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.
