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…Sri Lanka lose after leading by 135 on first innings…New Zealand win by one run after following on. All these things have happened at the Basin Reserve in the last decade. It might be thought that we Basin regulars would have come to expect the unexpected, to retain hope to the last that the home team would find a hero who would find a white horse stabled in the RA Vance Stand and ride to the rescue. 

Yet, once Gus Atkinson had finished off the New Zealand first innings with his hat trick it never seemed that the last two days of the match were more than an administrative exercise, devoid of expectation or emotion. 

New Zealand soon gave up making serious attempts to get England’s batters out, leaving it up to Ben Stokes to choose how many New Zealand would be set. This figure turned out to be 583, and even before the second innings subsided to 59 for four there was not a person in the Basin who thought this remotely achievable. 

There were two nineties and two centuries during the phoney wars of the second innings. Hundreds are the gold standard of batting statistics, the accepted measure of true class. Witness the latest round of comparison of Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson, which has focused more than anything on the number and frequency of three-figure scores. What transpired here questions the integrity of this currency. Are some centuries no more than a crypto scam in terms of what they tell us about the quality of the batting?

Joe Root scored 106, the third international century he has made in Wellington. The first was a run-a-ball 121 against Sri Lanka in the 2015 World Cup at the Cake Tin; the second a sublime unbeaten 153 in the Greatest Test of All at the Basin in 2023. Both were innings of immense quality, of a kind that are a warm, satisfied glow in the memory and leave a feeling of privilege at having been there to see them. 

This one,106 in 130 balls with 11 fours, did not have that status, and will not occupy much space in the memory, even in Root’s. A hundred devalued. Yet in its context it was perfect. It kept the score moving along at five an over, as much by exquisitely placed twos and threes as boundaries. It was not Root’s fault that the bowling was insipid. [As an aside, how we miss Neil Wagner, a man incapable of bowling in any situation without the intention of having ambassadors recalled.] Worth noting too that Root’s century here was the only one of the three to contribute to a win, which must have some sort of impact on the rate of exchange.

Tom Blundell has had a rough time of it lately. In India he broke double figures only once in five innings, and in Christchurch made 17 and nought followed by a scratchy 16 in the first innings here. The quality of his keeping has indicated a lowering of his confidence in general. I would have given one of the in-form keepers in domestic cricket a go here: Chu of Otago, Hay of Canterbury or Cleaver of Central Districts. 

In the second innings he made a hundred and reacted ecstatically to the achievement, as if it was paid out in gold doubloons. Were they the real thing? His 115 came from just 102 deliveries, with 13 fours and five sixes, four of which came off Shoaib Bashir, and with the help of a stiff northerly at Blundell’s back. Would Bashir have continued to bowl if the target had been for 250 fewer than it was? Almost certainly not. This was a work experience opportunity for him.

This century was similar to the one that he made on test debut against a dispirited West Indian attack. He was proud enough of that one to walk home in his batting gear, and so he should have been, just as his reaction to this one was right: it was a hundred in a test match. It secured his place in the team for the final test in Hamilton and quite probably beyond that. Is the money paid by this innings sufficient to buy that much? Or is it counterfeit?

The point should also be made that Blundell’s other three test centuries were made in the toughest of circumstances, at the MCG in the Boxing Day test; in England as New Zealand were being steamrolled by the novelty of Bazball; and last year at Mt Maunganui, one of countless rescue operations he has mounted to save a beleaguered batting performance. 

There were also two second-innings nineties, by Duckett and Bethall. I was glad that Bethall did not get to three figures. This sounds mean, but the intention is the opposite. It was predicted by many that the young Brummie-Bajan would be embarrassed by being pitched in at No 3 on debut. He was anything but, looking assured and proficient both technically and mentally. There will surely be centuries by the sackload to come, and he deserves the first to be glorious, made under the golden sun against top class bowling, not when kicking against a door blown open in a Wellington gale. 

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.

The Last of the Cricket?

Wellington v Central Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 1–3 March 2020

Scorecard with video clips

The last of the cricket of the season is forever poignant, the more so as the years pass by. There is a question mark added to the heading of this piece, because nobody knows how cricket will emerge at the far end of all this. Already there is talk of counties folding and of England’s test and one-day teams playing concurrently. Not even the most Blimpish of us could argue that the T20 should not have priority in the English season, to keep the people coming through the gates and the money going into the bank.

The immediate consequences for cricket here in New Zealand will be fewer than for the UK, as the suspension here came at the end of the season, costing only a T20 series against Australia and two rounds of the Plunket Shield. The national team has had a series in Ireland cancelled, but is not scheduled for test cricket until Bangladesh in August.

The game against Central Districts just over a month ago was my last cricket for the season anyway, Wellington’s final three fixtures all being away. I was able to attend only on the first day. Central were top going into the game, and Wellington were second, so we knew that the game would go some way to deciding the Plunket Shield, but we didn’t realise quite how far.

The pitch was greener than that for the test, and a degree more helpful, but not nearly as much as what ensued might suggest after Central were put in. It demonstrated the principle that I have just heard expounded once more by Richie Benaud as Sky Sports New Zealand start their rerun of the 2006/07 Ashes (the whole match, not just highlights—first day at Brisbane and it’s not going well for England)—that the ball only has to move an inch, not a foot, to get a batsman out. 

No assistance whatsoever was needed from the pitch for the first Central wicket, a gorgeous yorker from McPeake to remove Worker.

Had he been fit, Will Young would have opened for New Zealand in the Boxing Day test, just as he would against Bangladesh at Hagley Park last March had the test not been cancelled following the 15 March atrocity. He is Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle, continually just missing Meg Ryan playing the role of his unborn test career. Young was soon lbw shuffling across to Neesham, the pick of a strong seam attack.

It was a day on which the bowling was more intelligent than the batting, the verdant pitch an unconvincing defence for unconvincing defence. The fifth-wicket partnership of 28 between Hay and Cleaver was the biggest of the innings.

It was when Cleaver was dismissed that it first occurred to me that I had a chance of ticking off one of my unfulfilled ambitions in cricket watching: to see an opener carry his bat, that is to bat all through an innings, remaining not out when his side is all out.

I have seen batsmen on their way to this achievement, but have never seen it completed. At Canterbury in 1987, Neil Taylor, an underrated Kent opening batsman, was five not out at the close of play of the first day against Nottinghamshire, but I was back at work in Bristol when the bat carrying was done on the Monday. Ten years later, on what remains my most recent visit to Lord’s, I watched Mark Ramprakash get Middlesex’s second innings under way; he also went on to get an unbeaten hundred the next day, unperturbed by the foot traffic at the other end.

But the closest I had previously come to seeing an opener carry his bat was at Folkestone in 1977. When the Yorkshire team awoke and looked out of their hotel-room windows on the third morning they would have experienced the sinking feeling felt by a soldier about to go over the top, a pilot as an engine fails or, in their case, cricketers who find that it has rained overnight and that Derek Underwood is in the other team, for this was the time of uncovered pitches, with no protection permitted after the first ball of the game was bowled.

The opening batsman concerned was Geoffrey Boycott, in the very week in which he ended his self-imposed exile from the England team. If mention of Boycott fosters the notion that this was some sort of masterclass in batting on a drying pitch against Underwood, think again. Boycott did indeed show immense command and skill, but only in manipulating the strike. He spent so much of Underwood’s spell watching from the non-striker’s end that he might reasonably have been charged admission.

No 11 Mike Bore somehow broke Boycott’s bubble (as we would say these days), whereupon the Great Resistor became Underwood’s seventh victim. He was caught behind by Knott, with whom, just two days later, he was to put on 215 for the sixth wicket on his test return, though not before he had run out local Trent Bridge hero Derek Randall.

Logan van Beek stoked my hopes with three quick wickets. Now only two tailenders with only two previous first-class appearances between them stood between Greg Hay and his achievement (though by now I was regarding it as much my achievement as his).

There remains confusion about the identity of the debutant No 10. On the day, the board had him as Hook, as does the NZ Cricket scorecard linked to at the top of this piece. But CricInfo says that he is Stefan Hook-Sporry, possibly a friend of Bertie Wooster’s. What seemed clear on the day is that he is no batsman. He scooped a ball from off stump to behind square on the legside, where he was caught by van Beek off Sears.

Ray Toole was Central’s last man. Surely a man whose batting ability could promote Hook-Sporry to No 10 could not divert the course of history? But he was good, or lucky, enough to survive nine deliveries, at which point Hay was late with the shot to Neesham and was hit on the pad. The umpire thought for a moment, then decided that it would have hit leg and so Hay failed at the last, just as Boycott had at Folkestone. As things stand, I can still have the words “He never saw anyone carry their bat” on my headstone.

Central’s total was just 96. It was unusual in that only Hay reached double figures, his 62 constituting 65percent of the whole.

Ninety-six looked a fair score after the first over of the Wellington innings in which Colson and Conway were both dismissed without scoring. Both fell caught behind to testing deliveries that moved away just enough. The bowler was Blair Tickner, whose exuberant celebrations rile an element of the Basin faithful.

There was no need for concern. Just one wicket fell in the remaining 52 overs of the day. Left-handed opener Rachin Ravindra led the recovery. Ravindra, still only 20-years-old, was identified as a future international at an early age. He made his first-class debut for New Zealand A before he had appeared in the Plunket Shield. Here, he showed why. It was a composed, classy innings, made as if he was at a different venue from the rest of the batsmen. Look out for Ravindra in the Black Caps team very soon.

He was well supported, first by Troy Johnson then by the captain Michael Bracewell, who has had a season good enough to have placed him in international contention (if there is any international cricket to contend for). My cricket watching for the season finished with Wellington 79 ahead with seven wickets standing. It was a day that had settled the question of the Plunket Shield.

Next day, the lead was extended to 202. Though Central did better in their second innings, Wellington had to make only 53 to win the game by nine wickets. In the next round, sixth of a scheduled eight, Wellington beat Auckland by an innings while Central lost to Otago. This left Wellington with a 26-point lead (with 20 the most attainable in any one game). Thus when Coronavirus forced the cancellation of the final two rounds Wellington were declared to be champions, an odd way to achieve their first title in 16 years, to add to the T20 trophy won in January.

It has been a good season for me, the most enjoyable since 2014–15, which I picked as my vintage summer. Three test matches were at the heart of it, in Hamilton, Sydney and at home in Wellington. Fine batting by Latham, Burns, Labuschagne, Warner and Williamson; excellent bowling from Wagner, Boult, Southee, Cummins and Lyon, amongst others.

The domestic schedule was kinder to me than for some time, particularly in providing four 50-over games early in the year. I didn’t have time to blog on these, but they were most enjoyable. There was some good Plunket Shield too, notably Devon Conway’s triple hundred early on the season. Also, Wellington’s T20 victory.

What will it be like when we next meet at the cricket? The current emergency will change all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. Cricket, more than many sports, has international contests at its core. It will suffer from the restrictions on international travel, which may last much longer than is generally recognised, with 14-day quarantine periods at either end even when the planes start taking off again. I’ll be happy if I’m wrong, but England will be fortunate to see any international cricket in the coming season. When domestic cricket begins it is to be hoped that the ECB sticks to its promise to put domestic T20 at the heart of the schedule. If there are no tests, what about a little imagination to keep the longer form going? I suppose that Smokers v Non-Smokers might be a bit one-sided these days, perhaps less so if what was being smoked wasn’t specified. North v South would be pretty good. Or Born in England v Born Somewhere Else.

Here at Scorecards Towers we feel very fortunate. Both of us are working full-time from home in a large house with a well-stocked library in a country that is doing much better than most at dealing with the virus. You do so much better if you have a good captain.

My main concern at the moment is that this year’s Wisden won’t get here for a while. As mentioned above, Sky Sports New Zealand is running a stack of old cricket in full, (but with most of the ads edited out so it moves along at an old-school over rate). It’s now lunch on the third day at Brisbane 2006 on my timeline, and England are in a tricky spot.

See you at the cricket, sometime.

Double T20 triumph for Wellington

Women’s 2020 T20 Final

Men’s 2020 T20 Final

Forty-two years had passed since I last saw my team win a domestic one-day final, on that happy but drab day when Kent beat Derbyshire over 55 overs. Though I returned to Lord’s with Kent on six further occasions (to be related in future editions of the continuing but occasional series on Lord’s Finals That I Have Seen) all of them were defeats.

It might be thought to be a bit of a stretch to call Wellington “my team”. For nine years Northern Districts were my New Zealand team, when I lived the Bay of Plenty, but I have sat in the teeth of the southerly at the Basin Reserve these fourteen summers now, so claim freeholder privileges. My long wait was rewarded with two wins in one afternoon, as both the Wellington women and men won their finals.

Here in New Zealand finals are played at the home ground of the team that wins the league stage of the competition (except when the venue has been booked for another event, which was what happened to deprive Wellington of the staging rights for the final three years ago—this only happens in Wellington). The women’s game had been scheduled for Saturday and the men’s for Sunday, but the sensible decision was made to delay the former and to stage the two matches as a double-header.

Even better, spectators were offered free admission if they arrived before 2 pm, about scheduled mid-innings in the women’s game. This ensured a good crowd for both fixtures. I haven’t seen the RA Vance Stand as full for a long time. What’s more, there were plenty of young people, girls especially, there for a first taste of the Basin on a big day. It brought families to the cricket, something that we are often told is the point of the shortest forms, but rarely seems to result, particularly in England where finals day at Edgbaston looks like one of Hogarth’s more graphic depictions of human depravity.

It’s been a funny summer in Wellington. Much of the rest of the country has sweltered while we often find ourselves shrouded in low cloud, temperatures ten degrees lower than they are less than an hour away. This was such a day. With the strong breeze making the mist dance across the field we half expected Catherine Earnshaw to emerge from the gloom to open the bowling from the Southern End.

There was sufficient moisture with it to delay the start, truncating the women’s game to seven overs a side. The fewer overs there are in a cricket match, the more of a lottery it becomes. Wellington had won all their ten games in the round-robin stage, so it would have been an outrage had the weather cost them the title. Put in by Auckland, Wellington and New Zealand captain Sophie Devine ensured that was not going to happen with a commanding 54 off 23 balls including five sixes, all straight and all but one clearing the men’s boundary as well as the women’s. Some people (or rather some men) believe this to be significant, but I’m not among them. That the women’s T20 relies less on pure power than the men’s makes it more of an all-round display of cricket skills.

Wellington’s 81 for two was well beyond Auckland’s powers. Wickets fell regularly to Wellington’s bowlers who were much tighter, particularly Amelia Kerr, whose two overs conceded only nine runs. Watching Kerr bowling leg spin is one of the highlights of the contemporary New Zealand season.

Four of the players in the men’s game—Blundell, Phillips, Somerville and test twelfth man Jamieson—I had last seen in Sydney a couple of weeks previously. At least here they could be sure that the fog on the surrounding hills did not contain smoke particles. I watched from the warmth of the Long Room.

As in the women’s game, Auckland won the toss and put Wellington in. T20 games are often like those TV cooking shows where contestants have to concoct something tasty, or at least adequate, from supplied ingredients, small quantities combining to make something tasty. Here, as usual, the hero of the dish (we watch plenty of these programmes, so have absorbed their distinctive vocabulary) was Devon Conway. He is the leading scorer in all three forms this season, and by such margins that, as Peter Bromley said of Shergar’s Derby win, you’d need a telescope to see the rest. The analogy is appropriate as Conway will shortly disappear, from Wellington colours at least. He qualifies for New Zealand selection in a few months’ time, and will be in the team for all forms, without a doubt. His 49 here was one of his more modest efforts, but was comfortably top score. A spectacular catch at short extra cover ended his innings, taken by Auckland captain Craig Cachopa, the last surviving member of the band of small but perfectly formed Cachopii brothers, represented, it seemed, in every provincial team just a few years ago.

Conway and Blundell put on 60 for the third wicket, after which there was something of a collapse, with five wickets falling for 40. Michael Bracewell and Logan van Beek brought some relief to Wellington supporters with an unbeaten stand of 33 in three overs, 20 of which came from the final over.

Nevertheless, a look at the scoreboard where Auckland’s batting order was listed meant that none of us were confident that 168 was enough. Guptill, Munro and Phillips are as destructive a top three as there is in any T20 competition. In a group match just the week before, Wellington had removed these three for 33 and thought the game over, only for Chapman and Cachopa to take it away with a partnership of 132.

Guptill and Munro were well on the way to giving the innings the necessary launching pad, causing the collective blood pressure in the Long Room to climb like the Saturn V, when Munro was given out caught behind off Bennett. Note the “given” in that last sentence, necessary to render it an accurate representation of events. Thinking their decision-making impaired by the cold, the umpires referred the decision to their warmer colleague in the stands. No snicko or hotspot was available, and the replays, did not seem definitive. But out was the decision, so Munro was sent on his way, complaining until he left the field. The usually phlegmatic Guptill was moved to debate the issue with the officials. The Auckland innings did not recover from this injustice. Wickets fell regularly; Guptill apart, only Cachopa reached double figures.

The trail of batsmen to and from the rooms muted Guptill’s aggression. His 60 came from as many as 53 balls, but while he was there the game was always just a few blows from being Auckland’s. The 22-run margin of victory makes it look a stroll in the park, but it seemed to anxious Wellingtonians more a barefooted marathon on hot coals.

I always relish the star player in a final being someone who does not experience the international limelight, for whom this is the biggest of days. Here, that was Logan van Beek. Without the runs that he and Bracewell bludgeoned at the end of the innings, Wellington would not have had a defendable total. He took the wickets of Cachopa, O’Donnell and Hira in five balls in the fifteenth and seventeenth overs.

In the following over he was waiting on the deep mid-wicket boundary the direction in which Guptill hit what looked like a six. Van Beek stretched to take the catch while balancing on an invisible tightrope just a couple of inches inside the boundary. He tossed the ball up before he stepped out of the field of play, reclaiming the ball on his return.

Not much more than a decade ago, such a catch would have been considered extraordinary, but now they are commonplace, as van Beek proved by repeating the trick two balls later to dismiss Horne. An over later, coming in from cover boundary, van Beek sent in a perfect throw to run out McClenaghan, so he had a hand in six of the nine wickets that fell.

Had you told me, as I watched Alan Ealham raise the trophy at Lord’s in 1978, that I would wait 42 years to next see my team win a one-day final, and that when I did it would be half the world away and that the captain’s name would be Sophie Devine, I wouldn’t have believed you.