New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, Third Day, 14 February 2016

Scorecard

If yesterday’s play was pedestrian, today’s was a pleasant saunter in the sun, fast enough to keep the scenery changing sufficiently to maintain interest. The Basin was perfect: blazing sun, the breeze no more than a rumour. There was even a bushfire on Mt Victoria to make the Australians feel at home.

Voges was last out, for 239, with Australia’s lead 379. Perhaps my judgement of Voges after the second day was a little severe. A test double century—a chanceless one too, the phantom no-ball aside—is always an achievement, even if (to borrow a phrase from Robertson-Glasgow’s Cricket Prints, purchased from the Basin bookstall) he overdid the tranquillity at times. He scored only 26 in the first hour, but once he passed 200—completed in the same way as his century, off a Craig full toss—he became more expansive and hit three sixes. Like Khawaja he could have a significant test career in the afternoon of his playing life. On the other hand, he could retire now with an average of 97 and have his name follow Bradman’s for eternity.

There were four caught-and-bowleds in the innings. I can’t establish whether this is a record, but am sure that I have not seen so many before. Anderson’s to dismiss Lyon was even better than Boult’s against Marsh yesterday. He had to change direction in mid-follow through, a move that necessitated the execution of a half somersault as he scooped up the ball fingers brushing the turf.

New Zealand had to face one over before lunch. Did they consider a lunch watchman? Of course not, but would such a thing be any less illogical than a night watchman? Steve Waugh got it right by banning this pessimistic and fearful notion during his captaincy.

After lunch, Martin Guptill hit three fours to the mid-wicket boundary off Siddle’s first over. As in the first innings, Guptill looked untroubled until he got out. Nathan Lyon gave an exhibition of how an off spinner should bowl on a flat pitch. He was accurate with variations of flight and pace. These induced false shots and running catches to dismiss both Guptill and Latham. The contrast with Craig’s performance was stark.

The fall of Latham brought in McCullum, for the last time at the Basin. We stood to applaud him all the way, the moisture in our eyes sufficient to quench the bushfire. There were a couple of chancy fours, then he was pinned on the back leg by Marsh. Umpire Kettleborough took a long time to raise the finger, apparently as keen as we were to find a loophole in the prosection’s case, but the review showed it to be a sound decision. So we rose again and McCullum acknowledged the ovation. Then he was gone.

The company on the back row of the lower tier of the RA Vance Stand was excellent. If you ever come to the Basin for a test, that’s the place to head for. I particularly enjoyed meeting two Australian visitors. There was Michelle from Sydney; the Basin and Hagley Park are her 36^th and 37^th test venues as a spectator. When I made reference to Jason Gillespie’s famous double hundred at Chittagong, she said “yes, I was there for that one”.

And there was Max from Wagga Wagga, who recently spent Aus$16,000 of his redundancy money on a copy of the rare 1916 edition of Wisden. He pretty well cleaned out the bookstall at tea time, and I was pleased to give him a lift into town at the end of the day rather than see him risk injury staggering down Kent Terrace with his haul. I was only sorry that my Khandallah correspondent was not present to gain an appreciation that I am really at the lower end of the cricket book collectors’ spectrum.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, First Day, 12 February 2016

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The contest for sport’s most unoriginally named prize begins. Australia and New Zealand will contest the Trans-Tasman Trophy over two matches this week and next. Where’s the history, the romance, the inspiration? It should be the Clarrie Grimmett Trophy, after the Dunedin-born, Wellington-schooled leg spinner who bowled thousands of overs on the Basin before crossing the Tasman to play 37 tests for Australia, finishing with a world-record 216 wickets.

There has been much conjecture about the pitch ahead of the game, and at the start of the day it did indeed have about it a sufficiently verdant hue to suggest that it would provide a moderately hungry sheep with a decent lunch. In New Zealand we have fixed on the idea that the Australians are flat-track bullies. By way of reinforcing this notion Wellington’s Dominion Post this morning featured a large-type scorecard of Australia’s first innings at Trent Bridge last August, in which they were bowled out for 60.

Alas, Brendon McCullum lost the toss, so it was the home side who were the laboratory beagles testing how toxic the pitch was.

Fifty-one for five by drinks. It wasn’t one of those sessions where the ball was constantly beating or finding the edge. Most of the batsmen—Guptill and Williamson in particular—looked comfortable until they got out. The run rate was more than six an over for the first six overs. But once the bowlers found their line and length the ball did just enough.

Peter Siddle was outstanding. It is difficult to believe that a vegan can bowl such bustling aggression, but today he put the ball on the right spot time and again. Hazlewood bowled better when he had Siddle’s example to follow. Jackson Bird did not have such a good day, bowling an Australian length on a New Zealand pitch.

Anderson and Watling managed a partial recovery with a partnership that took New Zealand through to lunch. Watling and Bracewell were out soon after lunch, but Anderson batted for almost two-and-a-half hours for his 38. Yet it was not an innings that increased confidence in Anderson as a test No 6. It included six fours, which goes to show how difficult he found it to score singles and rotate the strike. At this point Mitchell Santner (absent with a foot injury here) looks a better fit in this position.

Anderson struck Nathan Lyon over mid on for four when the off spinner returned mid-afternoon, but was succoured by a slight change of pace into chipping the next ball tamely to mid off. Tim Southee attempted to get off the mark by slogging over long on and was caught at backward point, giving Lyon his second wicket in two overs at bargain basement cost.

Why Southee bats above Trent Boult is a mystery to everybody who was at the Basin today. That New Zealand finished with as many as 183 was due to Boult, who hit three sixes—stroked would be a better word, such was the refinement of the shots—and put on 46 for the tenth wicket with Mark Craig.

There was early promise for New Zealand, with Southee dismissing both openers in his first two overs. Smith was dropped by Craig at second slip, and Watling missed a tough stumping chance off Craig when Khawaja advanced down the pitch, but there was an ease about the batting of both men that had been absent from New Zealand’s innings. I was a surprise when Smith hit a low return catch to Craig to be dismissed for 71.

New Zealand’s difficult day was compounded in the final over of the day when Bracewell bowled Voges only to have Richard Illingworth call no ball. Replays showed a heel clearly behind the line.

I remember Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth test, at Edgbaston against Australia in 1968. It seemed an extraordinary feat, and some doubted that it would ever be equalled. Today, Brendon McCullum became the 64^th to achieve the feat, but he is the first to do so with consecutive appearances, something that we may very well not see again. Cowdrey scored a hundred way back when, but McCullum made a duck today, a Bradmanesque response, perhaps, to a standing ovation.

At the end of the day I was waiting for my Khandallah correspondent to pick me up outside the ground when one of a passing group of young fellows pointed at me and said “look, it’s Tony Greig” (I wear a white hat similar to that sported habitually by the late commentator, and am tall, though not as tall as him). Fortunately, I keep at my disposal a Tony Greig impersonation that suffices on such occasions. Doffing the hat, I said “good awfternoon gentlemen, let’s have a look at the pitch here at the Basin, where it will go like a tracer bullet”. I think that I made their day.

New Zealand v Pakistan, ODI, Basin Reserve, 25 January 2016

Scorecard

The old joke about New Zealand, favoured by those who can’t think of anything amusing to say, is that when you land here you turn your watch back 20 years. Last Monday at the Basin it was, for once, pleasingly true.

Pakistan were the visitors for the first ODI to played at the Basin Reserve in a decade, and only the second since the Cake Tin opened around the turn of the century. The day was glorious, with Wellington’s perennial gale taking a day off along with many of the capital’s workers, it being the annual provincial public holiday. The idea of a separate holiday for each part of New Zealand should have had its day with the invention of the telephone and the consequent integration of the national economy, but it persists, and under the sun at the Basin we were pleased that it does.

It was one of the more memorable ODIs: New Zealand turned 99 for six into a 70-run victory.

In the sixth over of the morning Martin Guptill off drove Mohammad Irfan for six, the ball kept within the Basin Reserve only by the top of the Don Neely screen at the southern end of the ground. Guptill has been imperious in recent weeks, so 10,000 people sat back and thought “here we go”. Two balls later Guptill hooked Irfan, but, supporting my hypothesis that the Basin pitches are quicker this season, was a little late on the shot and Wahab Riaz took a good catch at long leg.

Latham was caught behind, a thin but definite ripple showing on snicko, but Williamson was in, so there was no need to worry. But, though he is by no means out of form, Williamson has come off the crest of the wave that he surfed throughout 2015, and got an inside edge onto the stumps that would have found the middle a few weeks ago. Two balls later Elliott was bowled through a passable imitation of the nearby Mt Victoria tunnel between bat and pad, which brought in Corey Anderson, 25 overs or so early.

Anderson did a magnificent holding job in the World Cup semi-final last year, but circumspection is not his natural state and he gave the appearance of an elephant trying not to tread on the daisies. He fell caught behind for ten, and Ronchi went the same way next over.

Both men fell to Mohammad Amir, who bowled beautifully. Watching him will be one of the delights of the next decade or so. That he was the subject of taunting from bores on the bank was no surprise, and he will have to learn to live with that sort of thing. It was disappointing to learn that at the T20 a boofhead PA announcer had played cash register sounds when he came on to bowl. NZ Cricket was quick to apologise. As I wrote last week, Amir was a kid bullied into doing wrong and deserves the support of the cricket world. If Salman Butt were to turn up, I’d be happy to join in the booing.

Ninety-nine for six it was, at the crease two players who few of us had heard of at this time last year: Henry Nicholls and Mitch Santner.

Nicholls is a 24-year-old left-hander from Canterbury who has broken into the ODI side this year. He has also had a short spell in the Big Bash (for the Hobart Hyperbole, or possibly the Brisbane Boast, I forget which) so can certainly give it a tonk. He hit seven fours here, the first five of which came when New Zealand were only two down. But when the collapse came he changed his game and became an accumulator. It was impressive and established Nicholls as the leading contender to succeed McCullum at No 5 in the test team. He was dropped by Hafeez at slip at 15, a mistake that cost Pakistan the match.

Nicholls and Santner put on 79 for the seventh wicket in 16 overs. Pakistan skipper Azhar Ali failed the “what would McCullum do?” test early in this partnership when he put spinners on at both ends to get through the ten overs he needed from them, or least that he would need from them if the innings lasted the full 50 overs. Had he invested a few of the overs available to his quick bowlers and told them to attack, he could have brought the innings to an earlier conclusion.

Santner was judicious about shot selection. He came into international cricket without an impressive record at domestic level and has much to learn. But he looks as if he belongs at this level and the selectors are to be praised for picking him on the basis of class and potential. It worked for Daniel Vettori 20 years ago and could have the same result for Santner.

When Nicholls was out for 82 the score was 203 for eight in the 45^th over. Maybe the tail could scratch—let’s be optimistic—another 30 to give New Zealand a modestly decent target to bowl at?

No one foresaw the carnage of the last five overs. Matt Henry and Mitch McClenaghan set about the Pakistan attack like pit bulls. It was cricket remade by Quentin Tarantino. Six sixes and six fours were hit in the last five overs, during which New Zealand added 71 runs. Nos 8, 9 and 10 all passed 30, something that had not been achieved in any of the 3,277 ODIs that were played before this one.

The pace of the pitch helped the ball fly off the bat, but also accounted for McClenaghan who suffered a fractured eye socket when a ball from Anwar Ali penetrated the grille of his helmet. He went down with worrying thump and it was a relief when he walked unassisted from the field a few minutes later.

As it was a special occasion the Basin Reserve authorities had splashed out on replacement lightbulbs for the scoreboard, which was unusually unambiguous as a consequence. But the operators can report to their masters in Pyongyang that, nevertheless, they still advanced their campaign of misinformation by taking a perverse approach to the issue of the names of the Pakistan team. In most cases (though not all, notably when that name is Mohammad), Pakistani cricketers are identified by their first name (eg Hanif, Mushtaq, Zaheer). The video screen respected this convention. But the scoreboard listed Pakistan under their last names, so leaving those unwisely relying on it for information under the impression that it was recording a completely different game from that on the screen next to it.

A target of 281 was about par. New Zealand were without McClenaghan, which meant that all five frontline bowlers would have to bowl ten overs, with only Williamson in reserve. Pakistan started steadily with 33 from the first ten overs.

Grant Elliott had failed with the bat, but he is the Swiss army knife of New Zealand cricket, with something to offer in any circumstance. It was inspired of Williamson to bring him on as early as the seventh over. By the end of the eleventh over he had two wickets.

Mohammad Hafeez and Babar Azam were comfortable enough putting on 81 for the third wicket until the partnership was broken by Williamson, who brought himself on after Babar got after Santner. Hafeez mistimed a drive and was caught by Henry at long on.

Elliott took a third wicket and when Babar fell to Anderson five were down and the required rate was eight-and-a-half an over. Pakistan’s lower order had none of the resilience of New Zealand’s and Boult was able to finish the game with a spell of four for one, which consolidated his position as the No 1 ODI bowler in the world.

It was splendid to have the ODI cricket back at the Basin. In a perfect world, the stands would be rebuilt and the capacity increased to 14,000 or so, plenty for games against most opponents.

For Australia next week, we will be back at the Cake Tin.

New Zealand v Pakistan, T20, The Cake Tin, 22 January 2016

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We still haven’t worked out T20 here in New Zealand. I don’t mean in the playing sense. On good days, we are better than most, as shown by the 95-run trouncing of Pakistan at the Cake Tin, following a ten-wicket victory in Hamilton earlier in the week.

What we haven’t got to grips with is the place of T20 in our cricket. Tonight, 70,000 or more will be at the MCG for the final of the Big B(r)ash. The kiwi equivalent, the final of the Super Smash, was played in front of no more than 400 a week before Christmas on a rugby ground in a province that did not make the finals weekend. In marketing terms, touring Jesus Christ Superstar in Syria would be a better proposition.

Clearly, the New Zealand’s T20 should take place over the late December/January holiday season, at the places where people are at that time: Mt Maunganui, Napier, Queenstown and so on. Just as it was until a couple of years ago, in fact. It could feed off the Big Bash in marketing terms and might attract a few county biffers who fancy Christmas in the sun. There could be an auction. Or at least a jumble sale.

This proposal is purely altruistic, obviously. For my own pleasure I would return to the days when the Plunket Shield began on Christmas Day, though that would instigate tricky negotiations here at My Life in Cricket Scorecards Towers.

I take what I can from T20 games, and try to look cheerful. At the Cake Tin on Friday there was plenty to enjoy. Martin Guptill driving is as handsome a sight as contemporary cricket has to offer. As usual, his shots were orthodox, each one chosen to fit the ball delivered. This game confirmed a trend away from the reverse pulls, scoops and other inventions that once seemed about to render the MCC coaching book obsolete. Here, and in such Big Bash as I have seen, the trick shots seem to have reverted to being an occasional variation to the main theme.

As ever, Kane Williamson was everybody’s sensible older brother (his running calls the only hint that he might enjoy a few quiet ones of a Friday night). Corey Anderson’s undefeated 82 from 42 balls was the batting highlight, once he got over an early spell when his timing was out. He took two for 15 in three overs too. Anderson might just be to New Zealand what the New Zealander Stokes is to England: an all-rounder for the next decade.

Adam Milne took three for eight in three overs; he was too quick for them, simple as that. Many of us hope that the selectors will give him a run in a test match on the right surface. Four or five three-over spells in a day is all we would ask. If my observation about the Basin being quicker this year is correct, against Australia in February could be the time, especially with Johnson gone and Starc injured.

Grant Elliott bettered Milne by one run: three for seven. Hard to think that this time last year there was disbelief—scoffing even—at Elliott’s selection for the World Cup. Now he is a national symbol for dependability, a cricketing Volvo estate.

Elliott introduced an element of unorthodoxy to the batting: when facing a free-hit ball he took guard well wide of off stump, inviting the bowler to aim at the stumps. With batsmen now so much more adept at moving around the crease, the time has come to offer the bowlers more leeway, certainly in T20, but possibly in 50-over cricket too. A stumps-wide channel down the legside should be a legitimate operating area for the bowler. Cricket is at its best when bat and ball are in balance.

It was good to see Mohammad Amir back from his five-year ban and custodial sentence for bowling deliberate no-balls for betting purposes. He was still a boy when he was bullied into it, and the punishment (unlike that for Salman Butt) seemed harsh. I hope that the cricket world rallies around him.

If you go to a big T20 match there is no point in railing against the razzmatazz; the music, the lights, the hype are part of the package, and to suggest that it should be different would be to ask that a man carrying a flag precedes a motor car. It is the small things that are the most telling about how far we have come. Here, I was the only spectator I saw with binoculars around his neck, but then I have reached the stage in life where I accept that my role is often to add quaintness to the occasion.

The music was mostly ok, but almost all from the contemporary hit parade. Not until Bridge Over Troubled Water appeared late on could I name that tune. I propose that for the first six overs there should be only two fielders outside the circle and only Beatles and Stones through the speakers.

It was pleasing to see 16,000 or so enjoying themselves, and it is difficult to see a downside to the full grounds in Australia for the Big Bash. But I do worry. How long before the commercial interests start to demand that the best players are available for the biggest crowds and want to make the Melbourne Big Bash Boxing Day game a tradition?

New Zealand v West Indies, World Cup Quarter-final, Cake Tin, 21 March 2015

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We’re a cautious lot, we New Zealand fans. If our interest was the theatre, we would have gone to the Cake Tin yesterday hoping for a decent performance of something worthy. Ibsen, say, or Pinter. The provincial reviews had been good, but this was the West End, the knock-out stage. All we wanted was for the Brendon McCullum Players to remember enough lines to get us to the semi-final. Instead we got the most lavish Broadway show imaginable, full orchestra song and dance from start to end. Martin Guptill: the Musical.

What I love about cricket is its capacity for surprise, its ability to exceed expectation. After, yes, half a century watching the game you think you know what the parameters are. You assume, for example, that you will never see someone, particularly a New Zealander, score 237 not out in a World Cup knock-out game.

It was glorious. This New Zealand summer has conjured up cricket that stands with the best of the past fifty years. Williamson and Watling at the Basin, Southee at the Cake Tin, Sangakkara anywhere, McCullum everywhere. This innings of Guptill’s was the best of the lot. It has to be judged against Cowdrey at Canterbury in 1975, Richards at Lord’s in 1979, Slater at Sydney in 1999, to name but three, as the best I have seen.

It was the shots he didn’t play, as much as those he did, that measured its quality. No reverse laps, ramps or premeditated movements. Pure cricket, from the Rolex timing of the push drive that sent the first ball of the innings to the straight boundary to the pull that put the ball on the roof in the final over. Watch a recording of the innings and see how straight is the backlift, even for cross-bat shots. As well as being spectacular and surprising it was aesthetically pleasing, which the best batting always is.

Incidentally, it is not true, as has been reported, that Craig McMillan is the only batsman to hit the ball onto the roof of the Cake Tin. Guptill has done it once before, off Lonwabo Tsotsobe of South Africa in a T20 in 2012, a hit estimated at 125 metres, 15 metres longer than yesterday’s. His two-fingered gesture to McMillan after the hit was not, as Simon Doull said on commentary, to say “two of us have done it” but “I’ve done it twice”. Michael Lumb of England also did it, in a T20 in 2013.

Guptill’s innings changed in tempo. At times early on runs were hard to come by. His century came up in 111 balls, which is hardly laggardly. At that point it was already a classy, memorable innings. He got there in the 35^th over, just before the start of the powerplay. With only two wickets down, the foot could be pressed firmly to the floor.

Cricket is a game of numbers, and those for this match stretch credulity. Guptill’s second century came in just 41 balls. All eleven of his sixes came after the century mark. 207 came for New Zealand from the final 15 overs, 85 from the final five. It was wonderful.

From the third ball of the first over, Marlon Samuels became Dick Rowe for a day. Rowe was the Decca Records executive who, in 1962, refused to sign the Beatles on the grounds that guitar groups were on the way out. Samuels had the opportunity to send Guptill back to the rooms, but put down a sharp but catchable low chance at square leg. That was the only one Guptill offered. Just as Rowe would have spent the following years avoiding news of the Fab Four’s record sales, so Samuels spent the next 49 overs looking in any direction but that of the scoreboards as they audited the ever-increasing scale of his error.

A word in praise of Ross Taylor, who has been a worry for New Zealand supporters during the World Cup. He is hard to get out, but has got stuck in situations that he has hit himself out of in the past. Yesterday, he began slowly, with 23 off 43 balls, but he scored a run a ball thereafter and supported Guptill superbly in a partnership of 143, an excellent platform for the ensuing carnage.

Guptill is very fast between the wickets but is sometimes more cagey about his intentions than his partner would find ideal. We had already had one episode in which he and Taylor headed intently for the same end, so it was no surprise when Taylor was run out.

Earlier, Williamson had looked in as good touch as Guptill and it was a surprise when he got out to a soft shot. Later, Anderson, Elliott, Ronchi and Vettori all added to the mayhem.

My heart was filled with joy at New Zealand’s display. Yet it was also a little broken. I have written often enough about how early exposure to the West Indians fed my love of cricket. One of them was at the Cake Tin yesterday: the great Clive Lloyd of Guyana, Lancashire and the West Indies, the captain who brought together Jamaicans, Bajans, Trinidadians et al and made them a great West Indian team.

For Clive Lloyd, watching the shambles that the West Indies became in the final fifteen overs of the New Zealand innings must have been awful. How can the team of Richards, Sobers, Marshall, Greenidge, Holding and the rest have come to this?

To see England humiliated was comedy. To see the degradation of the West Indies was tragedy. The writer Dileep Premachandran recently tweeted “each time West Indies do well, the inner 10-year-old pumps his fist”. Today, the boy wept.

Jason Holder, the 23-year-old fast bowler who has been lumbered with the captaincy, looked bereft towards the end, and placed himself at long on, symbolically near the exit to the dressing rooms. It is always a bad sign when the skipper fields on the boundary. A little later, Darren Sammy, one of many recent captains, was seen in heated debate with the bench.

The fielding lacked commitment. Where were the dives, where were the support fielders? How the crowd roared later when all three of New Zealand’s slip fielders chased a ball to the boundary. What a difference.

So it was good that the West Indies took an adventurous approach to their futile task of chasing 394 for victory. They achieved more than was expected in maintaining a rate of eight an over for the 31 overs that they lasted.

But, in the words of a young member of the catering staff who took a seat behind us when they ran out of chips, West Indies were doing well “apart from the wickets thing”. Indeed. In cricket, it’s the wickets thing that gets you in the end. The wickets fell regularly and they never stood a chance of getting near. New Zealand knew how much protection they had and did not panic.

There were two noteworthy aspects to the innings. First Daniel Vettori’s catch at third man to dismiss Samuels. Vettori has always been highly competent in the field, but has never presented the world with an athletic persona. So, when, at the age of 36, he executed a perfectly timed, improbably high standing jump to pluck the ball from the night, it was as surprising as Maggie Smith rapping.

My Blean correspondent and myself have long been connoisseurs of one-legged innings, those made by batsmen under physical duress. The benchmark has always been Basil D’Oliveira’s half-century in the Benson and Hedges final in ’76. Despite his elderly hamstring having pinged earlier, D’Oliveira almost turned the game.

There was Basharat Hassan’s century at Canterbury the following year. Also Terry (though it might have been Michael) Parlane’s hundred at the Basin four or five years ago.

Chris Gayle’s 61 from 33 balls, with eight sixes, may have beaten them all. He has a bad back and could only hobble singles when there would normally have been a safe two. All of us who thought that Gayle’s non-appearance against the UAE was simply because he couldn’t be arsed, owe him an apology. Yet his hitting was devastating, if Sisyphean.

New Zealand’s two World Cup games at the Cake Tin have been two of the best days I have ever spent at the cricket. Years hence I shall remember them if I can’t recall my own name. The nation has become consumed with cricket. You hear people talking about it as you walk down the street. I have always wanted to live in such a place.

Tuesday, South Africa, Eden Park.