Taylor has always had that get out brain f**k shot in his armory, shame because he is such a talent, just need to get his head together which is probabaly why he wasn't a good skipper
I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiments. I just want to comment further.
Taylor is an anomaly because his dream was limited overs cricket. He came up through the levels and representing NZ in ODI cricket with no dream nor intent on playing test cricket. His ODI debut was 05/06 and his test debut was 07/08. That may be common in Australia, but not so often with NZ batsmen. If ODI batsmen do well, there is normally a spare spot in the NZ test batting line up to trial them.
The success he has had at test level is a sweet surprise to him by his own admission. Martin Crowe has worked extensively hard with him (and Guptill of late) once it was obvious that Taylor could score runs in international cricket with his endless sweeping of spinners and putting fast bowler loose deliveries through point and cover with disdain. He has an onside power game with pulls, slog sweep and custom 'hoic' shot but its agricultural.Its a challenge for Crowe with Taylor, because as you can well see, besides his off drive, he is not an orthodox technician. He managed to get Taylor to stop hitting or hoicing to mid wicket in test cricket (the ol' get out brain f**k shot of his) although he did that to Lyon in Perth. Taylor averages well over 50 in New Zealand. Which given the nature of our pitches is quite extraordinary. Over time under Crowe, his wagon wheel has a lot more shots in the V, but he is still instinctively brutal on wide off stump balls. Middle stump and leg stump - hes not so pretty on the eye. Even his on drive and often his straight drive typically follows a shuffle to the right, and often squaring up and getting a little too inside out when hitting the ball.
The captaincy being taken off him was nothing to do with his batting. NZ had just won a test in SL off the back of Taylor hitting a 50 and a 100 with Tim and Trent bowling very well. Ross found it very hard to accept. But Hesson only wanted to take the pyjama captaincy off him, not the test captaincy. Hesson wanted a more attacking captain in ODI and T20 - BMac; but because Taylor took it as a slight that he was not good enough, he did not tour South Africa and gave up the test captaincy.
I follow with interest the "reverse engineered" batsman for test cricket that succeed. Dave Warner is of course the most famous example of great extremes - fromT20 reverse hitter to a test opener of the highest quality be it with dashing or fighting an innings. A Sehwag and Slater approach of attacking test cricket is a common theme for some of the new breed learning to succeed in white shirts. Rossco plays test cricket with a SR of 60, which is not slow, but as he scores more runs the higher his SR climbs.
