Llorne Howell - Sports blogger Former cricket international for the Black Caps, Llorne Howell, gives his views on New Zealand's number one summer sport, both for the Bay and the national team.

The most that I could take from the games is that the wicket looked very substandard in respect of bounce. The main summer sport in the states is baseball. Bounce is not a factor when the pitcher throws his pitch, so many Americans may not understand these subtleties of cricket in relation to the surface we play on.

This is an aspect that makes cricket very interesting. When the ball is delivered to the batsman there is the same movement in the air, but cricket also has the huge factor of the clay and grass strip of 20m to contend with. The bounce and movement off this changes the shots a batsman can play and therefore the game hugely. This is why India do so well in India, but generally struggle on the bouncy surfaces of South Africa and Australia.

In Florida, guys were getting bowled from full length balls that were virtually going under their bats. Wickets like this make the game very uninteresting and difficult to play on. As a batter we say that when the ball comes off the bat beautifully it has hit the 'meat spot' of the bat.

The meat spot is an area from about 10-20cm from the bottom of the blade. So if the ball is only bouncing to a height of 5cm from a length ball, it hits right near the bottom and you get very little power. If you play slightly above the ball it will go under your bat, or with a touch of a cross blade you will miss it.

In these circumstances, facing a guy like Malinga becomes near impossible. He does not bowl with his bowling arm next to his ear. This type of bowling action gives a bowler the most bounce. His bowling arm is more like a throw. The arm comes over straight out towards the umpire. Our guys have commented in the past that when Malinga bowls the ball seems to be released from the umpire's tie. This is because he bowls with such a round arm action. For guys who have faced bowlers for 20 years with the ball release from basically above the bowler's head, it is a huge change. They have to pick up the ball from where the umpire stands instead of the sightscreen behind.

Because he bowls like this, his bounce is less than a 'normal' bowler. This is fine on a normal wicket. However, on a low-bouncing wicket like in Florida, it is very tough to get him off the block.

So there are two ways to stop a batsman scoring in general. One is to bowl yorkers so the ball hits the bottom of the bat. There is no power at the bottom of the bat. This is why you see guys like McCullum charging or dropping back in their crease while facing the bowler. They are trying to get in a position where the ball bounces enough off the wicket that it will hit the meatspot of the bat. If they stay on the crease and the guy bowls a Yorker, the figure they can get no power. At this level of cricket you have to be able to bowl good yorkers as a bowler. If you can't, you will soon be dropped. Hence batters need a plan to combat this type of bowling.

However, on this wicket in Florida, most balls effectively became yorkers as the ball was not bouncing. It also made cross bat shots very difficult as they would go under your bat.

These are the reasons for the low scores in these matches, not any deficiency from either side. So in the future the wicket will need to be of better standard for further matches.

Apart from the wicket, it looked a great start for NZ's partnership with USA Cricket. There was a good crowd and the facilities looked good.

One has to bear in mind the huge market there is for cricket in the USA. This is from research conducted there.
Professor Rajeev Kohli of the Columbia Business School, who has conducted detailed research into cricket in the USA, explains that America is the second highest broadcast revenue earner in the world, after India:
'Expatriates from the major cricket playing countries - India, England, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Bangladesh - spend so much money on buying pay-per-view matches that the USA is the second-highest broadcast revenue earner in the world, next to India.'
He also explains that, 'much of cricket's revenue is derived through the sports televised broadcast across the world, and the BCCI actually earns more income from pay-per-view broadcast of games in the USA than from broadcast in Australia and England combined.'

So this partnership with USA Cricket could pay huge dividends for NZ.

I was in India recently with Brent King of Investment Research Group based in Auckland and Tauranga. He is a board member of NZ Cricket. While in Mumbai, Brent received many enquiries about the deal NZ Cricket had with USA Cricket and the means through which different groups could invest. Brent would have to take any offers back to the board but the interest was huge. Cricket is phenomenally big in India and companies want their ads shown anywhere it is played and then beamed back to India.