AA Thomson writes

My Life in Cricket Scorecards is ten years old. The first post was published on 30 December 2009. The promise was:

Some posts will feature one of these scorecards, some will record going to the cricket now, and some will be on random topics, historical and contemporary.

Which is more or less how it has turned out. Thanks to all who have shown an interest, particularly Brian Carpenter who has twice given me the pleasure of seeing my name in Wisden.

A series of posts that created more interest than most was the re-creation, fifty years after the event, of the 1967 season in England. There were daily posts on Twitter and weekly summaries here. I will repeat that exercise when I have more time, probably focusing on the 1970 season with its splendid combination of cricket—the Rest of the World non-tests and Kent’s first Championship since the First World War—the football World Cup, and a surprise result in the general election.

One of the pleasures of the 1967 project (if it may be so grandiosely phrased) was to rediscover the writing of AA Thomson, then a member of the distinguished cricket reporting team on The Times, along with John Woodcock, Alan Gibson and John Arlott, among others.

It was to be his last season; Thomson died early the following summer. I have picked up five of his books from the Basin Reserve bookstall and similar sources, though this represents less than half of his cricket books (as listed in Wikipedia) and less than a tenth of his total output, which embraced plays, travel, history and even a book of poetry. There is also The Times archive and some copies of Playfair Cricket Monthly from 1966/67 (I was an unusual child in my reading).

The plan is this: to post a daily tweet taken from AA Thomson’s cricket writing. Some days it will be vaguely topical, or follow a theme for the week, sometimes entirely random. I’m off to Sydney on 2 January for the third test between Australia and New Zealand, so something relevant to that seems a good starting point. The way the series has gone so far, I’ll need something to keep me cheerful.

The tweets will be on @AAThomsonwrites. This is a reconditioned account that used to be @Lifeincards, so some readers may already be followers. I’ll link from @kentccc1968, the Twitter account that is associated with the blog. There will be such commentary from time-to-time on the blog as seems appropriate.

Peaceful days in the sun: New Zealand v England in Hamilton

New Zealand v England, second test, Seddon Park in Hamilton, 29 November to 3 December 2019

Scorecard

Restful. That is how I would characterise my three days at the Hamilton test. There was plenty to enjoy, even though the action was not frenetic (apart from when Neil Wagner was bowling, obviously), and it was good to be back at Seddon Park, which was where I watched test cricket for the first half-decade or so of the new century.

There was plenty to remember, starting with Campbell and Griffiths putting on 276 for the West Indian first wicket, only for their team to lose. That was largely thanks to Chris Cairns, who has been airbrushed out of New Zealand’s cricket history since the lawyers got interested, but was a terrific cricketer.

The following year Australia were reduced to 29 for five, a situation that Adam Gilchrist dealt with by batting as if they were 400 for one. Australia won by six wickets.

There was the two-day test against India beginning on Friday afternoon and won by New Zealand soon after lunch on Sunday on a pitch that looked as if it had been transplanted from the centre court at Wimbledon. I always think of that match whenever I hear people moaning about the Indians and their home-team groundsmen.

Then the crater test against South Africa. A big hole appeared at one end, which the groundsman filled up, then, once he had been acquainted with the rules, emptied again. It was too far outside the right handers’ leg stump to be a threat, and when the ball did land there was as likely to scoot off the other way, but it had a mesmeric effect on the bowlers who wasted a couple of days aiming at it.

So the pitch as talking point is not a new thing for Seddon Park. The strip for this game was similar to that at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui for the series opener. That game finished in a New Zealand win well into the fifth afternoon, which is what a test pitch is supposed to facilitate. However, that the Hamilton pitch received an ICC rating of “good”, suggested that cricket needs a new dictionary for Christmas. It was easy for batsmen to stay in on unless they tried to score at more than two-and-a-little-bit an over, which is about as bad as a test-match pitch can be.

There was a historical curiosity about the scheduling of this game in Hamilton after that at the Mount, which is little more than an hour’s drive away. It can’t have happened often that successive tests have been staged on different grounds in the same province/county/state, Northern Districts in this case (though the profusion of venues in Colombo may have beaten ND to it). This was a precaution against New Zealand’s turbulent spring weather, and it paid off, with three balmy days, hot enough to trigger a storm that finished off the first day just after tea.

Hamilton’s new lights were shown off to good effect just before the rain fell. A switch was flicked and made a substantial and immediate difference, even though it wasn’t that dark. In the County Championship, the rule that that the artificial light cannot be stronger than the natural light would mean that their being switched on at all would mean that the players would have to come off there and then.

The previous lights had to come down because the towers were an earthquake risk, though shakes are mercifully rarer in the Waikato than in much of the country. I was CricInfo’s man in Northern Districts when they went up and turned down the chance to climb to the top of one of them.

It seems compulsory for the British cricketing press to preface the name of any New Zealand player other than Williamson, Taylor and Boult with “underrated”. BJ Watling might have been thought to have used up this year’s quota during his double hundred in the first test, but a new supply was rushed out in time for the underrated Tom Latham’s first-day hundred. Those who describe Latham thus have missed his presence in the top ten of the ICC batting rankings over the past year or more.

His batting in the first innings was the most fluent of the match. He scored faster than any specialist batsman on either side, but never appeared to hurry. Latham was helped by Broad’s wayward line in his opening spell. When he got one right it was to Jeet Raval, who edged to Root at first slip. It is so often the case that the man out of form gets the bowler’s best. Raval benefitted from New Zealand’s policy of picking a squad for both these two tests and the three to follow, but further failure in Perth has cost him his place in the Boxing Day test.

Root also caught Williamson, squared up by Woakes, but Ross Taylor became established and by mid-afternoon England looked dispirited, not helped by having two leg-before decisions overturned by the DRS. In just his second over Stokes resorted to three deep on the legside plus a fine third man to Taylor, who was out more conventionally from the ball after he reached his fifty, providing Root with his third catch of the day.

Latham reached his hundred shortly before the rain brought an early end to the first day. He was out early the next morning, leaving on length a Broad delivery that hit the top of off. He was replaced by the underrated Henry Nicholls, also hiding from the English media in plain sight in the top ten of the rankings.

Just when we had agreed that Sam Curran didn’t have the pace for test cricket, he succoured Nicholls into top edging a catch to deep fine leg. Next in was Daryl Mitchell, on test debut on his home ground. Mitchell was as close to a like-to-like replacement for the injured De Grandhomme as was available, which isn’t very close at all, De Grandhomme being more than the cube of his parts, let alone the sum. At 191 for five, England had restored the balance of the game, but Watling and Mitchell reclaimed it with a stand of 124.

It occupied a serene 53 overs. With the heat, the grass bank at the top end, and BJ Watling digging in, I may have dropped off for a few seconds and dreamt myself back at Mote Park in the late seventies, the great CJ Tavaré at the crease, sucking the will to live out of the opposition. Only the Tip Top ice cream signs where the Deal Beach Parlours van should have been returned me to the present.

Joe Root resorted to placing of fielders in odd positions, but it was too random to be convincing. His handling of the bowlers had a by-numbers feel to it, but with an attack consisting of four quicks and an all-rounder whose fitness was dodgy, that would be hard to avoid. It was strange that he put himself on with Latham on 96 and helped the batsman to his century with a friendly (as Jim Laker used to describe all full tosses) full toss.

Mitchell upped such tempo as there was and played well for 73 before going the same way as Nicholls, but off the bowling of Broad, who had got Watling four overs earlier with another short one that went of the shoulder of the bat to Burns in the gully. Late-order merriment took New Zealand to 375.

England had addressed their three-keeper problem by picking a fourth, Ollie Pope, in for the injured Buttler. He was athletic, which with no frontline spinner in the XI was all he needed to be, but he lacks the quality most prized in modern keepers—he doesn’t jabber on incessantly in praise of half volleys.

Jofra Archer had a dispiriting time from which he will learn, but is a fine sight. Anyone who grew up in the era of Willis, Holding and JSE Price finds it hard to understand that a bowler can call himself fast without a run up that embraces two time zones, but with Archer and Bumrah as models, the next generation will strive for brevity.

England lost two before the close of the second day. Writers better qualified in technical analysis than me have written off Dominic Sibley as a test player on the basis that he appears to abstain from the offside as if batting in a permanent Lent. I hope that he proves them wrong, if only to show that runs in county cricket are not irrelevant. Here, it was a relief to all concerned when Southee got him lbw for four.

This was the seventh New Zealand v England test at which I have been present since moving here, but the first time a Kent player has been in the England team. Here there were two, Joe Denly and Zak Crawley.  Denly may yet become the David Steele of our time, a middle-aged hero of the Resistance. Not here though. At least there was a Kentish dimension to the dismissal, caught behind for four off Matt Henry. Denly did achieve something memorable in Hamilton: late in the game he infamously dropped a Sun crossword clue of a chance offered by Williamson. I so hope that is not what he is remembered for when his test career is done.

England finished the day on an uncomfortable 39 for two, though it would have been worse had Rory Burns not been dropped twice, the easier chance to Taylor, the harder to Raval.

My notes for the third morning consist only of the following:

“Root and Burns in no trouble for the first half of the morning”. Then, an hour or so later, “Nor the second half”. Some stories are easily told.

Root was not at his best, or particularly close to it, but that he had to work at it more than he usually appears to made it all the more praiseworthy.

Burns survived another chance on 86 when Henry butchered a run out by trying and failing to intercept a throw that Latham was perfectly placed to collect beside the stumps. He reached his hundred in mid-afternoon. Steve James, in his The Art of Centuries, explained that there is a challenge to overcome for a batsman who survives a chance or chances; he has to convince himself that he retains the right to be there. To say that a batsman is gritty has an air of damning by faint praise about it, but that should not be so, especially for an opener. Burns has that quality and should have a good run at the top of England’s order. He has also shown (see comments re Sibley, above) that runs in county cricket do mean something.

Burns was run out the ball after he achieved three figures, but it took an age to confirm, the problem being to establish that there was separation of bail and stump before Burns had made his ground, though this appeared obvious enough on the big screen. Perhaps the ICC could spare some of its largesse to provide stumps that light up for all tests, and agree that illumination equals separation.

New Zealand’s attritional bowling and field settings meant that Ben Stokes never got going before he fell to a slip catch from a Southee delivery that was one of the few to move laterally.

This brought in Zak Crawley for his debut innings. This was only the second occasion on which I have been present to watch a Kent player at the crease for the first time in a test match. The other was at the very first day’s test cricket I attended, England v New Zealand at the Oval in 1969. Then it was Mike Denness who batted with agonising uncertainty for a 43-ball two. This time it was briefer, but no better.

Crawley was anxious to impose himself and get off the mark. He drove his fourth delivery hard, but Henry at mid on made a sharp stop to prevent the run. This wound Crawley up a little tighter and though he hit the next ball straight to Williamson, he set off for the run as if drawn by an irresistible law of physics. He needed every bit of his diving 6’5” to beat the direct hit.

He edged the second delivery of Wagner’s next over to Watling, so Crawley’s hard-won single will constitute his test record until the next time, perhaps after his domestic record has been fortified with more consistent scoring so as to match achievement with his undoubted promise.

Crawley was on of Wagner’s five wickets. As ever he bowled with such energy and fire as to raise the question of how much more Sisyphus might have achieved had he shown Wagner’s spirit.

I left for the airport soon after Crawley’s dismissal, just before more rain ended the day an hour or so prematurely. Though two days remained, a forecast of rain for much of the last day combined with the torpor of the pitch to make a draw appear all but certain. Centuries from Williamson and Taylor confirmed the result, giving New Zealand the series win, with the usual rider that two games do not a series make.

Early adventures in the Plunket Shield

As I write in mid-November (roughly the equivalent of mid-May in England), three-quarters of Wellington’s home programme in the Plunket Shield has been completed. The New Zealand domestic schedule is a warning to England as to what may be to come if resistance from county cricket’s defenders is less than staunch.

I could not get to the Basin for any of the opener against Otago, an eight-wicket win for Wellington, but was there on the first and fourth days of a memorable contest between Wellington and Canterbury: Conway’s match.

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 29 October – 1 November 2019

Scorecard

Devon Conway scored more runs here than anyone has done before in one match in New Zealand. He followed an unbeaten 327 in the first innings with 66 in the second to top Bert Sutcliffe’s single-innings 385 for Otago against Canterbury in 1952–3. His 53 boundaries were the most hit by a New Zealander (including aspiring New Zealanders). It was the highest individual score that I have ever watched, though I saw only (only!) the 261 he made on the first day. Conway—an immigrant from South Africa—qualifies for New Zealand in October 2020, so it would be well worth a county making him an offer for next season.

At 20 for three in the twelfth over, such profligate scoring appeared impossible after Wellington had been put in by Canterbury, but this was not an archetypal first-day Basin pitch. All three wickets were down to good bowling. Left-armer Nuttall swung one into Fletcher to have him leg-before, then Matt Henry, in Kent form, combined accuracy, movement with a little lift to account for Colson and Bracewell. However, even at this early stage very few deliveries beat the bat, particularly when Conway was holding it.

Tom Blundell joined Conway to put on 34 for the fourth wicket before being given leg-before to Williams. Blundell could not have advertised more widely his view that the ball had hit the inside edge had he taken a full page in the Dominion Post. He stared at the raised finger with the expression of a Pope whose infallibility is questioned. All the way back to the rooms his head shook from side to side as he examined the offending strip of wood. Had he widened the scope of this inquiry it would have revealed that the bat also had a middle, which, appropriately deployed, would have saved him a lot of trouble.

The umpire involved, Garth Stirrat, has been outed in as a retired porn star, so I’ll leave a space here for the reader to insert their own witticism.

One of the characteristics of a class batsman that Conway has is that watching him gives no inkling that the team may be in trouble, or that batting is anything other than the breeziest of activities. As we were to see, he has shots around the ground, but his go-to area is behind square on the offside. So productive was he in this area that Cole McConchie committed a heresy against the creed of modern captaincy by stationing a third man before lunch on the first day, and followed it with a second a few balls later. Conway reached his 50—out of a total of 72— with the first false shot he played, an edge over the slips.

The Canterbury bowling in the early part of the innings was exemplary, with Henry conceding only 11 off nine overs and Will Williams—a tall right-arm seamer with a bouncy approach—12 off eight. The rest of the Canterbury attack could not maintain the pressure. Left-armer Andrew Hazeldine was sufficiently pacey to have Malcolm Nofal caught at mid on when attempting a pull, but was profligate to the extent of reaching his bowler’s century in his eleventh over, as quickly as I have seen it done. Conway is so adept at telling the good ball from the almost-but-not-quite good ball and steered what he got from Hazeldine through the gaps like a pilot in a busy waterway. He reached his hundred with another rare mishit, a top-edged pull that fell just out of reach of the diving keeper, Fletcher.

Peter Younghusband joined Conway for the sixth-wicket partnership and took the role of defensive support seriously as may be judged by the fact that he did not contribute to the first 33 runs they put on, and was on only 14 when the century partnership was achieved.

There were no nervous 190s for Conway; a four followed at once by a six over deep mid-wicket saw to that. He reached 200 before the team had passed 300, which can’t have happened often.

Those two boundaries came off Todd Astle, who had been held back until Conway was well-established, which suggested a lack of confidence in a bowler who is a semi-regular member of the test squad, but asking a leg spinner to bowl in New Zealand in October is like bringing a bear out of hibernation a couple of months early, to forage with the snow still on the ground.

Younghusband’s blockade was breached by a fine catch by Tom Latham at second slip. He was replaced by Jamie Gibson, who took the opposite approach, striking out from the start. They were both right, in their contrasting ways. By the time Gibson came in, Conway had been batting for most of the day and was happy to let his partner man the guns.

The Canterbury attack operated like two economies, one managed by Margaret Thatcher, the other by Robert Mugabe. Henry and, especially, Williams (one for 52 from 28 overs) held fast against the inflation of batsmen’s scores, while the other bowlers printed runs.

In my absence on the second and third days, Conway reached his triple century and Wellington declared on 525 for seven an hour or so before lunch. Tom Latham then scored his traditional Wellington double hundred (one in the test match against Sri Lanka late last year and one in the Plunket at Karori in 2013). Nobody else reached 50 for Canterbury, who declared nine down 110 behind.

To what Bismarck said of sausages and laws, add the accumulation of runs needed for an agreed target: it is better not to see them being made. I was glad to have missed the first hour or so of the final morning when the formalities necessary for Wellington to set Canterbury 358 were completed.  

That many runs in a day less half an hour is tough even on a pitch that appeared truer than George Washington. But by the time I arrived late in the morning session, pessimism had already set in among the Wellington faithful, in whose company Eeyore would appear a cock-eyed optimist. Canterbury were 80 for one, with one of the world’s top-ten ranked test batsmen (Latham) in and another (Nicholls) to follow.

However, Bowes, who had opened with 40 from 27 deliveries, had already departed and three more followed in the short time before lunch. Stephen Murdoch was out lbw making room to cut a ball from slow left-armer Nofal that was quicker than he thought. The decision looked dubious, though Murdoch was well back in the crease. The scorecard has links to video of all dismissals, so readers can make up their own minds.

The day took a significant turn in Wellington’s direction in the following over when Latham was caught at second slip, driving loosely at van Beek.

The third to fall was McConchie who, mind straying to the impending ham salad, swept the last ball before lunch to be caught at short fine leg. The bowler was again Nofal, who once more put a little extra speed on the ball. Canterbury’s target at the start of the afternoon was 239 with six wickets and a minimum of 62 overs left.

Nofal has taken 15 wickets in the Plunket Shield so far this year, more than anyone except Neil Wagner, so has moved onwards and upwards from the “golden arm” category. Wellington captain Michael Bracewell, however, with three wickets in 78 first-class games, only aspires to that description. But he did get one to turn to Henry Nicholls, who knocked it cross-batted it to mid off. Only the bowler was more surprised than the batsman.

Now Wellington were ahead and expected to win, particularly as Canterbury had a longish tail. There was a time when a team in Canterbury’s situation would have abandoned hopes of victory and set about digging trenches, but the modern cricketer just runs quicker towards the machine guns. This is no criticism. Here, with two or three more lucky breaks, it would have won Canterbury the match, and it was good to watch.

Todd Astle hit 33 from 15 deliveries, including two splendid straight-driven sixes. On only four, Cam Fletcher hit a Rohan Kanhai-style fall-over hooked six off McPeake. Matt Henry struck three sixes as he made 43 from 40, before falling to an excellent catch by Bracewell, low to his left, which is not where a first slip expects to take a catch from a right-handed batsman. Fletcher followed soon after leaving Canterbury with 126 to get with only two wickets left.

Canterbury continued to press on, if a trifle more cautiously than before. Williams and Hazeldine restored Wellington’s anxietyometer to the high levels to which we are accustomed with a ninth-wicket stand of 64 before Hazeldine off drove straight to van Beek at mid off. Still they hit out; the game ended when Nuttall was caught at long on to give Nofal his fourth wicket. Wellington won a splendid game of cricket by 44 runs.

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 8 – 9 November 2019

Scorecard

The following week we were back at the Basin for the visit of Auckland. I arrived soon after lunch on the first day to discover that I had missed Wellington’s first innings, bowled out for 91 having been put in. Lockie Ferguson took four for 23. After his performances in the World Cup, readers will know that Ferguson is capable of bowling as fast as anybody, but now with added accuracy. He had been withdrawn from the T20 series against England to play here in preparation for a summer of test cricket.   

Soon after I took my seat Auckland’s reply was interrupted by the rain, and there you have the story of the rest of match. There were only 26 more overs that day, and 57 in total in the next. As had been forecast, the third and fourth days were washed away completely, so from the outset this was a game played for the small stakes of bonus points. No point then in recounting events in any detail, save to introduce readers who do not follow domestic cricket in New Zealand with the name of Ben Sears.

Sears is a local 21-year-old all-rounder less than a year into his first-class career. He took six for 43, three of them in the two overs he was able to bowl on the second morning before the rain fell. He bowls right arm on the brisk side of medium with a high action. Test opener Jeet Ravel was bowled by a ball that swung in, and was quick enough to hurry Horne into a head-protecting edge.

Wellington finish the first half of the Plunket Shield season with a comfortable lead of 15 points. Whether anybody remembers that when the competition resumes in late February remains to be seen.

I will next report from Hamilton, where I’m heading at the end of the week for the first three days of the test match.