Wednesday, May 1, 2024

New Zealand v Australia, first test, Basin Reserve, 29 February – 3 March 2024

Scorecard

Spare a thought for Jeetan Patel, watching this test match in a hotel room in India, where he was as England’s spin bowling coach. There was every indication that this was his old stomping ground of the Basin Reserve, with a pitch that was Shrek–green at the toss and spectators huddling together against the southerly. But it couldn’t be. To prosper In two decades as Wellington’s lead spinner at the Basin, Jeets had to learn flight, variation in pace, clever angles, any trick at all, because the ball would not deviate. Here it turned like cream in the desert, even when propelled by an ex-wicketkeeper.

Think also of Ajaz Patel, the Flying Dutchman of New Zealand cricket, condemned to sail the seven spinning seas without ever making it home. This pitch was made for him. People who have been watching at the Basin for many more years than my 18 had never seen the like. None of this was apparent to anybody at the start of the game. New Zealand left out Santner and put Australia in. It was all quicker bowling until Ravindra was given a go before the new ball was due and immediately got one to straighten past Cummins’ outside edge.

I missed the first two sessions but was there for the rest of the game. When I arrived at tea the locals were reasonably content with 147 for four, all the more so with 279 for nine at the close, the acceleration down to Cameron Green, who moved from 50 to 100 in 46 balls while the wickets kept falling at the other end.

Green came into the Australian side in 2020, talked up as the next big thing, particularly by the Fox commentators, in full cheerleading mode. The delivery remained short of the promise, and he was dropped during last year’s Ashes in favour of the more rustic-but-reliable skills of Mitch Marsh. David Warner’s retirement gave him a way back, though at the cost of booting Steve Smith up to the top of the order, a project that is not going well.

So we started the second morning more optimistically than we had expected. Once the formality of dismissing Australia for under 300 had been attended to, the work of matching, or even surpassing that total would begin. What fools we were.

The pre-lunch session was excruciating, and ended only in the extra time that is statutory when nine wickets are down. Green and Josh Hazlewood put on 116 for the tenth wicket, two runs more than the McGrath/Gillespie stand at Brisbane in 2004 that many Kiwi fans mark as a nadir of our fortunes, the image of Gillespie leaving the field riding his bat like a horse being engraved into our subconscious. At least Green is a proper batter who had a century on the board at the start of the partnership. He is, however, a notoriously poor starter, so putting a bit of pressure on for the first few overs of the new day seemed the obvious move. Instead, New Zealand focused entirely on getting Green off strike and Hazlewood on. Why, when there is one wicket to take to end the innings, captains give up trying to get one of the batters out, remains a mystery, all the more so when Southee maintained the strategy even as Hazlewood unleashed cover drives of Goweresque languidity.

The New Zealand cricketing psyche is a delicate thing when it sees baggy green caps on the same field. The cautious optimism that it had taken all the first day to nurture was shrivelling by the drinks break and dead by lunch. It was a comfort to us up in the RA Vance Stand that one of our group is a psychiatrist. Had he brought a portable couch with him, he could have made a mint.

Latham was the first to go, indecisive to a testing line just outside off by Starc, playing on. Two balls later, Williamson pushed to mid off and set off for a slightly risky single. One day, when gravity messes up and the moon crashes into Earth, those of us there at the Basin that afternoon will be reminded of the way in which Williamson and Young were drawn inevitably together in mid-pitch collision, leaving the former short as Labuschagne swooped in with a direct hit at the bowler’s end.

Three balls later, Ravindra drove at Hazlewood but did not get over the top of it and was caught by Lyon just backward of square on the offside. Whenever a batter under the age of 26 or so gets out in such a fashion early in their innings words like “impetuous” and “hot-headed” are bandied about, but the shot was a good response to the ball, but them went slightly wrong in the execution.

Up in the in the RA Vance we always note the passing of New Zealand’s all-time low of 26, but today did so with more-than-usual relief (we are not a cheery crew). But it was a grind. Mitchell went for 11 in 37 balls. Next ball, Young followed for a 50-ball nine. Twenty-nine for five.

Tom Blundell has mounted so many rescue missions for New Zealand that one expects him to be winched down from a helicopter at the start of his innings. He did it again here, in the company of Glenn Phillips. Before the match there was a discussion on the radio about whether Phillips or Young should take the last place in the New Zealand XI (as it turned out, the injury to Conway meant that both played). The expert vote went for Young because of his superior technique, but I would favour Phillips because of his obvious relish for the tussle. The kryptonite of the baggy green has no effect on him. He went on the attack, but judiciously so. His first six scoring shots were all fours, and all around the ground. Blundell matched him, and the 50 partnership came up in 48 balls.

Nathan Lyon now entered the attack. Phillips took him for three boundaries in his first two overs, but in his third over Lyon deceived Blundell coming down the pitch, resulting in a straightforward bat-pad catch. Two balls later, Kuggeleijn was caught on the legside boundary from a witless slog. Kuggeleijn should not be in the New Zealand team. First, he isn’t good enough. Geoff Lemon and Daisy Cutter explain the other reason.

The second and fourth balls that Matt Henry received from Lyon both went over the legside boundary for six. He made 27 of the eighth-wicket stand of 48, which ended when Phillips was caught at deep-square leg off Hazlewood. Southee copped the third duck of the innings, bamboozled by Lyon. Henry’s final flourish was 15 of four balls from Hazlewood before New Zealand were all out for 179.

The grim fact is that in the last four tests between these teams, the only time that New Zealand have avoided the follow on was in the final test in 2020, when five runs that Australia were penalised for running on the protected area of the pitch in the second innings saved it retrospectively.

Though the result of this match camouflaged it effectively, Australia have problems with their batting. It has a vulnerability to it that was absent a year or so ago. Moving Steve Smith to the top of the order has not yet paid off. Here, he played on to Southee for a duck from the third ball of the innings. The New Zealand captain also got Labuschagne with a legside strangle before the close of the second day, but the three fours from three balls that nightwatchman Lyon dispatched off him the following morning were a more accurate measure of his current form. I am always reluctant to write off quick bowlers since telling people that Willis was obviously done and should be dropped the week before Headingley ’81. But it does appear that a fine career is at its dusk, if not a little later.

At 81 for three it appeared that Australia were on the way to a big lead. Enter Glenn Phillips, New Zealand’s second choice part-time spinner after Ravindra, a bowler who has taken under one wicket a game in his first-class career, in the first part of which his second string was keeping wicket.

In his fourth over Phillips tossed one up well outside off—let’s say deliberately—and Khawaja came down the pitch to it, only for the ball to turn for Blundell to make an excellent stumping. Listen carefully, and you could hear the sound of a tea cup crashing to the floor in India.

After lunch, Phillips took the next four. Travis Head holed out at long off, Marsh was caught at short leg first ball, Carey drove a tempter outside off—let’s say it was deliberate—to short cover, and Green went to a bat-pad catch. Thus Phillips had his first five-for in any form of the game, and his test bowling average is half his first-class average. He makes things happen, and his celebrations (those of a six-year-old according to Phillips himself) became more exuberant with each victim. It would have been six had Cummins not been dropped twice in the deep. Matt Henry finished the innings off.

New Zealand’s target was 389 (273 without that tenth-wicket partnership). Frankly, there was never a chance. But many of us had been there a year before to see a triumph against England in the face of no lesser odds. It’s the hope that keeps you going, hope that was by no means extinguished when New Zealand finished the third day on 111 for three.

Ravindra had batted beautifully, reaching his fifty just before the close. It was better value than his double hundred against the own-brand South Africans a few weeks before. Now he was looking comfortable against the best attack in the world. He was shortly to be named New Zealand’s Player of the Year. Those of us who have been watching him for the last five years or so now share him with the world. Ravindra was well supported by Daryl Mitchell.

It was less surprising that the fourth day should be Nathan Lyon’s, than that the third belonged to Phillips. He had dismissed Latham and Williamson the previous evening. In the seventh over of the morning, he snuffed out the hope. He packed the field square on the offside, then dropped one short to Ravindra—this one we can say with some certainty was deliberate—but it was not quite what it seemed, the shot was marginally mistimed and the catch taken.

The rest was a procession, and we were done by lunchtime, only Mitchell resisting until he was caught and bowled by Hazlewood to finish the game. Lyon finished with ten, just as he did when I watched the previous test between the two sides, at Sydney in January 2020. By the end of the series, he had 530 test wickets, and until his injury at Lord’s last year had played 100 consecutive tests, which he would not have done had he been from England or New Zealand. The Australians do not look at the pitch and ask “do we need a spinner?”; their question is “who are our four best bowlers?”. A few weeks later, I shared the frustration of supporters in Somerset and elsewhere when Shoaib Bashir was left out of the first Championship game of the season in favour of a sixth dobbing seamer. Of course, allowing pitches to turn without the ECB reaching for the smelling salts and the points deductions would help.

The Basin continued to embrace its new status as a spinner’s paradise with a convert’s enthusiasm. In the Plunket Shield against Otago a couple of weeks later, 21 of the 30 wickets fell to spinners including eight for 41 for Michael Bracewell, another ex-keeper. We learned that Bruce Edgar, the former New Zealand opener who is Wellington’s director of cricket, did indeed receive a message from Jeetan Patel asking what the hell was going on.


No comments:

Post a Comment

The Currency of Centuries: Days 2 & 3 of the Second Test

  Scorecard McCullum makes 302 to save a game that looked like it would be over in three days…Bangladesh lose after making 595 batting first...