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Daniel Brettig at the Gabba
December 4, 2011
Ross Taylor, the New Zealand captain, has said changes will be inevitable if his side cannot improve on their abject surrender to Australia over the final two days of the first Test in Brisbane. Having held their own entering day three, the visitors dropped a plethora of catches to help the hosts reach 427, before swishing unwisely outside off stump at the outswingers of James Pattinson to stumble to 5 for 28 on the fourth morning - a position from which only one result was possible.
Among the worst offenders was Taylor himself, dropping a chance in the slips and then following Pattinson's movement away to be gone for a first-ball duck. Taylor was also dismissed by Pattinson in the first innings for 14, and said his side had plenty of introspection in store ahead of the Hobart Test.
"You can't keep putting in performances like that. We need to look at ourselves," Taylor said. "There's a big summer ahead back home; Zimbabwe then three Tests against South Africa. If we put in another performance like that then there will be changes.
"You've got to give credit to James Pattinson, he put the ball in the right areas enough times for us to nick it. But we've still got to be harder on ourselves as a batting unit. Not only this morning but on the first day there were some soft dismissals and Australia didn't have to work that hard for their wickets.
"We had a good preparation leading up to the match and we all felt confident. We faced [Mitchell] Starc and Pattinson in the warm-up game. It was one of those days where we didn't execute as well as we would have liked. Turning up this morning we still felt we were in this match."
New Zealand has only played three Test matches prior to this one in 2011, the last against lowly Zimbabwe, but Taylor was not about to blame their lack of cricket for their poor performance. "We don't play as much Test cricket as some of the other nations but we need to learn quicker than we are at the moment," Taylor said. "That's the ultimate goal, to apply pressure for as long as possible and absorb it as for as long as possible as well.
"Sometimes early on in the innings you nick balls. We've just got to be harder on ourselves. We know Australia are going to come at us hard again in Tasmania. We need to play a lot better than we played today."
Aside from Daniel Vettori's first innings 96 and a handful of decent spells by the bowlers, the highlight of New Zealand's performance was a double of 77 not out and 42 by the former West Australian grade batsman, Dean Brownlie. Taylor said Brownlie had found the best method for the bouncy Gabba.
"He didn't commit himself forward early on, he played from a crease a lot and countered the bounce and played nice and late," Taylor said. "The other five batsmen can take a big leaf out of the way Dean batted. But even today, if he's perfectly honest it was a bit of a soft dismissal. He was one of the shining lights out of this game, the way he applied himself."
New Zealand have elected to bolster their squad for the second Test, calling in the seam bowler Brent Arnel to bring the squad to 14 players. The coach, John Wright, said the expectation of a slower surface in Hobart had encouraged Arnel's inclusion.
"We feel it's important to add a bit of bowling depth," Wright said. "Brent has been bowling well in the Plunket Shield for Northern and offers us another seam option. The conditions in Hobart are likely to be slower so he comes into the frame."
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