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.
One of our number in the Long Room at the Basin has
been ill for a while. He was determined to be there for the test match and was
in his usual seat in the front row for the first day. I passed him as he waited
for his lift at the end of the day and said “see you tomorrow”. He wasn’t there,
but sent a message saying that it had become too much, and that the first day
had been his last at the cricket. This will come to us all one day. Let us hope
that on that day the sun shines, and that there is, something to laugh at, something
to celebrate and something beautiful to see.
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