Tim Southee has won high praise from Richard Hadlee and in the Australian, Mike Coward is equally impressed with Southee following his efforts in Brisbane.
It is much too easy for red-blooded young pacemen to get carried away when they sight a grassy Gabba deck after days of heavy rain. But not Southee. He showed admirable poise and bowled with commonsense on a consistent line and an immaculate length. He moved the ball enough to disconcert and did not try to take a wicket with every delivery. And when he let loose his well-concealed quicker delivery the extra bounce brought Australia's top-order batsmen undone.
Not since Daniel Vettori has a teenager carried such weighty responsibility in New Zealand cricket. But while there are great hopes for Southee, unlike Vettori he has never been considered a prodigy. This will be to his advantage as he makes his way in the cricket world.
Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that everything went right for Daniel Vettori on the first day at the Gabba.
Vettori's masterstroke came on the stroke of tea. Hitherto Jesse Ryder has made his name mostly as a hard-hitting batsmen built along the lines favoured by John Daly, whose social habits lacked the discretion shown by the eventful golfer. Now he emerged as a burly medium-pacer capable of delivering the sort of temptations that started the rot in the Garden of Eden.
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