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| April 4, 2002 | Thursday | Muharram 20, 1423 |
‘I am not whinging captain’
AUCKLAND, April 3: Nasser Hussain insisted Wednesday he was no “whinging” captain as he refused to blame England’s defeat in the last cricket Test on New Zealand’s pivotal decision to play on under lights.
New Zealand flayed the England bowlers under floodlights after turning down the umpires’ offer of bad light on Tuesday evening to smash their way to a 311-run lead and set up Wednesday’s 78-run series-levelling victory.
Senior England batsman Graham Thorpe urged cricket authorities to look at the situation, but Hussain was having none of it.
“The last thing I want to do is sit here and be like a whinging English captain,” Hussain told reporters after the defeat at Eden Park.
“The cricket has been excellent, all this other stuff has to be looked at by people off the field, ICC (International Cricket Council), ECB, whatever, they’ve got to look at it.
“The thing last night was simple. Some of our boys were struggling to see the ball, I mentioned that to Venkat (Indian umpire Srinivas Venkataraghavan), he fully agreed with me, he said it was difficult.
“But at no time in the history of the game has any team been taken off fielding and as far as ICC regulations go you can’t take the fielding side off, so you will have to talk to the ICC about it.”
England had to settle for a series draw after dominating large tracts of the series, especially in the 98-run win in the first Christchurch Test and the drawn Wellington Test.
Hussain, whose team were berated as “champion whingers of the world” by former India captain Sunil Gavaskar in February, said England deserved more than finishing the northern winter season without a series victory in India or New Zealand.
“If it was just down to heart, effort and attitude yes, but there are other things. The New Zealand side are very resilient and hard to break down, and in a three-match series we have to be always at our best to beat sides,” he said.
“We were just off maybe by two hours in this game and we got nailed, you basically get what you put in.”
Hussain said he was not interested “at all” in the ICC Test Championship table.
“I’m interested in the efforts of my team, are we improving, are we learning, how we are going to get better, how we’re going to win an Ashes series.
“Tables will come and go, there’s about eight or nine tables floating around and I’m only interested in this team.”
Hussain, who has impressed with his captaincy in New Zealand, said there were areas his team needed to improve.
“There are certain technical things, we need more big runs, big hundreds... they’re the sides that are winning, the Australians are getting big hundreds, double hundreds, we have to get the 20s and 30s out of our system.
“If we are really going to get up and beat sides that’s where we’ve got to improve.”—AFP
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