Good morning!
Matty Flatt here, your deputy to the managing editor, back taking over Hoddle duties for the remainder of this week while Fitzie attends to “real life”™.
And as you know, Fitzie often likes to talk about other sports, like tennis (to which I am also partial), so I am making the most of this opportunity to SHOUT SOMETHING FROM THE MOUTAINTOPS.
The Black Caps have won a test series in India.
Look, you probably don’t want to talk about this today. But I don’t care. Let me expand a bit, as that may as well have been Dutch to a good chunk of you. New Zealand’s international cricket team, the Black Caps, have defeated India IN India in a three-match series. And they didn’t just win the series, they swept it 3-0.
Let’s give that a bit more perspective.
New Zealand up until this point had NEVER won a test series in India. NZ’s last test win in the subcontinent was 36 years ago, and before this series, they had won a grand total of two matches from 37 contests between the two in the South Asian country.
Test cricket in India is HARD. The format is played across five days with around 8 hours of play each day. The conditions are brutal, with temperatures typically in the 90’s (talking Fahrenheit for my American friends) with humidity regularly over 50%, sapping the endurance and fitness of even the best conditioned fielders and bowlers. These conditions have a huge impact on the playing surface as well, with the pitch extremely dry and deteriorating heavily over the five days, resulting in an extremely alien environment especially to visiting batsmen with cracks and footmarks causing uneven bounce, sharp spin, and basically turning every delivery bowled into a figurative hand grenade. And you are taking on a player pool totaling ten figures.
Everything is against you when you play a test in India.
This was New Zealand cricket’s Everest. It was something I almost expected to never see in my lifetime. And not only did they win one match, or the series, but they won every match. What makes it all the sweeter is India were the top ranked team in the world going into the series; New Zealand had just collapsed in a series in Sri Lanka and were missing their best player to injury, and had seen a number of their modern greats either retire or age into seeming mediocrity in recent years.
A fair few people predicted a 3-0 clean sweep going into the series... to India.
The Black Caps have conquered their Everest, and in stunning fashion. It’s one of the best sporting moments of my lifetime.
So let’s reminisce together. What are some of the sporting Everests you have seen conquered?
Matty Flatt’s Track of the Day: “Heroes”, by David Bowie
And now for your links:
Alasdair Gold decides to make a comparison between Ange and Antonio Conte, for some reason
The Athletic ($$$) on just how much Dominic Solanke offers this Spurs side
They also do a bit of a dive into racism towards Asian footballers, if you would like a slightly more depressing read