures.
Maybe Aotearoa represented something greater than those previous nations to tour Pakistan. This is where things get a bit tin-foily as Aotearoa has a ‘information sharing’ partnership with USA, UK, Australia and Canada. Such relationships would have ensured ample information for NZC officials to then act upon, this also points to what having Aotearoa tour Pakistan represents; a lovely western nation showing the world how safe Pakistan is.
Asked if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned NZC not to tour, White said: "We were not advised not to go."
We’ve heard a lot about player welfare and ‘safety of our players is paramount’. Then when advised not to tour Pakistan, NZC put their players and staff in this position. I know nothing about this stuff, I’m merely working through the information being released and it’s all rather tricky.
I’ve had a geeze at Pakistan’s reaction and maybe you have too. Hence it’s important to be empathetic to Pakistan and understand how this minor move from an NZ perspective can churn out such emotion. Zoom out and this isn’t about NZ, this is about Pakistan as a country trying to move on from their trauma with the thing that brings all Pakistani folk together - cricket.
The NZ perspective is more intriguing. The three-game ODI series was meant to be part of the World Cup Super League but that was taken out of the mix early last week due to DRS technology not being available. Apparently both nations could have played on without DRS if they agreed to do so, yet NZC “were not prepared to play a high-stakes series without the use of technology”.
With that, any slither of context that this weird ODI series had was subtracted. Three ODIs for the sake of playing ODIs with a Blackcaps ODI squad made up of the same ‘white ball 2nd 11’ group that played in Bangladesh. NZC didn’t want to play a high-stakes series without technology but were willing to play a high-stakes series with a 2nd 11 ODI team.
That’s just the ODI portion though, as the big fish here was a five-game T20I series vs Pakistan. Aotearoa has played seven ODIs since the World Cup final in 2019 and ODI cricket is clearly not a priority for NZC. Both Aotearoa and Pakistan have played plenty of T20 cricket in the last 12 months, but the Pakistan series was going to see T20 World Cup players lace up for Aotearoa for some much needed game time.
No World Cup player was part of the Bangladesh series. NZC designed this all to bring in the non-IPL players to face Pakistan for World Cup prep and now the only World Cup prep will be IPL and some warm up games. For Pakistan, this is far more niggly as their steady diet of T20 cricket (13 games prior to July 21) was flipped into playing just one of four scheduled games vs West Indies due to weather.
Then five games were scratched vs NZ. England are scheduled to play two T20Is in Pakistan ahead of the T20 World Cup and given the tin-foily relationship shared by Aotearoa and England, it would be a brave move for England to tour Pakistan.
Much of this is emotional. There are some low key T20 World Cup ramifications that could hinder both nations - especially considering ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India mean no Pakistan players in the IPL. Keep in mind that there is some angst between Australia and Afghanistan as Australia are set to host Afghanistan but don’t want to support a nation that will now shut down it’s women’s cricket team.
For Aotearoa this shut down what was an already cluttered schedule, further restricting meaningful T20 World Cup preparations. For the world of cricket this serves as a hefty reminder that politics and sport are deeply inter-twined, so stop pretending like they ain’t.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Vaccine Variance
This is sports in 2021. Tai Webster, arguably the Breakers’ top kiwi player, has been released by the club ahead of the new season because... well, they had to. Webster is unvaccinated and seemingly has no plans to alter that status and Victoria (which has spent large portions of the last year and a half in lockdown) just put a rule in place that only fully vaxxed folk can participate in most public activities... including organised sports.
The plan is that once they reach 80% vaccination coverage of eligible people then they’ll fully open up the state again, including interstate travel, but that’s not expected for at least another month at the projected rate. The Warriors have already confirmed that they’ll be starting the next NRL season based in Australia again. The Phoenix have pretty much agreed to the same thing. The next NBL season is scheduled to start on 18 November which is sooner than either of them so pretty obviously they’re gonna have to base themselves in Oz as well. With a high chance of that base being in Melbourne. Quite frankly... there’s no point holding on to a player who potentially won’t even be able to play, no matter how good they are.
Breakers owner Matt Walsh says he respects Tai Webster’s decision to remain unvaccinated.
“Tai was amazing for us last year and we wish him the absolute best. I fully support each player’s freedom of choice in regards to the vaccine. The club will keep the door open for Tai, but unfortunately we are living in extraordinary times and without being vaccinated he will not have freedom of travel which would allow him to play for us this season.”
Webster only just signed a new two-year contract in July. His brother Corey was mutually released not so long ago to take up a gig in Egypt. Gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s highly likely that Corey’s unvaccinated too - that right there is a family of free thinkers. For better and for worse but we’re all on our own individual journeys so peace and positivity to everyone.
That’s the thing here. That’s where this gets frisky. Different states and nations are handling the pandemic in different ways and so many of the things that have been taken for granted in our society in the past, like freedom of travel for example, maybe aren’t so simple any more. This isn’t a write-up about the vaccine. We all know people who won’t get it for whatever reason, I honestly don’t understand it but it’s not my place to lecture – from experience that tends not to work anyway, when you’re coming at things from completely different perspectives then you’ve gotta meet in the middle somehow if you want to have any influence. If you want to be heard at all.
The NFL was briefly toying with the idea of mandatory vaccinations but that was never going to work in the USA where so much of the world’s vaccine hesitancy seems to stem from. I can’t imagine many sports leagues anywhere will make vaccinations necessary if it means otherwise healthy star players aren’t able to play. More likely they’ll keep nurturing their bubble scenarios and the like.
No doubt this situation will end up doing the rounds with the usual grifters so its important to get a few facts out there in the front and centre: the club has NOT implemented a ‘no jab, no play’ rule. This has nothing to do with the club nor the NBL as a league either. The Victorian government have called the shots about the shot. The Breakers’ only role in this scenario is to decide whether a player whose availability is therefore under restriction is worth keeping on the roster. That’s a basketball decision, not a health decision.
Meanwhile Tai Webster has had to balance whether he’d rather get vaxxed or whether he’d rather play somewhere else. That’s also a basketball decision... as well as a health decision. But there’s no mandate here. There’s no enforced jab. The club supported his decision (from a personal freedoms perspective) but both parties knew he couldn’t stay with the team as a result. Nobody’s rights are being infringed upon. Tai Webster made a personal decision knowing what the consequences would be... and you can safely guarantee that he won’t be the last sporting vaccine holdout. He’s merely the first to get publicised because of the Breakers’ unique situation.
Webster will absolutely get another gig overseas by the way. He’s too good not to, he already has quite a bit of experience in Europe, and there’ll be plenty of countries where being unvaccinated won’t be a complete deal-breaker. Frowned upon, maybe. But not a deal breaker.
As for the Breakers, well the loss of the Webster brothers is a big bummer from a kiwi basketball perspective but it does at least simplify the guard rotations which were looking a right old mess not so long ago. They still have an import spot to fill plus they can now add another local dude too. Heaps of quality kiwi fellas worthy of that opportunity. Here’s hoping they don’t sign a bland middling Aussie bloke instead.
The Beths – Auckland, New Zealand 2020
Good tunes. Free concert film. Go on then.