Back at Hamilton: leg spin and an inflatable pub

Northern Districts v Wellington, T20, Seddon Park, 22 December 2018

Scorecard (contains video links of wickets, boundaries and beards).

For the first time since I moved to Wellington in 2006, I have been to the cricket at Seddon Park in Hamilton. I was a regular in the press box there for three years or so from the turn of the century as CricInfo’s man in the central North Island, and reported upon a good deal of interesting cricket while enjoying Northern Districts’ free lunches.

At that time the ground was newly remodelled to double the size of the banking that surrounds two-thirds or so of the playing area, so as to attract more international fixtures. This involved taking out the trees that formed a near continuous canopy around the top of the bank when I first went to Seddon Park twenty years ago. It was pleasing to see that their replacements have matured, returning the rural feel that the ground has despite its central-city location (as I have noted previously, it is the only ground I have spectated at where I have been able to get a haircut and sit-down meal and still been back in my seat for the first ball after lunch). As well as the bouncy castle, without which no T20 match can be played, there was also an inflatable pub.

It was a pleasure to watch under lights in a part of the country where the climate does not necessitate an overcoat, several sweaters and a balaclava to survive the experience. Flags were given to spectators on arrival rather than the thermal blankets that are more appropriate in Wellington. 

The occasion was the opening game of the domestic T20 season, with Northern Districts hosting Wellington. A pleasing scheduling development this year is that many games are double headers, with the men’s match preceded by a women’s game. I arrived in time to catch the last ten overs of so of ND’s innings. Chasing 144, ND were well-placed with 60 or so needed and eight wickets standing, but they collapsed like the morale of the turkey population at this time of year, losing seven wickets for 23 runs.

Amelia Kerr was playing for Wellington. Recently turned 18, in June she broke the women’s world ODI record for an individual with 232 against Ireland. Good judges say that she is a rare talent, and I look forward to seeing her bat. Today it was her bowling that took the eye. She took three for ten with her leg spin, inducing cluelessness in the opposition as only a good leg spinner can. The last time I saw a leggie do that was when Ish Sodhi ran through Wellington at the Basin earlier this year. Though in the other camp, he greeted her with warm approval after the match, the fellowship of the wrist-spinner’s union overriding team loyalty. The ND lower order may not be technically equipped to meet the challenge, but a bowler who lands it with consistent accuracy and turns it both ways with bounce as Kerr does, will bamboozle better players than them.

In the men’s match, Wellington won the toss and put ND in. On a good pitch for batting, as Seddon Park is, I remain of the opinion that it is better to bat first as the pressure of chasing a large total undoes a team so often. That is, more or less, what happened here.

Though Walker wasn’t in the home side here, the other two bearded crowned heads were, and it turned out to be a royalist triumph, though it did not seem that way when Devcich was forced to abdicate from the second ball of the match, top edging Woodcock to short third man.

Devcich was replaced by his emperor-cousin Dean Brownlie who played the most substantial innings of the day, 99 from 45 balls, 76 of which came in boundaries. It was a satisfying combination of muscle and guile. One short of the hundred, Brownlie deserves credit for going for the big hit rather than taking the easy single that was there for the asking.

Each of the first five overs of the innings was delivered by a different bowler. The aim of this is to prevent the batsmen from settling, but it is a tactic that can be more disruptive to the bowlers. Woodcock, for example, bowled a fine first over, but was immediately replaced by Neesham, who was hit for four fours (though more athletic fielding might have turned two of them into catches). One of these was a cross-bat smash by Seifert that rocketed towards non-striker Brownlie at waist height. He just managed to straddle jump the oncoming missile. An inch higher and the line of succession would have been terminated there and then. When Woodcock returned, he got tonked too.

Jeetan Patel, who stepped aside from the domestic 50-over competition, is back for the T20 and made an immediate impact, conning the in-form Seifert to tap the first ball he bowled back for an easy caught-and-bowled. Only a single came from that over, but Patel’s effectiveness diminished with each over that he bowled. In his last over his normally infallible control went missing, and three full tosses all went over the rope, by a considerable margin. I felt sympathy for Patel earlier, when a clear mishit by Mitchell went for six, a sure sign of imbalance between bat and ball. Nofal also went for three sixes in one over, all by Brownlie.  

Hamish Bennett’s clever change of pace restricted ND to four from the last over of the innings, but 215 for six is a T20 total that will win many more games than it loses, even in Seddon Park’s corseted boundaries.

It was good to see Mitch Santner back for ND after being out for nine months with a knee injury. The national team lacks balance without him, and 22 not out and three overs for 28 was a satisfactory start.

Leading the reply, Devon Conway got off the mark with a six over long off in the first over off Devcich, followed by a four through mid-wicket next ball. He hit seven more fours, all pure shots through the off side. It was the best cricket of the match.

It is Conway’s second season for Wellington since moving from South Africa. Such is the way of the world that a televised 45 here set off social media in a way that a double hundred in the Plunket Shield a couple of weeks ago failed to do, with many asking when he will be qualified to play for New Zealand (to which the answer is September 2020).

But returning to the theme of leg spinners instigating self-doubt, the mere appearance of Ish Sodhi ball-in-hand caused Conway to abandon the composed orthodoxy that had served him so well to that point. Sodhi’s first ball he unsuccessfully attempted to reverse sweep. The second he charged at brainlessly and was bowled.

Four of Conway’s boundaries came in Scott Kuggeleijn’s first over, and things got no better for the bowler, who had a shocker. The tenth over of the innings included three wides as he kept getting the slow bouncer wrong. At least that over eventually reached a conclusion. Kuggeleijn’s final over included two above-waist full tosses so he was stood down with two balls of the over left. Paradoxically, he bowled more deliveries than anybody else in the game, wides and no balls included, finishing with 3.4-0-58-1.

However, it was Kuggeleijn’s dismissal of Hose, caught behind from the last ball of the tenth over, that sparked the collapse that gave the game to ND. At that point Wellington were more than halfway towards their target with seven wickets standing, so were still narrow favourites.

But Neesham went in the next over, miscuing Sodhi to cover. Sodhi isn’t always the most economical bowler, but gets the key batsmen out, which is why he is No 6 in the world bowling rankings for T20 at the time of writing. Any hope that Wellington had from this point on was expunged by the deceptively unlikely figure of Anton Devcich.

If asked to demonstrate to a young person the art of pie throwing, simply show them a video of Devcich bowling and the job will be done, or so anyone watching him bowl for the first time might be forgiven for thinking. Any indecision on the batsman’s part would be merely whether to hit him over midwicket or long off. But beware. Devcich is in the great tradition of bowlers who carry the appearance of a friendly spaniel but who can bite like a rottweiler. Chris Harris is the personification of the type, his ambling windmill action apparently doing no more than placing the ball on the tee, yet performing good enough a con to bring him 203 wickets in ODIs. Darren Stevens is another example. Devcich finished with four for 27. Wellington’s last six wickets fell for 12 runs.

One man’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. Much of Kuggeleijn’s waywardness was communicated to the world by Billy Bowden, making the most of a rare appearance before the TV cameras to reprise his full range of theatrical umpiring signals, a Christmas ham a few days early.