New Zealand v Australia, first test, Basin Reserve, 29 February – 3 March 2024

Scorecard

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.

Early Adventures in the Plunket Shield 2020

 Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 19—22 October 2020

Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 5—8 November 2020

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 14—17 November 2020

“I’m off to the cricket.”

There’s a phrase to quicken the pulse of the cricket enthusiast, especially when uttered for the first time in a new season. This time, it comes with a new sense of privilege and responsibility, for New Zealand is presently the only place in the world where fans can freely watch their first-class team on their home ground.

As I have walked through the gates of the Basin Reserve these last few weeks I have had a sense of being at the cricket on behalf of those who can’t be, particularly those who blog on going to the cricket in the UK, on whom I have come to rely for a vicarious experience of county cricket, but who are, for now, excluded from it themselves. I’m lucky. Covid-19 hasn’t cost me a day’s spectating, save for what I might have seen had a planned visit to the UK gone ahead.

Traditionally, the season opens at the Basin Reserve to the sound of jack hammers and buzzsaws, but the renovation of the Museum Stand, or Old Pavilion as it is now called, is complete, and a great adornment it is. We look forward to an updated New Zealand Cricket Museum being opened in the New Year, and, I hope, the return of the second-hand bookstall.

My first cricket of the new season was a brief after-work visit to the third day of the opening Plunket Shield fixture, with Canterbury the visitors. Photos of the first-day pitch attracted a good deal of attention on social media due to its being greener than David Attenborough. Wellington were duly skittled for 65.

The rest of the game consisted of expanding totals as the pitch made its journey from spring to early summer. My visit coincided with the end of Wellington’s second innings. Devon Conway was batting. Wellington are making the most of Conway while they can. Top scorer nationally in all three forms of domestic cricket last season, he qualified for New Zealand in August, and was in the national squad for the T20s against the West Indies. Here, he was top scorer in both innings, not enough to prevent a seven-wicket win for Canterbury.

Conway, and the other international players apart from those in the IPL, were available for their provinces for the first half of the Plunket Shield, in theory at least. But while we are free of Covid-19 in New Zealand another plague is rampant, that of the “slight strain”, to which these internationals appear especially vulnerable, and which keeps them in social isolation away from dressing rooms.

The uneven structure of the New Zealand domestic programme sent the two teams to Christchurch the following week for the return fixture. Canterbury won even more easily, the prospect of Wellington retaining the Plunket Shield heading for the hills with summer not yet begun.

Otago were the visitors for the next match, at the Basin. This was a rare opportunity to see a first-class game in its entirety (or so I thought). The pitch wasn’t quite as green as that against Canterbury, but neither is the Amazon Rain Forest, so Michael Bracewell still put Otago in upon winning the toss.

Wellington’s customary breeze was unusually warm, and offered the prospect of swing, which may have had a hand in the first wicket of the match, Kitchen playing on to a Newton delivery that came back at him. 

With four right-arm seamers, Bracewell, as Trevor Bailey used to say about England in the 80s, could change the bowler, but not the bowling. Hamish Bennett has led the Wellington attack with distinction for the past few years, and in any other era but the pace-rich current one, would have been in the test team. He has yet to hit the rhythm of the recent past, and struggled for luck as well as form, having Hawkins dropped at second slip. The good fortune was monopolised by Sears, who got Hawkins in his first over, caught behind heaving at a wide ball.

The best batting of the innings came from Dale Phillips, who scored a maiden first-class fifty at a run a ball. I enjoyed his fluent driving through the offside, and so did the Wellington bowlers, judging from the opportunities they kept giving him to repeat the shot.

Phillips was joined by Hamish Rutherford, well-known in county circles. I saw him make a debut test century against England in Dunedin seven years ago, but he has become stuck in the cricket netherland populated by batsmen who look better than almost anybody in the domestic game, but who are not able to turn that into consistent runs at the higher level (for an English equivalent see Vince J).

Phillips slowed after passing fifty and was dismissed by the ball of the day from Ollie Newton, one that veered in from well outside off to knock out the off stump. A lunch score of 118 for three was indicative of an enterprising and entertaining morning.

The pace slowed in the afternoon as Wellington’s bowlers became more thoughtful and accurate. Rutherford and Kelly put on 56 for the fourth wicket after which the Otago innings subsided. They were all out for 265 in the 81^st over. Sears and Newton both took four wickets.

With 13 overs to face at the day’s end, the priority for Blundell and Ravindra was survival, something they looked like achieving comfortably until the penultimate scheduled delivery, bowled by left-arm wrist spinner Rippon. It was as bad a ball as had been seen all day, a long hop well wide of leg stump. Ravindra could not resist, and set about despatching it down the Mt Victoria Tunnel. Travis Muller, at deep square leg, had assumed that his participation would not be further required and was slow to react to the unexpected approach of the ball at this late stage, but remained sufficiently composed to take the catch. Ravindra’s return to the rooms was funereal; he may have hoped that it would be empty and locked by the time he got there.

The weather on the second day came at us straight from Antarctica vis the southerly, so this account of it is as seen from the Long Room. Conway was not exposed to the cold for long: he played on to a short ball from Jacob Duffy, the pace of which was more than the batsman expected. Like Bennett, Duffy would have got international recognition in any other time.

These days, the dismissal of Conway has the effect on the Wellington batting similar to that of kicking away an old man’s stick. Collapse follows inevitably. Duffy had Blundell caught at second slip a run later, and Bracewell’s 37 was the only significant resistance; soon enough, Wellington were 144 for nine.

Sears and Bennett put on 61 for the tenth wicket, the biggest partnership of the innings. In the circumstances it would be intemperate to express disappointment with this admirable effort, but for me last-wicket stands should be the occasion of yahoo and mayhem, of clown shoes and custard pies. This was nothing but dogged common sense: Sears 41 from 154 balls, Bennett 20 from 106. No slapstick there.

The same could not be said of Otago keeper Mitch Renwick, who contributed 23 byes to Wellington’s 204. Though they weren’t all down to him, Renwick’s performance with the gloves was as lamentable as I have seen for a long time.

Otago lost Kitchen, who was bowled by Newton off the inside edge, and finished the day 91 ahead with nine wickets standing.

The wind had returned to the north-west for day three, a direction from which the RA Vance Stand affords ample protection, but it was the day four weather that was causing more concern: the forecast was apocalyptic and suggested that cricket would take second place to civil defence.

The morning confirmed that Dale Phillips is a batsman with prospects. He made a second fifty, but off 124 balls this time, so he has patience as well as shots. Rutherford also made a second, assured half century.

It became clear immediately after the luncheon interval that there had been meteorologically inspired negotiations over the ham salad. First Ravindra and Bracewell, then the rarely seen spin of Tom Blundell, tossed up some hittable stuff with the field up. Batsman Finn Allan joined in to claim Rutherford as a maiden first-class wicket, all the more notable for being the only lbw given in the whole game.

The agreed target turned out to be 279, eminently reachable in a day and a half, not so much if there was no play on the fourth day. If made, it would be the highest score in any of the eight innings played at the Basin so far this season.

At first, it seemed that Rutherford had been generous. Blundell looked terrific, driving and pulling fours with equal alacrity. He was a last-man-standing pick as test opener at Melbourne at the end of last year, but made a century in the second innings. Here, he looked every bit a test opener.

Ravindra also looked at ease, in a more defensive manner until he was bowled by a very good ball from Muller from round the wicket that left him just enough to hit off stump.

Conway batted as if the target was a pittance. His first four scoring shots were all fours, three driven and one off the edge. Such is Conway’s talent that he has the game for all circumstances. Here, it was front foot and drives. The following week, back foot, cuts and pulls. But those four shots were all there was; Duffy threw himself to his right following through to take a spectacular caught-and-bowled to dismiss him.

That was pretty much it for Wellington’s winning aspirations. Bracewell went two runs later, and though Blundell and Allen put on 58, the pace slowed and it was clear that Wellington would not beat the weather. Four wickets fell for 15 and Wellington finished the day on 185 for seven, though there was just time for Blundell to reach his hundred.

The fourth morning dawned as predicted, lacking only King Lear to egg it on. For most of my cricket watching years, that would have been it, play called off first thing, all done. But cricket grounds now dry out like a polyester shirt, and with Otago potentially needing only a few overs to win the game a start later was not out of the question. Scorecards Towers is about 20 minutes from the Basin on a Sunday, so I had decided to get there if it did start. For one thing, it is some time since I have seen the whole of a domestic first-class game, for another you never know what you might miss if you don’t go. A hattrick maybe, or a surprising finish. I kept checking Twitter for an update from Wellington Cricket. None came. Instead the live scoring suddenly fired back into life with the news that play had restarted and that Blundell was out. How was he out?

Obstructing the field.

Just the 32nd instance of this dismissal in the history of first-class cricket (using the figures in Wisden; CricInfo says 26th but misses several recent instances that Wisden lists), and only the second in New Zealand (the first being JA Hayes of Canterbury against Central Districts in 1954-5). There is a coda to this. At any time in the game’s history before 2017, it would have been handled the ball, but, for reasons that are unclear, this form of dismissal was then subsumed into obstructing the field, a description that suggests a physical altercation, rather than the batsman merely tapping the ball away from the stumps with the glove, as happened in this case. There were 63 incidences of handled the ball, rare enough to satisfy my curiosity for the extraordinary. According to reports, Blundell was the first to be recorded as out obstructing the field rather than handled the ball.

Anyway, (and this is the salient point) I was not there and will have added to my headstone, after “He never saw an opener carry their bat”, “or any of the game’s more esoteric dismissals, come to that”. Of course, I need to get a grip and realise that cricket watchers the world over will envy anybody who sees the most mundane lbw or caught-and-bowled in 2020.

Two more wickets quickly followed Blundell’s to complete an 84-run win for Otago, Wellington’s third defeat in a row.

Changes were therefore inevitable for the following weekend when Auckland were the visitors. Fraser Colson came in for  Finn Allen in the middle order, a seaming all-rounder (Sears) was replaced by a spinning all-rounder (Younghusband) and Michael Snedden (son of Martin) replaced Hamish Bennett, about whom there was talk of “workload issues”, which may have been a way of avoiding the d-word. Snedden provided continuity in the habit of falling over in the delivery stride, just as Bennett does.

The pitch was a lighter, more benevolent, Varadkar green than the militant De Valera shade of the earlier games, but with Kyle Jamieson in the opposition, Michael Bracewell did not hesitate to put Auckland in on winning the toss. Both openers went in the first three overs, Beghin lbw to McPeake playing across the line, and Solia edging a full delivery to the keeper.

Phillips then made a half century, the third time that has been so at the Basin this season. However, this was not Dale, who had so impressed for Otago, but his older brother Glenn, who we came across when he was rushed to Sydney for the test match in January. This innings was in the manner of Dale’s aggressive first-innings knock rather than the more circumspect second. It included five sixes, four pulled and one edged.

The first two wickets fell to accurate, good or full-length deliveries, an approach that Wellington would have done well to continue, rather than feeding Phillips short stuff. McPeake’s self-image was bowling 15 kph faster than he was. It was to a good length ball on off stump that Phillips fell, caught behind off Snedden.

At the other end, the bowling to left-hander Mark Chapman was fuller, but no straighter. He reached fifty from 72 balls, with 80% of his runs coming from boundaries, mostly through the offside. With a first-class average above 40 and a list A average above 50, Chapman should add to his shorter-form caps soon, though he will have to deal with bowling less imbued with the early generosity of Christmas if he does.

Martin Guptill replaced Phillips. The prospect of watching Guptill bat is always a treat, though like Mark Ramprakash there is a massive discordance between how good he looks and his test stats. Soon there was a straight-driven four that made a sound off the bat as sweet as a hummingbird uncorking champagne. But Newton, showing the value of line and length, got him with a fine ball that bounced a fraction more than expected. O’Donnell chased a wider ball from Snedden to leave Auckland at 134 for five.

Wicketkeeper Ben Horne was next in. He has the most distinctive ritual while waiting for the bowler to bowl that I have seen for some time. He begins by banging the bat really hard on the ground. I thought that a 21-gun salute was under way at the National War Memorial just down the road. Once the bowler approaches, the bat is raised to shoulder height and waved manically, as if conducting an invisible orchestra in the covers. It worked well enough here; Horne made 57, the recovery built around him.

On 90, Chapman hit the shot of the day, a square cut that left McPeake on the boundary with no chance despite having only five metres to cover. Chapman was out in the following over, five short of a deserved century when he was caught at slip off Gibson while deciding whether to play or leave. Gibson did a decent job into the brisk north-westerly, which he needs to be careful about; you don’t want to get a reputation as an into-the-wind bowler at the Basin if you have aspirations towards old age.

Kyle Jamieson has a wonderfully straightforward approach to batting: play well back to anything short of a length, well forward to the rest, and be aggressive except when you really can’t be. He beat Horne to fifty despite coming in 13 overs later. They put on 85 for the seventh wicket. McPeake took three quick wickets to finish the innings at 279.

Wellington had seven overs to bat at the end of the day, always a nervous time, especially for Rachin Ravindra, who had given it away so memorably in these circumstances the week before. Today it was Blundell who did not make it to the close. He misjudged a short one from Jamieson and shovelled a catch to mid on.

The second day began in perfect conditions, with a clear blue sky. A photo of the ground at the start of play was liked and retweeted more than anything else that I have posted. It was one of those timeless days where you could close your eyes to the sound of bat on ball and be at Folkestone in the 70s, Mote Park in the 80s, Bath Rec in the 90s or your favourite ground whenever.

Only one wicket fell all day, that of Ravindra, driving a little loosely at Jamieson to be caught in the gully for 23. Ravindra has to avoid the reputation as a maker of elegant trifles (see Vince J).

For the rest of the day, Conway and Bracewell worked their way towards a third-wicket partnership of 287. Conway is patient, waiting for the ball does not have to be bad, just not quite angelic. Here, scoring square of both sides of the wicket dominated, though there were shots down the ground too, notably the six over long on with which Conway reached his century.

Worst moment of Auckland’s day was just before lunch when Conway fell for the trap that had been set all morning and hit a catch off Jamieson to deep square leg where a routine catch was put down.

Bracewell, who is quite capable of playing aggressively, sensibly played the supporting role here. His century was his first for Wellington in first-class cricket (he made seven for Otago), and helped suppress a growing reputation as a non-converter of fifties.

That Wellington did not run away with the day as it went on was thanks to a sluggish pitch and disciplined bowling. We have not seen one of these, hard-to-get-out-but-hard-to-score-on pitches at the Basin for a while, and let’s hope that we have a long wait for the next one.

Off spinner Will Somerville came on for the 26th over and bowled through until the new ball was taken. He gave Auckland control without looking like taking a wicket (he took two the following day). His admirable performance made me miss Jeetan Patel, who did the same job for the home team for the best part of two decades. Did anybody else feel the same? Probably not. Patel never got the recognition in his home town that that he has in Birmingham, where they hold him in reverence. Wellington have not replaced him. Here, Bracewell—12 wickets in a decade—was Wellington’s lead spinner (though for several overs the scoreboard told us he was Blundell). Younghusband bowled just one over.

The day was enlivened at lunchtime by an outbreak of the Scarborough Festival. A brass band appeared and treated us to a lunchtime concert, though, like the Wellington attack, it knew only one tune (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You). It was to do with the filming of a segment of the New Zealand version of Taskmaster.

Towards the end of the day there was use of experimental law 2.8.4, which states:

If the umpires cannot find any reason to suspend play under this law, they may still do so from time-to-time purely for their own gratification.

The players left the field for 20 minutes because of a problem with the run-up area just behind the crease at the northern end. Compacted sand was said to be the issue. As is usual, the first attempted remedy was that everybody with an official title of some kind went out to the middle and stared very hard at the offending area. When that didn’t work, the groundsman banged a heavy tool on the turf, which might have been thought likely to intensify any compaction problem. But it did the trick and the game continued. At the close, Conway was 149 and Bracewell 123.

I wasn’t there for the final two days. Auckland were set 167 to avoid an innings defeat, which they managed comfortably, Wellington having taken too much time in building the lead, but a side that has lost three in a row may be forgiven for consolidating.

The Plunket Shield disappears for three months now, like the British Raj heading for the hills to avoid the heat of summer. Test cricket returns to the Basin next week, however, and I give thanks that I will be there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Return to Sydney

Australia v New Zealand, third test, Sydney Cricket Ground, 3 – 6 January 2020

Scorecard

I last went to Sydney for a test match 21 years ago. It was the final match in the 1998-9 Ashes, and there was much fine cricket to see: a partnership of 190 by the Waugh brothers; Darren Gough’s hattrick; Michael Slater’s 123 that accounted for a greater proportion of his team’s total than any one batsman since Bannerman at the MCG in the very first; 12 wickets for Stuart MacGill. The history is palpable at the SCG; it is no effort to see Foster bouncing up the pavilion steps after his 287, to sense the anticipation as Bradman came down them, or to hear the sweetness of Trumper’s timing during any of his three Sydney Ashes centuries (or Woolley’s in his two).

First day

It was surprising to hear God Defend New Zealand struck up before play on the first morning when Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe might have more appropriate, given the Groundhog Day experiences of Perth and Melbourne, now to be repeated here at the SCG: Australia make a big score, New Zealand make a small score, Australia set a big target, New Zealand fall well short.

What’s more, the party was now depleted by illness, just as England’s was at the same time in Cape Town. Why are these fit young sportsmen so susceptible to bugs? More quinoa in the diet than the immune system can tolerate, perhaps? At least in Sydney there was no football match to further reduce the numbers, though this may have been only because there were not enough players left standing to make up two sides.

The biggest loss was the captain, Kane Williamson, not in his best form, but always the man most likely to make the substantial innings that New Zealand so badly needed. Henry Nicholls and Mitch Santner had also succumbed, though Santner would probably have been dropped anyway. Trent Boult was also out (though this was injury rather than illness) so the best bowler joined the best batsman on the sidelines.

There was no option but to bring back Jeet Raval, dropped for Melbourne after showing the form of a three-legged racehorse so far this season. The other batting place was filled by debutant Glenn Phillips of Auckland, the form player…in the 50-over competition. Phillips learned of his selection while surfing, and arrived in Sydney at about the same time as I did, the day before the game.

The New Zealand management chose to make one further change, omitting Tim Southee in favour of two spinners and the extra pace of Matt Henry. A comparison between the two teams in this respect would be that of a Ford Anglia to a Ferrari, but Southee had taken 12 wickets in the first two tests. It seemed odd at the time and nothing occurred over the next four days to change that view.

Had Southee played, he would have skippered, but it was Tom Latham who lost the toss to Tim Paine. New Zealand has been good over the years at knowing who the next captain will be and preparing them for the role, and Latham now fills this position. Williamson will, we hope, continue as a player for most of the 2020s, but may grow weary of the captaincy; Latham will be ready.

Paine’s decision to bat on winning the toss was an easy one. The pitch was expected to change as a test pitch should, becoming a spinner’s paradise on the fifth day; how true that was, we will never know.

With Wagner, for reasons that I have not heard explained, allergic to the new ball, it was Colin de Grandhomme who opened the bowling with Matt Henry. There was a certain amount of merriment about this from the Australian commentators, with Sunil Gavaskar being mentioned as a bowler of similar type of opening bowler, but de Grandhomme got Burns with a beauty that pitched on middle and off and moved away, to be caught by Taylor at first slip. Again and again he exceeds expectations. “Which of Henry and De Grandhomme will average under 30 with the ball and which around 50 at the end of the decade?” is a question we would all have got wrong at the outset of their careers.

De Grandhomme was also involved in the second wicket, straight after lunch. It was a legside long hop from Wagner that Warner hit pretty much as he intended only for de Grandhomme to snap it up at leg gully.

Steve Smith joined Marnus Labuschagne. The following half-hour or so was brilliant test cricket. No wickets fell and few runs were scored, but it was gripping. It was all about Steve Smith getting off the mark, which he took longer to do than any Australian for at least 20 years. Geoff Allott made a 77-ball duck against South Africa in 1998, and Godfrey Evans famously batted against type to remain scoreless for 90 minutes at Adelaide in 1946/7, but they weren’t trying to score. Smith was, and it took determined and skilful bowling, and sharp fielding to stop him. The best bit was the contest of pure will between Wagner and Smith. Even when Smith did manage to work one off his hip, a direct hit might have cost Labuschagne his wicket.

Smith continued to 63, with only four boundaries. He looked out-of-form, but he always does to a degree. There can’t be a club medium pacer anywhere who hasn’t seen Smith and thought that they would have him with a full-length ball on middle and leg, but the numbers tell us that is nothing but self-deception. If he were a building he would be of the brutalist school, stripped of all finery and elegance, but solid enough to withstand a nuclear explosion.

At the other end, Labuschagne was manifestly and magnificently in form, reaching his fourth century in seven innings after tea.

From mid-afternoon, New Zealand went more and more onto the defensive. On the radio, Mark Taylor said that Latham had set “a field looking for a bad shot”. In this, he was an authentic stand-in for Williamson, whose captaincy style is increasingly defensive. It was forced upon him by the inability of the spinners to exert pressure. Off-spinner Will Somerville was home; he grew up in Sydney from the age of nine and has moved between Australia and New Zealand as an adult. He had one successful season for New South Wales in 2016/17, taking 35 wickets in the Sheffield Shield. A late developer—he is 35—he is a chartered accountant, but didn’t bowl like one today. Leg-spinner Todd Astle was also wayward. Neither today nor at later stages of the match did Latham trust them enough to bowl them in tandem.

De Grandhomme took the third and last wicket to fall on the first day, getting Smith with a repeat of the Burns dismissal. The third-wicket partnership was worth 156. The day’s most rambunctious batting came from Matthew Wade, who took it to Wagner in the last few overs of the day, and was unafraid to hook and pull, depositing one ball among the members in the pavilion. Australia finished the day on 283 for three.

The comment by Mark Taylor referred to above, I came across on Macquarie Sport’s coverage. Radio rights are not exclusive in Australia, and three different teams provide ball-by-ball commentary on tests, an approach that the ECB should consider. Taylor shares the calling (describing the play) with the competent Bruce Eva, with the wonderful Ian Chappell leading the analysts, who included Geoff Lawson, Glenn McGrath and Ian Smith. Danny Morrison was there too, but nowhere near as irritating as he is on television. This was some of the best cricket broadcasting I have heard for some time, particularly when Taylor, Chappell and Smith were on together. They were very funny too, rich in anecdote and wit (which is not to be confused with banter, the curse of modern sports broadcasting). It was well worth putting up with the ads between overs and the in-commentary promotions (“on the MacDonald’s scoreboard…”). My enjoyment of the cricket was enhanced by having them in my ear telling me what was going on.

Second day

In the western suburbs of Sydney, pavements became frying pans and   and thermometers bulged as temperatures touched the high 40s, but at the SCG it peaked at a more temperate 35 degrees. I took my seat in the Victor Trumper Stand early and spent the hour before play applying sunscreen impasto.

At the start of the day all the talk was about the timing of the declaration, so Australia being bowled out represented progress. That the New Zealand openers survived until the end of the day made it the best day of the series for the tourists, though this is to damn it with faint praise.

Wade went in the first over of the day, attempting to sweep a Somerville delivery that did nothing more than to carry on in a straight line to take off stump.

The biggest partnership of the remainder of the innings was 79 between Labuschagne and Paine for the sixth wicket. Paine became a pantomime villain, dominating the strike as Labuschagne neared 200.  Astle received the custard pie in the face when a DRS referral for his lbw appeal to Paine was discovered not have hit the pad at all.

Labuschagne went on to complete his first test double hundred, reaching 215 before giving Astle a leading-edge return catch. On the first day the bulk of his runs had come square and behind on the legside, but today he became more expansive and attractive, using his feet to the spinners and unleashing drives as handsome as a matinee idol.

His dismissal triggered a mini-collapse, with four wickets falling for 20 runs. The Stakhanov of the South, Neil Wagner, was heavily involved. He bowled Pattinson via his glove, arm and bat and removed Starc’s middle stump to finish the innings at 454, a total that New Zealand would have taken at the start of play with the enthusiasm of Arthur Daley unloading a dodgy motor onto a naïve punter.

But my, we New Zealanders were nervous. As Latham and Blundell went out to bat our expressions were those of an anxious mother dropping off her choirboy sons on their first day at Bash Street Secondary. It was a close-run thing at times, but they survived to the close.

Latham showed yet again that his technique against the new ball is as good as anybody’s. Blundell drew heavily on raw determination and chapters from the Brian Close Book of Rash Bravado. I have seen quite a lot of Blundell for Wellington and have never spotted his potential as a test opener, something I have in common with coaches, commentators, selectors and probably Blundell himself. He made a century on debut, but that was against a tired and lacklustre West Indian attack. Selected as opener on Boxing Day as the last man standing, he made another century of an altogether different order. His unbeaten 34 here was as impressive, against the odds and expectation.

So we left the SCG in good heart, able to cope with the news that the heat had put Sydney’s brand new light rail out of action. Fifty busses were magiced from the air and within the hour I was at dinner, pleased with the day.

Third day

As the temperatures dropped, so did New Zealand’s hopes and self-esteem. The main reason for this was some terrific bowling by Australia, particularly Nathan Lyon, who it was a treat to watch. The pressure exerted by good bowling often results in dismissals to poorer deliveries, but several of the New Zealanders got out in ways that were uncharacteristic, almost as if they were overwhelmed by the place and occasion, as New Zealand cricketers can be in the palaces that the Australians play cricket in. It may be not be chance that New Zealand’s only test win in Australia in the past 35 years came at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, a ground and town that look like they belong more in New Zealand than Australia.

Blundell provided an early illustration of this phenomenon. He was unlucky that the ball found its way between his legs to the stumps, but it was a long hop, a ball that he could usually be relied upon to dispatch.

Raval played much more aggressively than usual, particularly off the back foot, as if he had decided to hit his way back into form. He looked good until on 31 he fell lbw to Lyon, well forward but confirmed by DRS.

Latham, solid as ever this morning, followed in the next over, dollying a catch to a surprised Mitchell Starc at mid on, the only out fielder forward of square on the legside.

At lunch a total of 143 for three appeared satisfactory, but the New Zealand supporters felt on the edge of a precipice, over which we teetered first ball after the interval when Ross Taylor—who had looked in good form to that point—was lbw to Cummins.

It seemed that Latham would win the prize for getting out in a way you would expect him to be the least likely to do, but Watling took it away from him with a loose drive to a ball well wide of off, a shot he does not usually play until the sun has risen twice.

Meanwhile, the debutant Phillips was trying to get out but failing, a kamikaze pilot who kept returning to base. Twice Lyon dropped return chances, the first, which ripped off the bowler’s thumbnail, explaining the second. When he was caught at deep midwicket the replay showed that Cummins had, by a whisker, failed to land any part of his boot behind the front line.

A couple of days before the game nobody would have predicted that either Raval or Phillips would be playing; even more improbable would have been Raval’s scoring rate being significantly higher than Phillips’. But test match cricket can be about character as much as ability and Phillips deserved the fifty he reached after tea because of the way the chances he offered did not diminish his sense of entitlement to be there. He became more fluent as his innings went on and he had the consolation of being out to a top-class delivery from Cummins that moved through the gap between bat and pad to hit the top of off.

Speaking of kamikaze pilots brings us to de Grandhomme, run out attempting a second that nobody apart from him thought was on.

With the tail invertebrate, New Zealand fell three short of saving the follow on. Or so we thought, naively underestimating the ability of cricket’s rules to bend the time-space continuum.

Warner and Burns made it to the close untroubled except by their own running between the wickets, which twice left the latter face down in the dirt like a defeated western dueller.

I made my way to the Guylian Belgian Chocolate Café for a medicinal dessert with views of the Bridge and the Opera House. If your team has to lose badly, Sydney is the place for it.

Fourth day

Inspired by Burns’ two close calls yesterday, New Zealand adopted a strategy of bowling for run outs. Warner and Burns batted with considerable urgency, adding 54 in the first ten overs.

No contemporary cricketer irritates opposing fans more than David Warner. Australia’s answer to Jeffrey Archer, he has bounced back from shame and humiliation, hubris and ego undiminished. But what a batsman he is. In the opening overs he played two shots that were as good as any in the match, the first a cover drive threaded between a straight extra cover and a wide mid off, the second a cut that scorched the grass in the split second it apparently took to reach the boundary. He weights his shot impeccably, enabling twos to be taken where others would only get singles.

The inevitable hundred came in 147 deliveries. I had promised myself that I would discover an urgent need to leave the stand as the moment approached so as to miss the vulgar extravagance of his celebration. But I stood and applauded with the rest of the crowd, compelled by the excellence of the performance.

Astle got Burns lbw from a googly via the DRS. That brought in Labuschagne who ghosted his way to fifty unnoticed, as the best can. He needed 69 to break Hammond’s 90-year record for a five-test season’s aggregate. This is stretching it a bit as Hammond made 903 in one Ashes series whereas Labuschange’s runs have been made over two series, but it would have been something to have been there and I was sorry that he fell ten short.

There was some distraction late in the innings as Aleem Dar became agitated about the batsmen running on forbidden parts of the pitch, like a father protecting a daughter’s honour. A warning was followed summarily by the imposition of a five-run penalty. Dar would have preferred to have had a shotgun with which he could have forced Labuschagne to marry the pitch to protect its reputation.

At first nobody knew whether the five runs were to be added or deducted, or to or from what. It emerged that New Zealand’s first innings gained five runs, so for the first time in the series New Zealand had saved the follow on! What a time to be alive!

The declaration came with Labuschagne’s dismissal, leaving New Zealand a notional target of 416, or to bat for four-and-a-half sessions. But willing either of these outcomes would be like going to Romeo and Juliet in the hope of seeing a wedding in the final scene. Instead, everybody knew that the ending would be painful. It was less spectating and more being at the bedside as the patient slipped away.

At 22 for four, passing New Zealand’s 65-year-old record low of 26 could not be taken for granted. Ross Taylor played some bold shots down the ground that took him past Stephen Fleming’s 7,172 to become New Zealand’s biggest scorer in tests. I first came across him almost two decades ago as a 16-year-old playing for the New Zealand Under 19s. No question about the talent, but he had and has the mental strength to go with it, and to carry on a while longer, apparently, keeping the record warm for Kane Williamson.

De Grandhomme and Watling put on 69 in their contrasting styles to show that the pitch was not necessarily as toxic as the top order had made it appear. In the batsmen’s defence more dismissals than in the first innings were down to quality deliveries, notably Cummins’ dismissal of Taylor. James Pattinson’s catch to dismiss Astle, sprinting 30 metres then a full-length dive, was the catch of this series and plenty of others.

Last time I watched a test at the SCG Stuart MacGill took 12 wickets; this time, Nathan Lyon had ten, a supreme display of spin bowling on a pitch that gave him no more than moderate help.

Final thoughts

Australia, once more, has a very fine cricket team. Warner and Smith have returned and Labuschagne has emerged, giving them three batsmen performing at world class. The pace attack contends with India’s as the best around, and Lyon is brilliant. Australia would have beaten any and all opponents over Christmas and the New Year (though the visit of India next season will be interesting).

Nevertheless, New Zealand’s performance in this series was hugely disappointing. Not just beaten three-nil, but beaten by such wide margins with such little fight, the second and third tests carbon copies of the first.

New Zealand began the series as the second-ranked test team. At least four of the team would be strong contenders for an All-Time New Zealand XI. We all knew that it would be difficult, but hoped for a performance that would erode our historical inferiority complex in trans-Tasman cricket, not augment it.

That all three tests finished in four days was awkward, at a time when the barbarians are at the gate, shouting for that to be the standard duration. It is difficult to explain that a test that finishes in four days might have had a different outcome if scheduled for four rather than five. New Zealand might have saved this game and perhaps one of the others had survival over four days been possible; the chasm between the two teams might have been disguised, which would have been wrong.

A strong performance might have brought New Zealand in from the fringes of international cricket, the country cousin surviving on the oxymoron of two-test series.

The strong turnout of New Zealanders means that we probably won’t have to wait another 32 years for an invitation to the Boxing Day/New Year party, assuming that it remains possible to play cricket in Australia at that time of year, something can’t be assumed given the sight of the Harbour Bridge shrouded in smoke haze on the day I departed.