Early Adventures in the Plunket Shield 2022

Wellington v Northern Districts, Basin Reserve, 18-21 October 2022

Wellington v Canterbury, Basin Reserve, 26­-28 October 2022

The early-season blogger faces a perennial challenge when reporting the first games at the Basin Reserve: how to convey the sheer greenness of the pitch. Peter Jackson’s movie studios are nearby. Having limbered up on Tolkien, are they applying their CGI artifice to Wellington’s cricket blocks, producing a verdance that nature cannot match?

As we have established before, a surface of that hue is not necessarily as pernicious as it would be in England. Northern Districts made 225 batting first in the season opener, and that was the lowest total of the match. The case for the pitch’s defence became more shaky for the second game, in which Wellington’s aggregate total was their lowest in 116 years of the Plunket Shield. However, their innings were punctuated by Canterbury’s 338 for eight declared, with a century for Tom Latham and a fifty from Henry Nicholls. Throw in Matt Henry’s seven for 44 in the match and it becomes clear that this was a pitch that sorted the wheat from the chaff with considerable efficiency.

I was able to be present for only one session of each match. For the Northern Districts game it was pre-lunch on the fourth day. ND started the day 225 ahead with six wickets remaining, apparently heading for a declaration close to lunchtime, but seamers McPeake and Sneddon expunged all six for just 23, leaving Wellington with a target of 250. It was one of those collapses that give the team that suffers it a greater chance of victory, closing the innings earlier than a more cautious declaration would have dared. This was a whisker from being the case here.

The highlight of both my mornings at the cricket was the batting of Rachin Ravindra. He puts me in mind of the young Ramprakash (though our man is left-handed) for the precocity and fluidity of his shots. Of course, that comparison raises questions about whether the class will translate to the top level. I hope that the national team management desists in using him as a No 7 who can bowl a bit of spin, and waits until he can be given a decent run in the top four. On this morning he hit several sumptuous cover drives before getting out to a legside strangle.

When I left at luncheon (as John Woodcock would say) Wellington were 77 for four, so ND would have considered themselves to be ahead. I caught up with the live stream (a more basic affair than in the UK, with just a single static camera) when Wellington were about 20 short with eight down. That they were this close was down to Tom Blundell, who performed an innings resurrection like those he undertook with Daryl Mitchell during the recent tests in England. Adam Leonard went in a manner similar to Ravindra with six left to get, and it was last man Hartshorn who secured an inside edge to the fine-leg boundary for the winning runs. This was four-day cricket at its best.

There was no such tension when I got to the Basin for the third morning of the match against Canterbury. The weather forecast was for rain in the late afternoon and for much of the following day, so the visitors had declared on the previous evening, setting Wellington a target of 378. They started the day on nine for two.

Again, Ravindra’s batting was worth the trouble of going to the Basin. He hit three offside fours off the otherwise near-unplayable Henry that were Goweresque in their languidity. This time it took a good one to get him, a ball from O’Rourke that rose a little and left him on off stump. With nightwatchman McPeake in support, that wicket did not fall until we were into the second hour, but thereafter only Blundell and the agricultural Newton made double figures. It was all over in time for lunch.

Despite the crushing defeat, Wellington have the same points as Canterbury and the two teams lead the Plunket Shield table after two of the eight games.