Australia v New Zealand Report Card

Featuring ploy sleeves, Glenn Phillips' sunglasses, smart citches and Weisz and Bergman

Ploy Sleeves
Grade: C

Travis Head returned to the Australian side for their match against New Zealand, and flayed his way to a 59 ball century.

59 balls?!? Prrfrt. Why so sluggish, Trav? Hand still sore?

He and David Warner blasted away against the Black Caps’ bowlers, scoring about a zillion (118) off the first ten overs. It was such a new ball onslaught that Trent Boult (0/30 off 4 overs) was being correctly talked about as the bowler keeping it tight.

(Travis Head wasn’t the only Australian making his first appearance in this World Cup. Ricky Ponting had also finally shown up on commentary. Now, Ponting is a man who captained consecutive undefeated Australian campaigns in 2003 and 2007. He also scored a magnificent 140* in the 2003 final. But despite these various heroics, his efforts to displace Hayden from the commentary box is easily his greatest World Cup feat.)

New Zealand seemed to play this very cleverly, looking to push Australia into their notorious danger zone of a score in the 400s. However, they were bowling so infrugally that there was a genuine risk of pushing them so far into the 400s that they came out the other side into the 500s, a zone that has no known danger at all.

Poor old Matt Henry was the man who bore the major brunt of Head’s healed hands, thrashed for multiple sixes in an over as the quick continually overstepped.

At this point, the sensible question was being raised: What if the rest of the match was just Matt Henry bowling no balls and being hit for six?

The game would have to be declared a no result. A ploy to keep up your sleeve, for sure. (Assuming that’s where one keeps ploys.)