New Zealand v West Indies, Second Test, Basin Reserve, 11–14 December 2020
As the West Indian fielders and the New Zealand openers took their positions for the first ball on the first day of this test match, they went down on one knee to affirm the universal truth that black lives matter. There had been no announcement of this beforehand so it took us by surprise. There was silence for a few seconds, then I and others started applauding, soon to be joined by a good proportion of the crowd. It was an emotional moment on a sunny morning with the red blooms of the pohutukawas leaking across the Basin’s panorama. Added to the privilege that we in New Zealand feel at simply being able to go to the cricket was my personal reflection on the debt I have to West Indian cricketers. They were my Jesuits, capturing me at my most impressionable, inculcating me with an unshakeable faith in the passion and excitement of cricket to a degree that English cricket’s abstaining methodism of that time could not inspire.
Regular readers will know that finding new ways of conveying the deep verdancy of New Zealand cricket pitches has proved a challenge to Scorecards over the years. The strip at Hamilton for the first test attracted a lot of social-media attention from the UK, mostly from people to whom it did not occur that the parameters of pitch behaviour 12,000 miles away might vary from those at the club down the road (the more strident the opinion about New Zealand, the less likely it is that the perpetrator has been here, or can locate the country on a map). The occasions on which these pitches produce the amount of assistance to the bowlers that their appearance might conventionally suggest are greatly outnumbered by those on which they do not. The score at the end of that first day at Seddon Park was 243 for two. Discussing this issue the other day, the TV commentators suggested that the green grass here might be so dense that the main effect is to cushion the ball.
At the Basin, the first-morning pitch was about an eight on the international scale of greenness, and three-and-a-half measured domestically, still enough for Jason Holder to put New Zealand in upon winning the toss. Tom Latham was captain, as he was the last time Scorecards reported on the national team, in Sydney at the start of the year. This time, Kane Williamson’s absence was down to the impending arrival of his daughter.
The sun had a ticket, but the wind is a life member at the Basin, and registered its presence by removing a bail at each end after the first ball of the match. The gale seemed to blow Shannon Gabriel off course. His first two overs went for 21, the ball pitched up too far with no consistent line.
Gabriel adjusted to the conditions with the alacrity of an America’s Cup skipper. In his next 12 overs he took three for 17. The first of the three was Tom Blundell, the ball after he had cover driven a four. The next one came back just enough to find the gap between bat and pad and to hit the top of the off stump. Gabriel bowled with the wind, but that meant that he had to walk back to his mark into it, which he achieved at a speed of a retreating glacier.
Showing himself to be an over-the-top-into-the guns sort of leader, Jason Holder opened the bowling into the wind. His opening spell was tight, but the first wicket from that southern end was taken by his namesake, Chemar Holder, at whom Latham drove to provide a first test dismissal not only for the bowler but also for replacement keeper Da Silva, in for the injured Dowrich.
Regular readers might expect that Devon Conway would have come in at No 3, so often has Scorecards extolled his credentials as an international batsman in the four years since he started playing for Wellington and qualifying for New Zealand. Despite Conway’s impressive start in the T20 side, Will Young of Central Districts got the call in this series. Young was close to selection for some time before making his debut in the first test. He was down to play in the Christchurch test against Bangladesh that was cancelled following the terrorist attack on the mosques in that city in 2019. He has a first-class average of 43, just four fewer than Conway.
Ross Taylor was Gabriel’s second victim with another ball that straightened a little to provide a second catch to Da Silva. This brought in Henry Nicholls, another feeling the breath of Conway on his collar. It is a sign of the current health of New Zealand cricket that Nicholls’ current test average of 41 did not guarantee him a place for the rest of the season when not so long ago it would have done so for several summers. He and his fourth-wicket partner Young knew that a substantial innings by one would mean the other making way for Williamson on his return on Boxing Day against Pakistan.
Young fell for 40 to a stunning diving catch by the captain at second slip (it was a surprise not to see Holder driving the team bus at the end of the day such had been his ubiquity in other roles). Nicholls finished with 174, but was missed four times, including two straightforward slip chances, and had edges go into gaps on any number of occasions. He showed great mental strength not to be undermined by his good fortune, but Young might be forgiven for shaking his fist at the fates.
BJ Watling played an uncharacteristic innings that ended in an uncharacteristic way. Big shots replaced little nudges: 24 of his 30 runs came from boundaries. He played on attempting to cut a ball that did not have the necessary width.
Daryl Mitchell looked as comfortable as anybody and accompanied Nicholls to his century, achieved appropriately with an inside edge. It was the hundredth test century at the Basin, and one of the ropiest, not that Nicholls will care. New Zealand finished the day on 294 for six, much better than it would have been with average test-match catching.
The southerly always keeps its diary free for some of the Basin test, and was there for the second day, but without its usual icy venom. The Wellington summer wardrobe of two sweaters was sufficient.
The highlight of the first half of the day was Neil Wagner’s innings at eighth down. Wagner bats as he bowls, like a man writing an angry letter to the editor, in green ink with much underlining. After five balls to gain a sighter, he began with a little light legside slogging off Holder, then top-edged a six off Joseph, who was beginning to look a bit of a spare part, as Josephs will at this time of the year.
Our hero was dropped twice at fine leg in three balls, neither easy, but both catchable. The joke du jour was that it had been a waste of money putting the West Indians in quarantine for a fortnight as they can’t catch anything. With a combination of the classical and the grotesque, the 50 partnership, 39 from Wagner, came up in 30 balls. In his 50th test, Wagner’s first test 50 was now close, but he had to wait until after lunch to push for two past point to get there. How we roared. There is no more popular cricketer in New Zealand than Wagner, for his enthusiasm, dedication and unkiwilike bad temper. He is Monty Python’s Black Knight made flesh. In the Boxing Day test a couple of weeks later he bowled 28 overs in the second innings with two broken toes. Here, Wagner marked the landmark by unrolling a cover drive of which Frank Woolley would have been proud.
When Nicholls’ marathon ended, Wagner was joined by Trent Boult, the only batsman by comparison to whom he appears measured and orthodox. Anyone who has not seen Boult bat need only read some of Hardy’s descriptions of the bucolic folk of Wessex scything hay in the fields to get the flavour. He was off the mark first ball with a six over wide long on.
The innings finished two balls later at 460, Wagner unbeaten on 66. This was at least 200 more than the fielding should have allowed.
West Indies had not taken a single step towards that total when Southee got one to hold its line close enough to off stump to force Brathwaite to edge to Watling. Along with Boult, Southee controlled and threatened throughout the opening spell. The inevitable second wicket came when Bravo did not go through with a drive, giving Southee an athletic return catch. Bravo’s departure from the field was Brexit slow.
These days, the New Zealand attack is no longer what Graham Gooch described as the World XI at one end and Ilford Seconds at the other. After Boult and Southee there was Wagner, who had got himself into a state about the price of fish, or global warming, or something, and was working it out with red-ball therapy. Then there was Kyle Jamieson, whose first over was one of the most memorable bowled in tests at the Basin.
Jamieson has made a dazzling start to his international career this year, having been on the domestic scene since 2014. He is 26, and it is hard to explain why he has suddenly become such a force. There was never a chorus of calls for him to be picked before he was. Yet here he is, with batting and bowling averages of 49 and 14 after five tests.
He came on, into the wind, for the 15th over. The first ball brought appeals from the slips, but not the bowler, for caught behind, but it had flicked the pad. Jamieson joined in the appeal for lbw from the second ball, but Latham did not review, rightly as there was an inside edge. Campbell drove at the third, full on off stump, and was caught behind. Chase’s first ball was an inswinging yorker that bowled him.
The hattrick ball got the RA Vance Stand to its feet, as it clattered into Jermaine Blackwood’s pad, but the review showed that it was missing leg. The final ball was closer, again spearing into the back pad. It was turned down on review on the umpire’s call.
Blackwood played for a while with the abandon of a man who has cheated death and is attempting to tick off his bucket list, reaching 30 from just 21 balls. At this point he drove hard to give Jamieson a tough return chance that was put down. This seemed to bring him back to his senses, and he took a further 43 balls to reach 50. With Shamarh Brooks he put on 68 for the fifth wicket.
Brooks was bowled by Jamieson playing no shot for a 92-ball 14, the first of the six remaining wickets to fall for the addition of only 34, leaving the West Indies with a deficit of 329. Southee and Jamieson divided the wickets equally between them, but this was a combined achievement of the whole attack. There was no let up in the pressure from either end.
The final two wickets were taken on the third morning. Since the abolition of the rest day, it has become unfashionable to enforce the follow on, but Tom Latham could feel what it was like to be Clive Lloyd, with four fast bowlers at his disposal, two of whom would always be fresh, so the West Indies openers were back in on a cold morning that had me watching the first session from the Long Room.
The second innings went much better than the first for the visitors.There was more of an attacking intent, with 186 more runs scored in just 23 more overs compared to the first innings. The openers had almost seen off the opening spells from both ends when Boult removed Brathwaite and Bravo in the 11th over, the former to a fine catch by Young at leg gully off the middle of the bat.
Campbell and Brooks put on 89 for the third wicket, but both fell within four runs of each other, interspersed with Chase picking up a pair. We expected the game to be wrapped up within the hour, but the West Indies lower order had more spirit, led by their estimable captain. I have written before of my admiration for Jason Holder, who has borne the burden of the West Indian captaincy with courage since the dark day of the World Cup quarter-final at the Cake Tin when he fielded lonely on the boundary as Martin Guptill tore his team apart.
Holder found support from debutant Joshua Da Silva. They put on 82 for the seventh wicket in 18 overs, relying on the big hits rather than rotation of the strike and took the game into the fourth day helped by an early finish because of bad light, which, as ever, came when the batsmen were seeing the ball better than at any point in the match.
Holder was out in the first full over next morning to a cracker from Southee that left him just enough to take the off stump. Alzari Joseph got off the pair with a hooked six off Southee and made 24 entirely in boundaries before being caught behind off a legside strangle. Da Silva got a deserved half century on debut.
Wagner uprooted Gabriel’s middle stump to secure the victory with a margin of an innings and 12 runs. As usual, New Zealanders put the result down to how poor the opposition had been. As Holder acknowledged after the game, their catching was awful and spending so much of their lives in various degrees of quarantine over the past few months must take its toll, but we must overcome the natural humility that is central to our charm to acknowledge that we have a very good test cricket team.
That as good a player as Devon Conway does not walk straight into the team shows the strength of the batting (Williamson returned to the team for Boxing Day and peeled off his 23rd century). We have added to this a four-man quick attack of high quality, even if, with loveable Kiwi diffidence, it lacks the speed of the great Caribbean attacks or England 2005. Of course, Wagner bowls as if at 150 kph rather than the mid 130s that the machine registers, a magnificent illusion worthy of membership of the Magic Circle. A quality spinning all-rounder would round things off nicely. Mitch Santner may fill this slot, but isn’t there yet.
India’s defeat of Australia in the Boxing Day match in Melbourne means that New Zealand and Australia are level on points at the top of the ICC rankings, but, as we have come to expect from ICC contests, a technicality (most boundaries? wicketkeeper’s height? who knows?) keeps us in second place.
This is different from the ICC test championship, with a final at Lord’s in prospect for the top two. New Zealand have a path to this, but it seems to depend on a decisive win for either Australia or India in the rest of their series, and for India against England.
This may leave us in the awkward position of being on Australia’s side in the current series, though unprecedented choruses of C’mon Aussie, C’mon have yet to be heard this side of the Tasman.
I wish everyone a happy and safe 2021.
