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While the farmers around Australia must be thankful for the unusual rain this season, their cricketers are not.
Australia could justly claim to have been robbed of a 2-0 result in this series after bountiful rain ruined all their good work in the first two Tests. Then after spending the entire third Test on the back foot, Australia hung out for a honourable draw.
Australia dominated the first two Tests with impressive first innings of 9 declared for 486 and 8 declared for 558. In reply, the Kiwis struggled to reach the follow on targets.
It took sporting declarations by both captains to liven up the first Test. The there was not enough play in the second Test as the rain made the struggle meaningless. However, over a full five days without rain, Australia would have been expected to inflict large defeats in both games.
New Zealand would not have expected to arrive at the final Test on an even standing with Australia. They had not managed this since the Australians toured in 1986. On that occasion New Zealand won the third Test and the series. Stephen Waugh rightly remembers this series as a low point in his career.
If one exchanged the team names in the final Test then most observers would think that it was just another Australian domination. But it was the Kiwis that did to Australia what Australia has done to so many other teams.
New Zealand set a first innings of 534 runs and Australia struggled to get past the follow on target. New Zealand then set a victory target of 440 runs with seven hour play remaining. However, unlike Australia they were not successful in taking all ten second innings wickets. They fell three short.
Before the series began, Australia was expected to comfortable win the series. The drawn result means Australia has now slipped below the 1200 point barrier for the second time in the last twelve months.
Australia's rating of 1193 points is the lowest it has been for twelve months. In spite of this, Australia retains a healthy 37 point lead over second place South Africa. This is the narrowest the gap has been since March this year.
South Africa will have the chance to dethrone Australia later this month. However, South Africa will need to defeat Australia in all three Tests to do this.
New Zealand has now set their highest rating since February 1991. This was toward the end of their golden period when they set their own record high rating of 1047 points.
They remain in eighth place, but have narrowed the West Indies' and India's lead to just 6 and 5 points respectively.
New Zealand next faces Bangladesh and they could easily overtake both these nations to claim sixth place in the ratings. They have not been rated higher than seventh since South Africa returned to international cricket in 1992.
The latest Test cricket ratings are: 1. Australia (1193); 2. South Africa (1156); 3. Pakistan (1061); 4. England (1059); 5. Sri Lanka (1023) 6. West Indies (1019); 7. India (1018); 8. New Zealand (1013); 9. Zimbabwe (937); 10. Bangladesh (837 provisional).
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