The 2021/2 Plunket Shield began with the unexpected but glorious distinction of being the domestic first-class competition of the World Test Match Champions. As the world’s cricketing media sought to account for this unlikely turn of events, the strength of New Zealand’s domestic game was cited by many as a significant factor, particularly the pitches that are, we learn from the overseas press, balanced perfectly between bat and ball.
Well, I’m as surprised as you are. We devotees of the Plunket Shield (we are a select band) are puzzled that a competition consisting (in normal times) of eight matches a team (not enough for a double round-robin), played in the season’s dawn and dusk, should have propelled us to the summit. It is like finding that your loved but unexceptional child Wolfgang Amadeus is a fair piano player. I should not be surprised. Almost everything that I read about New Zealand in the foreign media is wildly inaccurate.
But the Plunket Shield is still something to be treasured, especially in these times. This season started with only four of New Zealand’s six cricketing provinces able to participate, Auckland and the bigger part of Northern Districts being in lockdown.
In the Basin Reserve’s Long Room we were all masked, even though Wellington remained Covid-free. I am astonished, when I look at sports fixtures elsewhere in the world, that hardly anybody is wearing a mask. How have those who find a small square of cloth such a challenge coped all these years with trousers, not to mention the myriad challenges that underwear brings? New Zealanders, much more than most people, believe that the common good is a common responsibility. As I write, fifty people have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand since the whole thing kicked off (which does not stop people in places with thousands and thousands dead telling us how we are getting it wrong).
Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 23-26 October 2021
The Basin Reserve will be hosting international cricket when the Plunket Shield concludes next February and March, so Wellington’s four home games were done with by mid-November. So this account represents not just the start, but also the totality of my domestic first-class spectating for this season.
Wellington were without Jimmy Neesham and Devon Conway, both at the T20 World Cup. Hamish Bennett has given up red-ball cricket so as to extend his career in the national limited-overs teams. Wellington will miss him, but have found a replacement in Nathan Smith, a 23-year-old all-rounder who has represented the national Under-19 and A sides. Smith made a fine start against his old team, trapping Hamish Rutherford lbw with his second ball. Rutherford offered no shot. As ever I invoked the words that the great Arthur Jepson would deliver as he raised the finger in such circumstances: “there’s a reason why tha’s got a bat in thy ‘and lad”.
Smith continued to impress, with two more wickets in the first innings and six in the second. He is skiddy and slippery, at a decent pace too.
Wickets fell regularly. The biggest partnership of the innings was 49 for the seventh wicket. This naturally raises the question of the pitch, which was the Basin’s traditional first-day green, but with a yellow tinge down the middle, as if to profess its love for Norwich City. Otago’s 207 was the highest total of the match, the difference between that and the lowest being only 27, so the pitch was at least consistent in its capriciousness, which was no more than might be expected of the early season in a temperate climate.
This being the context, a target of 193 was an anxious one for the home supporters, the more so when Rachin Ravindra went off holding his arm gingerly, having been hit. He missed a good deal of last season with a shoulder injury so we feared a repeat. Happily no damage was done, and has since made his test debut in the two tests in India, saving New Zealand from defeat in the first test by blocking for the last 90 minutes of the match and taking the catch that completed Ajaz Patel’s miraculous ten-wicket haul in the second. Regular readers will know that I have been tipping Ravindra for success for a while, though that requires no more insight than predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Now we know that he has the temperament as well as the talent.
The most memorable moment of the match was Luke Georgeson’s catch at third man off Rutherford’s ramped cut in the second innings. The ball went towards the boundary in a flat arc. Georgeson had to make a fair distance backwards before diving to take a one-handed, over-the-shoulder catch, always aware of the proximity of the boundary. This initiated a discussion among the stalwarts of the Long Room about the best catch seen at the Basin. The consensus was for Mayu Pasupati’s full-length dive in the 50-over final in 2000, though Trent Boult has multiple entries in for consideration, as CricInfo has recorded. Georgeson’s was at least the equal of any of them.
Rutherford was seventh out, having raised then dashed my hopes of seeing an opener carrying his bat through a first-class innings. A man needs an ambition in his declining years.
Throughout the game in the Long Room there was an empty chair with a reserved sign on it in the name of Fred Goodall, New Zealand’s most famous pre-Bowden umpire, mostly for being body checked by Colin Croft. Fred had passed away a week or so before. He was a regular attender right up to the end of last season, despite declining health. On the first morning, Otago’s top three were all out leg-before, as fitting a tribute to Fred as could be.
Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 31 October-3 November 2021
This fixture was scheduled to be against the quarantined Northern Districts, so Canterbury, unable to host Auckland, filled in, so we had successive first-class matches between the same teams on the same ground. Canterbury won both resoundingly, their Shield-winning form continuing from last season.
Five wickets fell in the first session after Canterbury were put in by Michael Bracewell, and it seemed that we were in for a repeat of the moderate scores of the Otago game. But none followed between lunch and tea as Canterbury took control. It was a match in which class told, first in the form of Henry Nicholls, who made 97 while he second-highest score from either top six in the first innings was 26. Nicholls is Mr Imperturbable, unfazed by what is happening at the other end or by any ball except the one he is about to face.
There was a strong performance from the bottom half of the Canterbury order, most notably from keeper Cam Fletcher, who made 110. Fletcher kept beautifully too, standing up impeccably to the sharp medium pace of Will Williams. Tom Blundell played here before heading off to India as successor to BJ Watling as the national team’s custodian (a term worthy of rehabilitation). During this first phase of the Plunket Shield I also saw Max Chu of Otago (another recent centurion) and Wellington’s reserve Callum McLachlan. Of the four, Blundell was the least impressive with the gloves. He will need to improve, or score a stack of runs, or both to keep his place.
A lead of 218 was not enough to tempt Canterbury to enforce the follow on. Instead, Tom Latham’s unbeaten 127 was the innings of the season so far, and gave context to the challenges that the pitch presented to those of lesser ability. Ravindra’s second-innings 70 approached its quality, and constituted not far off half of Wellington’s second innings.
Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 7-9 November 2021
An hour or so into the first day, most of the players on the field dived to the ground and lay flat, reminiscent of that photo of Lord’s during World War Two when a doodlebug cut out above them. Here, it was bees. There was a story on the radio the other day about the tradition of telling bees the news. PL Travers wrote about her aunt doing this. “ ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man.’ ” I’m sure that the bees were interested in the state of the Basin Reserve pitch. Someone should have faced them and said “Bees, it’s another one in which you could hide an emerald in plain sight, but batting of quality can still produce runs, and that will decide the game”.
I was present only for the first day of this one, but, in terms of wickets down that constituted almost half the match. With the test players gone, it was Canterbury’s opener Ken McClure who stepped up, with 130, four fewer than Wellington managed in their first innings, and 15 more than their second.
The fourth match of the series, against Central Districts, was during the working week, so I didn’t get to any of it. For the first time this season Wellington scaled the heady heights of 200, and in both innings, but Central’s first-innings lead of 120 was the foundation of a seven-wicket victory.
Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 1 December 2021
It was something of a relief for us Wellington folk to send the Plunket Shield into summer hibernation and to turn to the shorter forms. The 50-over Ford Trophy began with another visit from Otago, who put Wellington in. This year the longer shorter form is mixed in with the T20, As every match in the latter is on TV, they have first call on the pitches in the centre of the block, so as to be aligned with the camera towers. Thus the Ford Trophy finds itself in the cheap seats at the edge, where the pitches have a shifty countenance, coloured like a damaged car with a hasty respray. This is no bad thing as it produces a balance between bat and ball and a fuller test of skills that is much preferable to a 370 v 370 slugfest. This game was a fine example.
Here, Wellington reached 255, more than looked likely for much of the innings, thanks to some effective hitting from Nathan Smith in the final overs. Otago’s slow bowlers were their most effective. Left-arm wrist spinner Michael Rippon took four for 41 while Anaru Kitchen conceded only 26 from his ten overs.
So Michael Bracewell’s early exit from the field after a blow on the fingers seemed decisive, depriving Wellington of ten overs of slow stuff (a better representation of Bracewell’s oeuvre than “spin”). Bracewell returned to the field periodically, unsuccessfully trying to persuade the umpires that the binding on his hand would not assist his bowling, the cricketing equivalent of claiming that the Norwegian Blue remained sentient.
For the greater part of their innings it seemed that Otago were coasting it, led by Neil Broom’s 72. Broom has reached that stage when people ask if the Broom playing today is the son, or maybe grandson, of the former Otago player Neil Broom, but it is still the original, accumulating away in the cause of the South. When he was fifth out Otago had to score 54 to win in ten overs. As so often, it was a run out that undid them, as Rippon sold non-striker Kitchen a dummy of which any Otago outside half might have been proud. Jakob Bhula, slow bowling stand-in for Bracewell, did a fine job in the final phase with five overs for just 19 as Wellington picked the match from Otago’s pocket.
Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 21 December 2021
The Ford Trophy has a veneer of equity about it, with each province playing all the others twice. However, eccentricity lies underneath. In each pair of fixtures, the same side is at home for both games. This is supposed to be cost-saving, with two matches in three days. Three weeks separated the two fixtures between Wellington and Otago, yet the southerners were asked to make the long journey to the capital once more, when a reversal of venues would have meant that each team played five at home and five away.
It was an enjoyable day in the sun, without there being much of note to report. Wellington made 333 with solid contributions from most of the batters led by the increasingly impressive Troy Johnson with 88. Otago lost wickets regularly and soon fell irredeemably behind the required rate. I left early, something I rarely do out of fear of missing the extraordinary, but nothing of that nature occurred in my absence.
To finish this round up of the first half of the season, four T20 games.
Wellington v Central Districts, T20, Basin Reserve, 5 December 2021 Women Men
Wellington v Canterbury, T20, Basin Reserve, 19 December 2021
New Zealand Cricket continues its admirable policy of making every match day a double header, with a women’s and a men’s game. The inclusion of the women widens considerably the range of approaches and skills to be seen, a pleasing degree of aestheticism replacing an over-reliance on power.
Regular readers will know that, for several seasons now, Amelia Kerr’s legspin bowling has been one of the great pleasures of my cricket watching. To this she has added consistent and heavy scoring. Her lowest score in the five games so far is 42, the only time she has fallen short of a half century, which goes some way to explaining why Wellington are the only team with an unbeaten record at the halfway stage.
The same cannot be said for the men. The chances of a home final as top-placed team in the round robin are remote, with just two wins from five.
We begin 2022 with a 50-over game on New Year’s Day; I can’t think of a better way.
