Back at Hamilton: leg spin and an inflatable pub

Northern Districts v Wellington, T20, Seddon Park, 22 December 2018

Scorecard (contains video links of wickets, boundaries and beards).

For the first time since I moved to Wellington in 2006, I have been to the cricket at Seddon Park in Hamilton. I was a regular in the press box there for three years or so from the turn of the century as CricInfo’s man in the central North Island, and reported upon a good deal of interesting cricket while enjoying Northern Districts’ free lunches.

At that time the ground was newly remodelled to double the size of the banking that surrounds two-thirds or so of the playing area, so as to attract more international fixtures. This involved taking out the trees that formed a near continuous canopy around the top of the bank when I first went to Seddon Park twenty years ago. It was pleasing to see that their replacements have matured, returning the rural feel that the ground has despite its central-city location (as I have noted previously, it is the only ground I have spectated at where I have been able to get a haircut and sit-down meal and still been back in my seat for the first ball after lunch). As well as the bouncy castle, without which no T20 match can be played, there was also an inflatable pub.

It was a pleasure to watch under lights in a part of the country where the climate does not necessitate an overcoat, several sweaters and a balaclava to survive the experience. Flags were given to spectators on arrival rather than the thermal blankets that are more appropriate in Wellington. 

The occasion was the opening game of the domestic T20 season, with Northern Districts hosting Wellington. A pleasing scheduling development this year is that many games are double headers, with the men’s match preceded by a women’s game. I arrived in time to catch the last ten overs of so of ND’s innings. Chasing 144, ND were well-placed with 60 or so needed and eight wickets standing, but they collapsed like the morale of the turkey population at this time of year, losing seven wickets for 23 runs.

Amelia Kerr was playing for Wellington. Recently turned 18, in June she broke the women’s world ODI record for an individual with 232 against Ireland. Good judges say that she is a rare talent, and I look forward to seeing her bat. Today it was her bowling that took the eye. She took three for ten with her leg spin, inducing cluelessness in the opposition as only a good leg spinner can. The last time I saw a leggie do that was when Ish Sodhi ran through Wellington at the Basin earlier this year. Though in the other camp, he greeted her with warm approval after the match, the fellowship of the wrist-spinner’s union overriding team loyalty. The ND lower order may not be technically equipped to meet the challenge, but a bowler who lands it with consistent accuracy and turns it both ways with bounce as Kerr does, will bamboozle better players than them.

In the men’s match, Wellington won the toss and put ND in. On a good pitch for batting, as Seddon Park is, I remain of the opinion that it is better to bat first as the pressure of chasing a large total undoes a team so often. That is, more or less, what happened here.

Though Walker wasn’t in the home side here, the other two bearded crowned heads were, and it turned out to be a royalist triumph, though it did not seem that way when Devcich was forced to abdicate from the second ball of the match, top edging Woodcock to short third man.

Devcich was replaced by his emperor-cousin Dean Brownlie who played the most substantial innings of the day, 99 from 45 balls, 76 of which came in boundaries. It was a satisfying combination of muscle and guile. One short of the hundred, Brownlie deserves credit for going for the big hit rather than taking the easy single that was there for the asking.

Each of the first five overs of the innings was delivered by a different bowler. The aim of this is to prevent the batsmen from settling, but it is a tactic that can be more disruptive to the bowlers. Woodcock, for example, bowled a fine first over, but was immediately replaced by Neesham, who was hit for four fours (though more athletic fielding might have turned two of them into catches). One of these was a cross-bat smash by Seifert that rocketed towards non-striker Brownlie at waist height. He just managed to straddle jump the oncoming missile. An inch higher and the line of succession would have been terminated there and then. When Woodcock returned, he got tonked too.

Jeetan Patel, who stepped aside from the domestic 50-over competition, is back for the T20 and made an immediate impact, conning the in-form Seifert to tap the first ball he bowled back for an easy caught-and-bowled. Only a single came from that over, but Patel’s effectiveness diminished with each over that he bowled. In his last over his normally infallible control went missing, and three full tosses all went over the rope, by a considerable margin. I felt sympathy for Patel earlier, when a clear mishit by Mitchell went for six, a sure sign of imbalance between bat and ball. Nofal also went for three sixes in one over, all by Brownlie.  

Hamish Bennett’s clever change of pace restricted ND to four from the last over of the innings, but 215 for six is a T20 total that will win many more games than it loses, even in Seddon Park’s corseted boundaries.

It was good to see Mitch Santner back for ND after being out for nine months with a knee injury. The national team lacks balance without him, and 22 not out and three overs for 28 was a satisfactory start.

Leading the reply, Devon Conway got off the mark with a six over long off in the first over off Devcich, followed by a four through mid-wicket next ball. He hit seven more fours, all pure shots through the off side. It was the best cricket of the match.

It is Conway’s second season for Wellington since moving from South Africa. Such is the way of the world that a televised 45 here set off social media in a way that a double hundred in the Plunket Shield a couple of weeks ago failed to do, with many asking when he will be qualified to play for New Zealand (to which the answer is September 2020).

But returning to the theme of leg spinners instigating self-doubt, the mere appearance of Ish Sodhi ball-in-hand caused Conway to abandon the composed orthodoxy that had served him so well to that point. Sodhi’s first ball he unsuccessfully attempted to reverse sweep. The second he charged at brainlessly and was bowled.

Four of Conway’s boundaries came in Scott Kuggeleijn’s first over, and things got no better for the bowler, who had a shocker. The tenth over of the innings included three wides as he kept getting the slow bouncer wrong. At least that over eventually reached a conclusion. Kuggeleijn’s final over included two above-waist full tosses so he was stood down with two balls of the over left. Paradoxically, he bowled more deliveries than anybody else in the game, wides and no balls included, finishing with 3.4-0-58-1.

However, it was Kuggeleijn’s dismissal of Hose, caught behind from the last ball of the tenth over, that sparked the collapse that gave the game to ND. At that point Wellington were more than halfway towards their target with seven wickets standing, so were still narrow favourites.

But Neesham went in the next over, miscuing Sodhi to cover. Sodhi isn’t always the most economical bowler, but gets the key batsmen out, which is why he is No 6 in the world bowling rankings for T20 at the time of writing. Any hope that Wellington had from this point on was expunged by the deceptively unlikely figure of Anton Devcich.

If asked to demonstrate to a young person the art of pie throwing, simply show them a video of Devcich bowling and the job will be done, or so anyone watching him bowl for the first time might be forgiven for thinking. Any indecision on the batsman’s part would be merely whether to hit him over midwicket or long off. But beware. Devcich is in the great tradition of bowlers who carry the appearance of a friendly spaniel but who can bite like a rottweiler. Chris Harris is the personification of the type, his ambling windmill action apparently doing no more than placing the ball on the tee, yet performing good enough a con to bring him 203 wickets in ODIs. Darren Stevens is another example. Devcich finished with four for 27. Wellington’s last six wickets fell for 12 runs.

One man’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. Much of Kuggeleijn’s waywardness was communicated to the world by Billy Bowden, making the most of a rare appearance before the TV cameras to reprise his full range of theatrical umpiring signals, a Christmas ham a few days early.

The Return of the Kings

Wellington v Northern Districts, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 4 November 2018

Scorecard

At full strength Northern Districts would be favourites to beat any other domestic team in the world, Surrey included. They have five bowlers in the top 15 of the world rankings in at least one format—Boult, Southee, Wagner, Santner and Sodhi—as well as one of the world’s best batsmen, Kane Williamson, other established internationals De Grandhomme and Watling, and Anderson and Seifert in T20.

“At full strength” is the key thing there. All the above except the injured Santner are on international duty in the UAE at the moment, where the Black Caps are taking on Pakistan in all three formats.

Wellington are without Blundell, van Beek and Rachin Ravindra, all with New Zealand A in the same location. Ravindra’s absence is particularly noteworthy as he is yet to play for Wellington’s senior team in first-class, list A or T20, but has been accelerated into the national A squad because of exceptional promise shown in international age group cricket, another straw in the wind that blows away the significance of the domestic first-class game.

What’s more, Jeetan Patel has opted out of the shorter forms for Wellington this year so as to preserve his aging bones for the next English season, for which nobody blames him in the least. Luke Woodcock has also decided to restrict himself to red-ball cricket, having made more first-class appearances for Wellington than any player has for any New Zealand province.

This is the New Zealand present, and the UK future: the national 50-over competition without the top talent, and with a fair portion of the middling talent unavailable too. This is what it will be like from 2020 when the Hundread (feel free to use that) gets under way.

Today’s match was an illustration of what the game becomes in these circumstances—a contest in who can best disguise their inexperience. Of course, a fine game of cricket can be the outcome, tolerable in the New Zealand spring, but lacking something as the main attraction outside the big grounds in the high English summer.

Andrew Fletcher and Malcolm Nofal opened, ND having won the toss and put Wellington in. Fletcher, who has earned his first professional contract at 25 with a lot of runs in club cricket, has been Wellington’s 50-over star so far, with two centuries in three games. He didn’t start like a man in peak form. One handsome cover drive apart, he was fortunate not to touch at least one of the deliveries that Brett Randell sent down the off-stump corridor.

As so often, a wicket fell after the release of pressure when good but unrewarded opening bowlers were replaced. The deceptively amiably paced Daryl Mitchell came on and had soon accounted for the first three Wellington wickets.

Nofal played casually across to be leg before, Conway feathered a catch behind (from his disappointed reaction the bird was already plucked), and Michael Bracewell top-edged a hook to fine leg.

Mitchell, by the way, is no relation to the Worcestershire player of the same name but is the son of John Mitchell, the former All Blacks coach who seems to be doing a fine job as England’s defensive coach, judging from the difficulty teams from this half of the world have had in crossing the line in the last couple of weeks.

For all Mitchell’s success, there was a right-arm-medium sameness about the Northern Districts attack. Fletcher was given far too many opportunities to play off his pads, which seems to be a strength of his.

Off spinner Joe Walker provided a little variety. He is one of several Northern Districts players whose off field time (there being little else to do in Hamilton of an evening) is the cultivation of big, bushy beards. A field-setting discussion between Walker, Devcich and Brownlie resembled a meeting of the crowned heads of Europe in the years before the First World War.

 

Devcich and Brownlie model ND's one-day and T20 uniforms

At 81 for three, Fletcher was joined by Jimmy Neesham, perhaps the best player left in New Zealand this weekend. At once, he was on the attack with great reserves of timing and power. The extent of his domination can be measured by the fact that when he reached 50, the fourth-wicket partnership was worth no more than 67.

Fletcher edged a catch behind off the slow left-arm of Anton Devcich for 64, but with ten overs to go Wellington were 203 for four, looking to set a target not far short of 300. At that time I wrote a cautionary note saying “all depends on Neesham”. So when he was out chasing a Devcich down the legside in the 42^nd over, estimates of the final total tumbled like those for the post-Brexit pound.

It was a smart piece of keeping by Bocock. Everybody around the boundary thought that Neesham had been stumped, but the clue was that no wide was given. It took the online replay to confirm a sharp catch, the bails whipped off in affirmation. Neesham made 86 from 67 balls with eight fours and four sixes.

That Wellington got as far as 269 was due to some loose bowling and optimistic hitting, particularly from Ollie Newton, whose innings was the cricketing equivalent of the golfer who keeps driving into the trees only to have the ball rebound into the middle of the fairway.

Devcich cleaned up the last three wickets to give him a career-best five for 46.

In the break between innings I called into the Museum, where I was delighted to find that they were having a half-price Wisden sale. I settled on an unusual 1950 edition, bound in hard covers, but dark red with a navy blue spine. I have never seen one like this before. Perhaps it was an individual collector salvaging a dilapidated copy with their own design; one or two of mine could do with some help. It cost NZ$30, which is about £15 at current rates.

That’s No 73 on the shelves in Scorecards Towers, with 1951 the most recent gap. I must get round to writing something in each edition about how I got it and where it’s been so that when they end up on other shelves one day, their story will be known.

Wellington’s opening bowlers Bennett and Newton started well, conceding just five runs from the first four overs. Bennett had Cooper leg before with a full pitch. For the next 15 overs, Northern Districts made decent progress, but it was clear that much rested on the partnership between the Tsar and the King, who, with Mitchell, comprised the bulk of their team’s experience.

At 86 for two in the 21^st over it was pretty even, but Devcich’s slog-sweep to long on was the first of six wickets to fall in the next 12 overs, with just 44 added to the total. The last two wickets added a further hundred, with Randell, Gibson and (especially) Bocock striking the ball well and with spirit. But the rate required expanded throughout, so for those of us who stayed, the experience of the last hour was akin to knowing that your car has passed its warrant (= MoT for UK readers) but having to hang around for the paperwork to be completed.

With four for 34, Hamish Bennett was again outstanding. Nofal took three with his slow left-arm, with the word “occasional” now deleted from that description.

With four of ten rounds completed, Wellington were top of the table. The winner of the group stage hosts the final with second and third playing off for the other place.