Lord Luteru
Luteru Ross Taylor's Career In Numbers + English Cricket Funniness
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Scotty’s Word
Luteru ‘Ross’ Taylor retires…
My favourite cricketer ever announced his retirement yesterday. Bit of a bummer as I was eager to see how deep Taylor would dip into the ‘Samoan Tom Brady’ bag, however a quick note at the end of his press conference left me giddy; Taylor is retiring from international cricket and will keep playing domestic cricket in Aotearoa, County Championship and T20 league cricket.
This throws up a whole new wrinkle to my cricket loving. Taylor will likely pop up in a town near you with Central Districts and along with Kiwi County Tour veteran Hamish Rutherford, the thought of Taylor being part of perhaps numerous Kiwi County Tour winters is exciting. Jeetan Patel became Lord Jeets through his KCT mahi and after his retirement, Rutherford was a lone soldier. Looks like Taylor will add to KCT funk in the coming years.
So much of our cricketing thoughts can be based around ‘what did they do?’. Pondering Taylor for a bit left me thinking more about how much fun I have watching Taylor play cricket - hence he’s my favourite player ever. We’d all love to see Taylor play for Aotearoa much longer, but the fact that I can keep watching Taylor is what leaves a positive taste.
There is a reminder within all of this that while playing sports at the highest level is what these jokers desire and thus representing Aotearoa is the pinnacle, there is a lot of bullshit that comes with that. Careers are often dictated by one or two opinions for example and we all know about the niggly stuff Taylor has had to deal with while doing what he loves. Perhaps those of us who stay tapped into Taylor’s mahi will enjoy this wee pocket of his career where all that’s left for Taylor to do is play cricket where he wants and how he wants. I’m kinda looking forward to that.
English cricket…
England’s perceived demise has been front and centre of my noggin for a while now. I might dive deeper into all of this from my Aotearoa perspective and this email forms the building blocks to that idea. I have watched all the clips and heard all the yarns about English cricket on the back of their 3-0 Ashes sweep (two Tests to play) and whether you love cricket or not; this is a fascinating sporting yarn to learn from.
And how convenient that I could bring up County Championship cricket in relation to Taylor because that’s at the crux of England’s woes. County cricket has been heavily impacted by the ECB’s desire for money and that’s the first learning here that can obviously flow outside the cricket boundaries and into all our lives. When profits are the priority, other things become less important and somehow NZC has found a balance between selling almost everything to India/foreign brands, plus ample T20I cricket vs strong cricketing foundations and ideals.
This winter (English summer), the ECB rolled out two short-form competitions with the T20 Blast and The Hundred. That left County cricket well down the pecking order, and even before The Hundred there were a variety of issues with County cricket. England didn’t suddenly start to suck - their last win vs NZ was in 2015 (eight Tests). County cricket has been steadily shunned aside for the glitz and glam that business folk like and while I have watched England become food for the Blackcaps, all they care about is the Ashes. In the same year that The Hundred was introduced, England reached a level of capitulation that was funny.
One constant thread of discussion has been how England’s Test batsmen can’t score Test runs - England’s Test batsmen aren’t good enough for Test cricket. County cricket is thrown up as a reason as County cricket is so different to Test cricket with nibbly seamers dominating. This year on the KCT, Will Young hit two centuries in a row for Durham while Daryl Mitchell and Devon Conway both hit a 50+ score in their two games…
Kiwis in 2021 County Championship
Will Young (Durham): 7inns, 278 runs @ 39.71avg, 2 x 100 — 28yrs.
Hamish Rutherford (Glamorgan): 7inns, 260 runs @ 37.14avg, 2 x 50.
Glenn Phillips (Gloucestershire): 6inns, 109 runs @ 18.16avg.
Daryl Mitchell (Middlesex): 4inns, 134 runs @ 33.50avg, 1 x 50.
Devon Conway (Somerset): 3inns, 121 runs @ 40.33avg, 1 x 50.
Young, Mitchell and Conway all played County cricket among looking like good Test cricketers. Young built on his mahi to go alright in India and Mitchell built on his mahi to pop up as a T20 World Cup opener. Kiwis and Aussies go to County cricket to get better (Marnus Labuschagne loves County cricket) and this has always been the case as the best players in the world loved the busy English schedule. Kiwis and Aussies are still playing County cricket to get better and this is the exact opposite to England.
That alone is a fascinating dynamic. An easier way to digest it would be that Aotearoa and Australia benefit from County cricket, while England do not.
Also fascinating here is that England took such inspiration from Aotearoa that they rebuilt their white ball set up as if Brendan McCullum was in Eoin Morgan’s pocket. Such a focus of white ball cricket was lovely for the 2019 World Cup (how easily England’s woes could be greater lol) and has resulted in a competitive T20I team (that lost to Aotearoa at the T20 World Cup). That focus obviously didn’t help the Test team.
England emulated Aotearoa but overlooked the fact that Aotearoa is good in all formats. Aotearoa is the only team to make the most recent final of all three major tournaments (ODI, T20I World Cups and World Test Championship), while England copied Aotearoa to put all their eggs in the white ball basket - that conveniently makes the most money.
Money! Guess who gets the money?
All of this is funny because there are many examples of England not learning from their previous Ashes failures. You can watch clips of what was said after previous tours and how similar it is to the current backlash. Somehow England keep doing the same thing in the Ashes, plus they haven’t looked into their demise against Aotearoa…
2015
First Test in England: England win by 124 runs.
Second Test in England: Aotearoa win by 199 runs.
2018
First Test in Aotearoa: Aotearoa win by an innings and 49 runs.
Second Test in Aotearoa: Draw.
2019
First Test in Aotearoa: Aotearoa win by an innings and 65 runs.
Second Test in Aotearoa: Draw.
2021
First Test in England: Draw.
Second Test in England: Aotearoa win by 8 wickets.
Two of Aotearoa’s wins were ‘by an innings and…’ while winning by 199 runs and 8 wickets are also hefty margins. Those aren’t narrow victories - hence England being food. The most interesting result though was the draw this year at Lord’s where Devon Conway smacked 200 on Test debut.
Aotearoa’s second innings featured Taylor hitting 33 runs @ 94sr in what was a glorious team-first knock from Taylor. Aotearoa wanted to make this a contest and Henry Nicholls chimed in with 23 runs @ 64sr while Colin de Grandhomme smacked 9* of 5 deliveries. After being 74/3, Aotearoa declared on 169/6 to set England a target of 273 runs to win … a Test at Lord’s.
England reached 170/3 and no English batter had a strike-rate over 60. Joe Root was the only lad with a strike-rate over 50 (56sr - just above his Test career 54.90sr). Opener Dom Sibley hit 60 runs off 207 deliveries (29sr) as England shut up shop to embrace the draw.
England celebrated their white ball revolution that was headlined by playing with freedom like the kiwis. Aotearoa are really about that life though and at the holy grail of English cricket, Aotearoa brushed aside ego or selfish stats to push for a result and give England something to chase - thus producing a funky final day. England shut up shop and didn’t want to have fun.
Luteru Taylor was the main bloke pushing that Lord’s Test to a result and it’s obviously lovely that his retirement came the night before this yarn. They say that the mark of an individual is how they leave their team (how you leave the beach/picnic area and any other relevant examples you can think of. Taylor leaves the Blackcaps with Aotearoa cricket being the best it’s ever been.
Meanwhile, Aotearoa vs England is the thing to track. Guess who tours England for three Tests in 2022?
Wildcard’s Notebook
The strange thing about Luteru Ross Poutoa Lote Taylor’s retirement announcement is that despite him closing in on 38 years of age it still felt like a surprise.
Maybe that’s just me being in denial. I believed him when he spoke in 2019 about the possibility of hanging in there for another ODI World Cup, however there have been signs since then that maybe the hunger had dipped that tiny amount for Rossco. Fair enough. The important thing is that he’s going out on his own terms.
See, I’m firmly of the belief that there are one or two players that come along every generation who are simply undroppable. Even if the numbers dip, they’ve earned that tail-end to their career and they’ll retire when they deem it time. Well, that’s what Taylor’s getting now. One last summer to celebrate an all-time legend.
There’s a deeper dive version of this yarn that’ll arrive in article form in a couple of months. Luteru Ross Taylor: A Career In Numbers or something like that. But I can’t write that when he’s still got games to play, you know? The career ain’t over yet. So the plan for this email is to serve up a bit of a checklist of things that Taylor may yet still achieve in his Test and ODI career, although researching it got difficult because, I mean, he’s already broken most of these records. We’re talking about...
Aotearoa’s leading Test run scorer with 7584 runs (Williamson 7272 is second)
Aotearoa’s leading ODI run scorer with 8581 runs (Fleming 8007)
To date the only man on the planet with 100 Tests/ODIs/T20Is
Aotearoa’s leading ODI century maker with 21 tons (Astle/Guptill 16)
Aotearoa’s best ever ODI batting average (min 10 inns) of 48.20 (Williamson 47.48)
But there are a few more milestones that he could reach over two more Tests and six more ODIs. Starting with the Test stuff where… let’s be honest against Bangladesh at home there’s a very good chance he only gets to bat twice more and that could be a problem. It means he’s highly unlikely to score the 416 runs needed to become the first kiwi to reach 8000 in Tests. However a twentieth Test ton would be nice. Three more scores of 50+ would tie (at least temporarily) Kane Williamson’s record of 57 in Tests. Stephen Fleming is second with 55 so Rossco needs one more to tie him, two to beat him.
The thing to really look out for is his average. A rough time of it in India saw his Test batting average dip under 45 for the first time since November 2015... when he scored that outrageously good 290 in Perth against Australia – which remains the highest ever score by a visiting batsman in Australia. As it stands he’s 21 runs shy of a 45.00 average. In other words, a cheeky 21no would get him up there... plus add 45 runs to that tally for every time he’s dismissed. If he gets out twice, as is most likely, then he’d need to score 111 runs. Stephen Fleming famously scored just enough in his final Test to nudge his average up over 40 on the permanent record so Taylor’s just gotta follow that blueprint.
Sneaky fact: Ross Taylor is the only NZer with more than 1000 Test runs in the fourth innings of matches.
Speaking of Fleming, he and Taylor are the only two Blackcaps with more than 72 outfield catches (Williamson is third with that number, one ahead of Martin Crowe). And to the shock of exactly nobody they’re WAY ahead of everyone else.
However Fleming’s still a few clear of Taylor. 171 catches for Flem, 161 for Ross. There are 40 more wickets available in Taylor’s Test career and he’d need to take catches for exactly a quarter of them to match Fleming... probably not gonna happen but it’s one to watch for all the same. Incredibly, there are only four NZ wicket-keepers with more total fielding dismissals than Taylor or Fleming: Watling (275), McCullum (209), Parore (204) & Smith (176).
Needless to say, the Williamson/Taylor batting partnership is Aotearoa’s greatest. 3882 runs at an average of 58.81 per wicket. 10 century partnerships. Top effort of 265. People freak about the run outs between them but the far more important fact is that no other pair have scored within 1400 runs in partnership for the Blackcaps (Latham + Williamson is second with 2458).
That won’t get added to with Williamson out injured for this series, sadly. They did have one knock of seven runs together in Kanpur against India, second innings, but we’ll call that an aberration and consider the last proper Test partnership between Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor to be the 96* that they added for the third wicket against India in Southampton which ended with Luteru hitting the winning runs to clinch the World Test Championship. Truly iconic.
Another sneaky stat: Taylor has been involved in an NZ record 43 Test victories. Boult and Williamson (37) are second equal, Southee (36) is fourth. Then it’s Vettori and Watling (34) which shows how superb this current era of Blackcaps Test cricket has been. Meanwhile the great Bert Sutcliffe played 42 matches and never won any of them.
One more for the Test stats... supposing that Taylor plays both these Tests against Bangladesh then he’ll tie Daniel Vettori with 112 caps for New Zealand. He did have the choice of breaking that record with the home series against South Africa on the cards but he’s chosen to prioritise the ODIs in Australia instead – with covid quarantines meaning they’ll probably need to pick two separate squads. Which is fair enough because it’s in One Day Internationals where the man has set a legacy that goes beyond world class. And there are still six more games to add to it.
419 runs to reach 9k... not sure that’s gonna happen but gotta list it because it’s about the only thing left to achieve. His 21 centuries are a kiwi record. His 72 scores of 50+ are 15 clear of Astle and Fleming. His 139 catches are seven clear of Fleming. So maybe we’ve gotta look further abroad than just kiwi records here.
Luteru Taylor has 8581 ODI runs, good for 25th all time (the only players ahead of him with fewer games played are AB De Villiers and Rohit Sharma). He’s directly ahead of Marvin Attapattu, Mark Waugh, Virender Sehwag, Hashim Amla & Herschel Gibbs. The only active players within 1000 runs of him are Eoin Morgan and Tamim Iqbal (and only Kohli and Sharma are ahead of him). Here’s how high he may climb up the ladder in these last six matches...
He needs 68 runs to surpass Desmond Hayes for 24th
He needs 121 runs to surpass Yuvraj Singh for 23rd
He needs 197 runs to surpass Shiv Chanderpaul for 22nd
He needs 243 runs to surpass Saeed Anwar for 21st
He needs... 625 runs to (temporarily) surpass Rohit Sharma for 20th
Also two catches will take him past Sachin Tendulkar for fourth all time in ODIs. Not gonna catch Mohammad Azharuddin for third (156 catches) but to be fair he’s played 101 fewer matches. He’s only 21 catches behind Ponting in second in 142 fewer matches. He’s a hefty 79 catches behind leader Mahela Jayawardene but that’s in 215 fewer matches. You can see why it’s hard to compare Blackcaps players internationally, right? We just don’t play enough cricket to stack these things up.
Another fun fact: Ross Taylor has the second highest ever score for a number four (181no vs ENG in March 2018).
If he scores one more ODI century then he’ll retire 10th equal for hundreds, along with Ganguly and Dilshan. Two more would put him tenth outright... though we’re only talking six ODIs left here and three are away in Aussie so can’t get greedy. He’s 18th all up in 50+ scores with 72 of them. Haynes (74) and Aravinda de Silva (75) are still in range. Also if he does score another ODI century then he’ll top Bevan Congdon as the oldest Blackcap to ton up in the format. Won’t get there in Tests though because Bert Sutcliffe scored 151no at age 41y 108d against India in 1965.
Not that it would matter one bit if he doesn’t do any of this stuff. These stats are all bonus numbers. He’s already (basically) guaranteed to retire as New Zealand’s top run scorer in both Test and ODI cricket, leaving behind a legacy that weighs well against anybody else on the planet.