The End of the New Zealand Season

New Zealand v Bangladesh, third ODI (of three), Basin Reserve, 26 March 2021

Wellington v Northern Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 27–30 March 2021

The Bangladeshis have been here, the sixth and final international opponents to visit New Zealand this season (including the English and Australian women). To the pleasure of the capital’s cricket fans, their visit here was to the Basin Reserve rather than the Cake Tin. It was only the fourth ODI at the Basin since I moved to Wellington in 2006. The authorities are reluctant to shift short-form fixtures away from the stadium, perhaps because it would be tacit acceptance that the multi-sport concept behind it was flawed. Usually, it occurs only when there is a clash of events, but this time it seems to have been accepted that the crowd likely to be attracted to the fixture would look lost at the bigger venue. 

Bangladesh have a 100% loss record for international matches in New Zealand, and had maintained that in the first two games in the three-match ODI series. But we in Wellington look forward to their visits, as we so enjoyed the test match here in 2017, which had some brilliant cricket and a finish in the final session of the fifth day.

Regular readers will know that recent Basin Reserve pitches have varied wildly in their character. Early on in the new Zealand innings the difficulty that batsmen had in timing the ball suggested that this one was towards the bowler-friendly end of the spectrum. 

New Zealand won the toss and batted. Henry Nicholls, heaving like a ship in a typhoon, was dropped off a diving chance to keeper Mushfiqur Rahim, only to be caught in the gully two balls later. Something similar happened to Ross Taylor, first dropped, then caught, this time by the keeper, at the end of the same over. Rarely for him, Taylor is going through a bit of a dip in form. Is this age casting its long shadow? He wants to go through to the next 50-over World Cup, and has the botox of class with which to ward off the calendar’s attack. In the meantime, he has been impressive in the commentary box during the T20s.

Guptill and Latham, both in good form, were also out to mistimed shots, which made it hard to judge what an adequate score would be. At 120 for four from 23 overs it could have gone either way; that the final total was as high as 318 was down to an innings of some brilliance by Devon Conway.

Since he came to Wellington from South Africa in 2017, these columns have brought to readers’ attention his international class. This has required no special insight nor superior analytical ability; the weight of runs he has scored are evidence enough. Here, there were shots off the back foot and the front foot, on the offside and the legside, played with a precision of placement that made boundary fielders look as if they had weights strapped to their legs. 

My favourite shot was the straight drive he played early on…or maybe the late cut in his 40s between two fielders so close they might have danced…or perhaps the successive drives through the offside after he had reached his century…or even one of the other of the 17 boundaries he hit, each of which might have been hallmarked.

Conway has not yet played test cricket, but must do so in England. There has been some debate about where he will fit in. The middle order of Williamson, Taylor, Nicholls and Watling, followed by an all-rounder, is well-established. As a practised No 3, opener seems the best option for him, which would be tough on Tom Blundell, who averages just under 40 from ten tests, most of them at the top of the order, but it is a characteristic of a successful team that what was once good enough becomes no longer so. What is clear is that Devon Conway is too good to leave out. On both his entry and exit from the field Conway was hailed like the local hero he has become.

Conway was well-supported by Daryl Mitchell in a partnership of 159. Mitchell was 83 at the start of the fiftieth over, a century improbable, but three fours off Mustafizur’s first three balls, the last a no-ball, brought it within reach. A two and a single moved Mitchell to 98, but left him at the non-striker’s end with two balls left. It looked as if Santner had found the cover boundary with the next, but never has a home batsmen being denied a four been more warmly received; they ran three to give Mitchell one chance. A better throw would have run him out, but he scrambled the second and reached his maiden international hundred, the 21 accrued from the over apparently putting the total beyond Bangladesh’s aspirations. Only towards the end of the reply, when Mahmud Ulluh started hitting out, was a serious attempt made to score at the required rate, but it was far too late. New Zealand won by 164 runs.

The following day a select spectating elite returned to the Basin for the final home Plunket Shield fixture, against Northern Districts. As usual, the severe green of the pitch suggested that the groundsman had been under the impression that he was preparing a surface for snooker rather than cricket. It has been some time since a toss-winning captain chose to bat first here in a first-class game, and Northern Districts’ skipper Joe Carter was not going to buck the trend. But, as is usual these days, the pitch was like a fierce-looking guard dog that, upon being offered a chocolate, rolls over to have its tummy rubbed.

Anybody entering the ground during the 15th over with Wellington 40 without loss would have thought that they missed nothing the least bit out of the ordinary. Yet I have never seen anything like it before in the first hour of a first-class game. 

Twenty-four of those runs came in sixes, all pulls by Rachin Ravindra. I have written about 21-year-old Ravindra’s rich promise before. This was his first game for a couple of months after sustaining a shoulder injury in the T20, so peppering the bank was just working his way of working himself back in. The shots, perfectly executed, were impressive enough, but the best thing was that these were the only attacking shots he attempted in that first hour. Great shot selection, technical excellence, the audacity to go through with them and the mental discipline not to get carried away and try it too often all wrapped up in one young opener. 

None of the sixes came off Neil Wagner. An odd fact about contemporary New Zealand cricket is that Wagner has never played for the national team in either of the shorter forms, which is why he was able to be in the Northern Districts line-up here. One can understand why, sort of. He functions only when set to “attack” and asking him to throttle back to the containing mode required in the limited-overs game would be like recruiting Genghis Khan for a UN peacekeeping mission. 

Here, at first it appeared that Wagner had signed up with Bouncers Anonymous as, unusually, he forsook his natural length, located close to his toecaps, for the uncharted waters in the third of the pitch nearest to the batsman. There were signs that he was about to fall off the wagon—a fielder sent three-quarters of the way to the square-leg boundary—but not until the twelfth over did he go round the wicket to take his seat at the short-pitched bar. Even then, it was only to Georgeson; there was no greater compliment to Ravindra than Wagner’s reluctance to give him further opportunities to smite sixes.

Towards the end of the day Wagner struck Troy Johnson on the pad. The appeal was a theatrical masterpiece, so perfectly constructed as a three-act drama that halfway through I instinctively looked for an usherette from whom to buy a vanilla tub. 

He drew on some of the finest dramatic oeuvres, starting with the great tragic actors. Then a pirouette and a backwards progress down the pitch en pointe brought to mind Nureyev as Romeo, before a finale on one knee, arms spread wide in beseechment was Al Jolson reincarnate. All of us would have walked a million miles for one of Wagner’s smiles except the umpire, who ruled it not out.  

The context for Wagner’s performance here was a dead game (the Plunket Shield having been sealed by Canterbury before it began), and he was certain of his place for the forthcoming tour to England, so had nothing to prove. Yet his analysis for the innings was 24-7-34-1. He could not have tried harder. Neil Wagner is the most estimable of cricketers. 

Ravindra joins Wagner in the tour party. He went on to 138, first out with the score on 226. Blundell also made a hundred. Long-term, his international future may be as BJ Watling’s successor as keeper. Northern Districts had reached 97 for four in reply to Wellington’s 414 for four declared at the end of the second day, only rain to wash away the final two days.

So ended the New Zealand season. It has been a good one. The fixture list worked well for me, enabling me to see more Plunket Shield and domestic 50-over cricket than I have for a few years. There was a good test match, and I enjoyed the T20 competition more than before, especially the women. That, I think, was down to an appreciation that simply being at the cricket was a privilege in our world.

My mother, who more than half a century ago was so willing to foster a young boy’s unexpected fascination with cricket, was one of those taken by Covid as the Kent variation ravaged the county, three days after my aunt succumbed to it. It will be some time before I’m next at St Lawrence (if ever, I sometimes think) so it has been a real treat, this week, to watch county cricket on YouTube. The sight of Darren Stevens sauntering in with the new ball proved that the world is not turned completely upside down. 

I hope that those whose reports and reflections on county cricket and its players I so enjoy, and anybody else who knows the pleasure of a day at the cricket, have the sun shine on them this English summer.