Kiwis fly high, sink low on same weekend

The highs and lows of sport were there for New Zealanders on the one weekend: a superb century on Test debut from 20-year-old Kane Williamson, and a boorish display of alcohol-fuelled hooliganism from the Eden Park crowd on Saturday. The rugby league Test against Australia was blighted by crowd behaviour more associated with the ‘ultras' of European football than an antipodean sporting audience.

Local sportswriter Steve Deane summed it up: "The sight of thousands of people sheltering their children from flying missiles as they streamed for the exits with fully a quarter of the night's test to go was as bad as it gets for the code."

The booing of the Australian national anthem was one thing, but the tossing of bottles is another. Urged on by a ridiculously protracted haka and flowing full-strength beer, the Auckland crowd disgraced itself. At least the beer bottle that hit Petero Civoniceva on the head as he sat on the bench was plastic, as was, reportedly, the shot glass that narrowly missed Cameron Smith as he lined up a kick for goal.

A streaker topped off the low-rent atmosphere, which had Deane saying he would not want to take his children to a game to an event like it.

The Eden Park debacle will require plenty of deep thinking before the Rugby World Cup rolls into town next year: crowd control was hopelessly poor on Saturday night.

But in fairness to New Zealanders, I should also give a prominent mention to one of the most assured Test Cricket debuts you are ever likely to see, a magnificent 131 from Williamson in Ahmedabad at the weekend.

Coming to the crease after a double-strike had rendered New Zealand 4 for 137 chasing 487, Williamson batted nervelessly and brilliantly for six-and-a-half hours and was finally out at 6 for 415.

Along with Jesse Ryder's century and Chris Martin's spell-of-a-lifetime to reduce India's second dig to 5 for 15 (words and numbers I thought I would never type), Williamson's great debut has put New Zealand in with a chance of what would be one of its finest-ever Test wins.

I know that New Zealand has to do this with anyone who shows any ability whatsoever, and Australia thinks it does not, but watching Williamson batting at the weekend I thought about what it would be like for him if were Australian: doomed to seven more years of Sheffield Shield before a middle-order incumbent finally retired.

Oh, and how's this for a factoid: watching Williamson up close in the field was Sachin Tendulkar, who made his first Test century in August 1990 - on the day after Williamson was born.

Simple game plan yields rewards

While I'm on cricket, the sight of Clint McKay and Mitchell Starc attacking the stumps against the Sri Lankans in Brisbane on Sunday was a huge relief. Yes, the pair had great assistance from a bowlers' special at the Gabba, and they used it gratefully, but the line of attack certainly made a refreshing change from the first two games against the Sri Lankans.

In those games the Australians bowled too wide and too short to the touring side, and paid the price. Chief offender was the serial sprayer Mitchell Johnson. I don't like to bash recurring themes, but what are we going to do about Johnson, given that he is clearly undroppable: it looks as if Ponting has issued an ‘if-he-goes-I-go' edict about several of his team, and the selection panel is bound by that.

There is no other explanation for the continued tenure of Mitchell Johnson in the side. He is a strike bowler that hardly ever strikes, and in between those occasions, leaks runs, hands game-changing momentum back repeatedly, gives batsmen mental breaks during which they do not have to play at the ball and generally makes it easy on them.

Weighed down by ink, his bowling action is getting so round-arm it threatens to cuff the umpire on the back of the head. In all of this, obvious to anyone with eyes, where is the discernible effect of any coaching from the vaunted Australian set-up? We brought the guru, Troy Cooley, back from England, and in his time with the team Johnson has got worse, dragging his bowling arm lower and unable to find any semblance of line or length with any consistency. What happens in the nets? Why isn't Johnson made accountable for not making the changes that Cooley wants?

I don't want to write this, I want Johnson firing, I want him - seeing he is evidently going to be kept in the team regardless of outdated and trivial criteria such as taking wickets and bowling tightly - taking heaps of wickets against the English: no-one would be happier about that than me.

But what worries me most is that the English view Johnson as the ‘drossmeister': they remember the 25 four-balls he handed to Andrew Strauss at Lord's last year, forever putting to rest the saying that "they don't give away Test centuries". Well, they did, and the English remember it very well.

Unless and until Johnson shows them that he is a bowler to be feared and not feasted upon, they are entitled to consider themselves favourites against an attack of which he is part. All of which makes Glenn McGrath's prediction of another 5-0 whitewash simply laughable: maybe if you and another fair-haired bowler were playing, Glenn, but not with this lot, for whom form is not a factor in selection.

Backs going forward, forwards going backwards

The Wallabies present a bizarre sight to followers of Australian rugby. Just when some electrifying young talent has gelled into possibly the best backline in world rugby, the long-suffering scrum has suffered the ignominy of being pushed all over Millennium Stadium by a Welsh pack that weighed in seven kilograms heavier on average.The Australian scrum was crippled by injury at the weekend but even so, the leek-eaters threw them around like rag dolls, and the even heavier English pack awaits them at Twickenham on Saturday night.

In contrast with the travails of the scrum, Australia's free-wheeling young backs turned on the razzle-dazzle in some style in Cardiff, stretching the Welsh to breaking point with their pace, slick handling and sleight-of-hand (and foot), a quality that Kurtley Beale and Quade Cooper possess in spades.

The signs for the World Cup are maddeningly inconsistent: a backline that poses huge trouble for any team if given space; defensive frailty in the same (that would be you, Quade); and a scrum that needs to man up. Still, the progress made in 2010 means that Australia has the basis of a side that can win next year's World Cup. From where we started the year, that is huge strides.