Fourth day
My Life in Cricket
Scorecards
achieved a lifetime’s ambition at 10 am on Sunday morning; for the first ten
minutes of the day it constituted the entire crowd. The first two-and-a-half
overs were its private entertainment and it could barely suppress a cry of
“Proceed!” before the first ball was bowled.
The
early start was down to the weather, which had curtailed progress over the
first three days. Play did not begin on the third day until 4 pm when the temperature
was measured at six degrees. A penguin wouldn’t accept a free ticket in those
conditions. I’m sure that the mercury dropped to similar levels on the Hammond
Room roof at the County Ground, Bristol in April days of yore, but I was
younger then and my desperation for cricket after the long English winter always
set my judgement askew.
So
it was not until the fourth day of this Plunket Shield game that I put in my
first appearance of the season. Overnight, Wellington were 77 ahead with seven
wickets standing, so anything could happen. That’s the delight of first-class
cricket: a run chase; a collapse; a canny declaration; elegant attack; sticky
defence; the ball turning square; the ball not turning at all; a great catch; a
missed stumping; a shambolic run out. Or the whole thing can end in torpid
anti-climax. A night at the theatre with a different ending every performance.
One
thing was certain: a Cachopa would be involved. There were three of them
playing for Auckland: Carl, the all-rounder, Craig, the opening batsman, and
Brad, the wicket-keeper. All the size of pixies. In Wellington’s first innings
the Cachopii had a hand in nine of the ten wickets.
Today’s
script dropped some heavy clues about the denouement almost before the
orchestra had finished playing the overture. Left-arm opening bowler Michael
Bates removed both the incumbent batsmen in the first quarter of an hour.
Stephen Murdoch was caught behind driving at a ball that left him. Tom Blundell
was struck on the pads playing across the line. Umpire Ashley Mehrotra took an
age to rule. By the time the finger was raised Blundell had already taken
several steps towards the rooms.
Another
thing that makes cricket the king of pastimes is that even when you have
watched for as long as I have it will still conjure something new. Today, when
fast bowler Matthew Quinn bowled to debutant Henry Walsh, he did so with seven in
the slip cordon, a silly mid off and a mid off. Nobody left to field on the
legside then. So when Walsh turned a ball from outside off stump into the
vacant acres, as was inevitable, it was the bowler who had to pursue it.
 |
| Rob Nicol's 9 - 0 field for Matt Quinn |
The
best that can be said for this is that it offered Rob Nicol (the Auckland
captain) a controlled environment in which to exercise his psychological need
to test half-witted theories, rather than exposing society at large to harm.
Walsh
lasted for ten overs before losing his leg stump to Bates. It took only a
further eight overs for Auckland to finish Wellington off. The most eye-catching
feature of the lower-order batting was a series of millionaire off drives from
Ili Tugaga, his preferred approach to getting off the mark. When, against
expectation, he succeeded in hitting the ball with one of these pieces of
speculation, he was caught at mid off for a duck.
That
was Carl Cachopa’s third wicket; Bates finished with four for 47.
So
what explains Wellington’s subsidence? There was movement, certainly, though
the report that described the pitch as “green” was exaggerating, from what I
could see at least.
Just
as happened when I watched Gloucestershire collapse on the first morning
against Kent in September, the ball tended to find the edge of the bat rather
than beating it entirely, and most of the edges went to hand. Still, seven
wickets had fallen for 50 today, so Auckland’s target of 128 might not be the
early Christmas present it seemed.
Opener
Jeet Ravel started impressively. He is a tall left-hander with a wide stance
and expansive style. A square-driven boundary off Arnel was the shot of the day,
but Ravel was out quirkily off the next delivery. As the ball rose off his
thigh pad, Ravel attempted to lift his arms clear, but in doing so committed
the very indiscretion he was seeking to avoid. He deflected the ball with just
enough power to dislodge one bail when it came into contact with the stumps.
Two
of the Cachopii—Carl and Craig—were now united. Carl had earlier survived a
Gillespie appeal on the grounds that it was too high on the leg, a rare event
for one of the brotherhood. The partnership was worth only four when Craig was
bowled by a full-length Matt McEwan delivery.
With
Auckland 29 for two, Wellington were bouncy. Another couple of wickets and they
would be on top.
Colin
Munro put an end to such pretensions. Munro is one of those cricketers who
takes much the same approach regardless of the format or state of the game.
Hard, clean hitting is to Munro what cold baths were to the Victorians: the palliative
for all ills.
Here,
59 off 49 balls, 52 of them from boundaries (four sixes), settled the matter. He
was particularly harsh on the normally abstemious Arnel.
Munro
was out 24 short of victory, but look at the scorecard and you will be misled.
It says that he was caught by Walsh. It was indeed Walsh who caught the ball on
the long-off boundary, but he was still shuffling his feet to ensure that he
did not connect with the boundary rope when he threw the ball to the nearby
McEwan, who should therefore be credited with the catch.
McEwan
is a bustling medium-fast bowler in the manner and shape of Tim Bresnan. This
was his Wellington debut after a couple of seasons with Canterbury. The ball
followed him about for a while. He took a fine catch to get rid of Carl
Cachopa, running back with his hands above his head, but dropped an even harder
chance diving in from the fine-leg boundary in a brave attempt to intercept a
Nicol top edge.
It
was too late to make a shred of difference anyway. Auckland won the game by six
wickets and were top of the table after two rounds. Most of the Plunket Shield
will be played while the World Cup is in progress, so I may be a lone spectator
again before the season is out.
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