The Plunket Shield Returns: Declarations and Dropped Catches

Wellington v Northern Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 21 ­– 24 March 2019

Scorecard

New Zealand’s domestic first-class season resumes at last. The first half was so long ago that I have a half-formed memory of Bert Sutcliffe and Dick Motz having played in it. With four of the eight games to go, Wellington are in fourth place, six points and two places behind visitors Northern Districts.

I wasn’t there for the first day, at the end of which Wellington were 367 for five. The pitch was, apparently, rain-forest green at the start but did little more than carry through at a perfect pace for the batsmen. Rachin Ravindra, on his first appearance in first-class cricket at the Basin, made 96 and Devon Conway was 146 not out overnight. Conway has now made 200 more runs than anybody else in the Plunket Shield this season, having been the leading run scorer in the domestic T20. From South Africa, Conway will qualify for New Zealand in 2020, and looks a shoe-in in all forms as things stand.

Earlier in the week, a three-day deluge had been forecast, so it was good to see the players taking the field as I arrived at the Basin at the scheduled start time. But it was only as I took my seat that I registered the presence of umpire Brent “Billy” Bowden, already well advanced in his rain-divination ritual. Sure enough, microscopic water droplets were coaxed out of the air, and the players were off the field before a ball had been bowled.

It did get a bit heavier, but only briefly, and hardly sufficient, it seemed to make much of a difference to the state of the outfield. Nevertheless, it was determined that play could not start until a hot-air blower had circled the ground a few times, and at some speed. This is the twenty-first century’s version of a rope being dragged around the ground, but less effective, one would have thought.

With Bowden satisfied that the outfield had been returned to as near a desert state as was possible in the circumstances, play began. But not for long. In the sixth over of the day Logan van Beek slapped a straight four that disappeared under the sightscreen. First one player disappeared behind the screen to retrieve the ball. Then another. Then another. Five players there in the end. They emerged in the manner of schoolboys from behind the bike sheds, but the ball was found—in a drainage channel, so it was soaking wet. Umpire Bowden retreated, at stately gait, to the dressing rooms, returning with a replacement. This was deemed unsuitable, so he repeated the excursion, this whole proceeding taking place at a speed that would have shamed a funeral. The next ball was bowled more than ten minutes after the last.

In between the interruptions, Conway completed his 150 and van Beek his 50. With maximum bonus points harvested, Wellington declared at 400, earlier than would usually have been the case because of the foreboding weather forecast.

Northern Districts captain Daniel Flynn inside edged to uproot his leg stump from Hamish Bennett’s second delivery, but that was only wicket for the rest of the truncated day. Cooper should have been a second, but was dropped by keeper Blundell, diving across Patel at first slip. There was some criticism from the cognoscenti about Blundell having taken the catch away from Patel, but the man with the gloves should always go for anything catchable. His mistake was not that he went for it, but that he dropped it, and it was to have critical consequences towards the end of the game.

Northern Districts were 78 for one at lunch, but the rain returned, diffidently but enough to finish play for the day, bar one brief return during which three were added to the total. So it was an afternoon of hanging about at the cricket waiting for something to happen, which is never disagreeable as long as I have a book and a coffee.

When we got to the ground for the third day, the scoreboard showed the Wellington were nought for nought, so, assuming that the North Koreans had retaken control of the information channels, we joked that ND must have declared. They had, 319 behind on first innings. I have seen many a declaration deal that was a consequence of the weather, but can’t recall one predicated on the forecast of rain, rather than actual wetness. The assumption, entirely correct as it turned out, was that there would be no fourth day. Nobody likes these negotiated finishes, but there are occasions when it is for the best and this was one of them.

Obviously, Wellington would score as many as needed to reach an agreed target, but this passage of play was different to what would normally be expected in this situation. The Northern Districts opening bowlers, Kuggeleijn and Baker, bowled with hostility at full pace, with plenty of short stuff. The Wellington batsmen sliced and swished, the runs coming rapidly as a result. No cognisance was taken of this in terms of the field settings or the approach of the bowlers. It was as if two games were taking place at the same time, each politely ignoring the other.

Wellington reached 53 for two in six overs in this manner before the declaration, leaving Northern Districts a target of 373 with 88 overs scheduled. However, this was the third, not the fourth, day, so the possibility of an extra eight overs if a result could be achieved had to be factored in. This would reduce the required scoring rate to under four an over, possibly generous on a pitch as friendly to batsmen as a labrador to a butcher.

Flynn went early and softly, guiding a legside delivery into the hands of Blundell. Seifert was dropped early at third slip by Nofal off the bowling of Newton, high to the left-handed fielder’s right. That chance apart, Seifert and Cooper reached lunch progressing at the required four an over and looking easy about it. Already the second gully and third slip had been relocated to more defensive positions.

Hamish Bennett began his second spell after the interval and a menacing line on off stump dismissed both batsmen to slip catches. At any other point in New Zealand’s cricket history, Bennett would be in or near the national team, but such is the depth of pace bowling here that he isn’t mentioned.

At the other end, Jeetan Patel called the batsmen to him and attached a leash to their collars, conceding just 17 from his first 12 overs. Dean Brownlie hit a series of attractive cover boundaries at the other end, but it may have been Patel’s control that induced him to play loosely at McPeake to be caught at third slip by Nofal.

Daryl Mitchell (to repeat, not the Worcestershire version) slipped Patel’s leash and went for a run in the park by hitting a six onto the top deck of the RA Vance Stand, happily missing the only spectator in any of its thousand or so seats at the time—your writer—by some way. His liberty was temporary as Bennett had him leg before, playing across a full delivery from Bennett.

Carter gave Patel his only wicket of the innings with a caught and bowled to leave Northern on 236 for six, but not out of it as long as BJ Watling remained out there, at the scene of his two world-record test partnerships. There is no cricketer in the world whose excellence goes so unrecognised. He keeps wicket as well as any of the regular test keepers, if, as it seems we have to, we regretfully exclude Ben Foakes from that category. Williamson and Taylor apart, he is as good an orthodox batsman as New Zealand has. It is generally a surprise to look at the scoreboard to find how many runs he has, usually 20 or so more than you realise, made by playing appropriate shots with no fuss at all. He made 77 in this manner today, looking the best batsman in the side by a street. Only when he was seventh out at 258 did Northern’s aspirations for victory disappear. Kuggeleijn was bowled by Newton, leaving no doubt that the umpires would agree to the extra eight to settle it.

Just before the extra overs began there occurred the first of two fielding errors that decided it. Blundell—still with that failed dive across first slip in his head—did not go for a chance that passed him at a nice height before continuing past first slip well to Patel’s left. Earlier he failed to collect a Patel delivery that beat Watling. It was unclear from the long room where Watling’s back foot was, but it was certainly close enough for the bails to have been removed to test the case.

It was little over a year ago that Blundell played a couple of tests when Watling was injured, scoring a century on debut. Now he looks like a keeper whose confidence has gone.

From the first ball of the extra overs Baker was caught at first slip to give Bennett his fifth wicket. Twenty-one-year-old Zak Gibson joined Ish Sodhi with seven overs and five balls to see out for the draw, if the weather forecast was correct. Gibson looked a capable No 11 and Sodhi made no attempt to protect him from the strike. Given some of Sodhi’s shot selections, it might have been an idea for Gibson to have protected him.

With nine down and safety just a few overs away, hooking Newton was unwise. Sodhi got under it and the ball flew towards long leg where Bennett awaited. He had to move in a little way, but did so quickly, too quickly perhaps, as he now had a second or so to ponder the context, to make a list of all the ways in which it could go wrong.

It went straight through his hands.

There were a few close things and near misses, but Sodhi and Gibson survived the remaining overs. Players and spectators were all confused about how to react at the end of the day. Had Northern saved the game? It all depended on the weather.

Bennett—without whose splendid bowling Wellington would not have got remotely as close to winning the game—looked mortified. Had it been the real last day he could at least have put it behind him straight away. But he had to return the following day to watch the rain in the hope that there would be redemption. One over might have been all it needed.

I didn’t go down to the Basin on the last day (it might have been worth it to watch Billy Bowden’s all-day portrayal of torment, a fine substitute, I am sure, for those of us who missed Olivier’s Othello), but kept an eye on the weather just in case. Apparently, they came close to starting after tea, but another squall came in and that was that.

A win would have put Wellington up to third, just nine points behind new leaders Auckland. As it is, they are fifth of six with three to play.

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.

Three days at the Plunket Shield

Wellington v Central Districts, Basin Reserve, 17 – 20 March 2018

Over the two weekends before I went down to Christchurch for the test match, I was able to watch three days of Plunket Shield cricket, New Zealand’s equivalent of the County Championship. They turned out to be decisive in deciding the winner of this season’s competition.

Like first-class competitions the world over, the Plunket Shield is the discarded novel of the cricket calendar. Put down at the end of the November, it is picked up again at the beginning of March, without anybody having any clear memory of the plot or the characters.

I was at the Basin for the first of two days of the game between Wellington and Central Districts in the eighth of the competition’s ten rounds It began with Wellington leading the table with Central second, so a home win would be a large step to Wellington’s first title since 2004.

I have preached before about the necessity of getting to the cricket on time. This is doubly the case for cricket at the Basin where the pitch awakes vigorously with the dawn chorus before settling down by lunchtime for a four-day snooze. Returning readers may recall that earlier this season, Auckland were 12 for seven early in the piece and that Wellington were 246 without loss by the end of the day.

Central put Wellington in. Adam Milne, once more of Kent, opened the bowling to Michael Papps:

·        1^st ball—edged between third slip and gully for four.

·        2^nd ball—diving catch in the gully. Steven Murdoch is in.

·        3^rd ball—edged to second slip, keeper caught the rebound, Murdoch is out. Four for two.

Luke Woodcock and Michael Bracewell survived the rest of a testing opening spell from Milne, resolutely leaving on length, even with the ball almost brushing the bails. Jesse Ryder was the surprise choice to replace Milne. Kent people who have seen Ryder regularly run through the county’s order would spot the danger here, but Bracewell did not and lashed out at the first ball, well wide of off stump, to be caught behind. He was a soldier who survived battle but who then succumbed to a dodgy prawn sandwich on the way home.

New Zealand is as replete with young South Africans as English cricket is. Two were important here. Willem Ludick was on first-class debut. The final day of this game was his 21^st birthday. He is well on the brisk side of medium and took two wickets as Wellington were reduced to 99 for five by early afternoon.

This brought in Malcolm Nofal, a 26-year-old left-hander from Johannesburg, on first-class debut for Wellington having played a handful of games for Gauteng, the last four years ago.

He joined Luke Woodcock. Has anybody ever seen Woodcock and Darren Stevens in the same room? Both are balding and tending to the portly, yet perform rescue operations of Tracy brothers proportions as a matter of routine. In the morning, Woodcock was a fortress, holding ground that others were conceding. In the afternoon he began to make forays into opposition territory and by the evening was advancing on all fronts.

Woodcock and Nofal put on 247 for the sixth wicket before Woodcock went for 147 near the end of the day. I made a note that it was a long time since I had seen so many cross-bat shots in one day, a measure of the predictability of the Basin pitch, and how the Central attack flagged. 226 of Wellington’s 365 for six for the day came after the halfway point.

Nofal continued to bash away on the second morning, with enthusiastic assistance from Nos 8, 9 and 10—Patel, Newton and McPeake respectively—who bludgeoned 119 between them. Wellington were all out for 530. Nofal was eighth out for 175, which, as we will see, left the Wellington selectors less impressed than might have been thought.

Nineteen-year-old slow-left-armer debutant Felix Murray had begun with ten from his first nine overs while Wellington were still in defensive mode, but conceded 79 from his remaining nine. Murray had stepped into the shoes of Ajaz Patel (who had been called up for the test warm-up in Hamilton), or possibly into Patel’s shirt and trousers, both of which appeared to be three or four sizes too big for him.

Ben Smith fell early in the Central reply, lbw with bat raised. It looked a bowler’s decision, but as Arthur Jepson used to say “there’s a reason tha’s got a bat in thy ‘and”.

The highlight of the rest of the day was Jesse Ryder’s 69 from 85 balls, with two sixes. I wonder how much longer he’ll stick around. He is good enough to carry on making runs for another ten years, but can he be bothered with everything that goes with it? Watching him bat has been one of this season’s greatest pleasures.

Central were 226 for three when my two days at the game ended. Unlike Wellington, nobody kicked on to a century and they were 107 behind on first innings. They made no attempt on the target of 372, focusing instead on stopping Wellington for collecting the 12 points for a win, which they achieved with just two wickets to spare. With two rounds to go, Wellington now led Central by eight points.

One other unfortunate curiosity to emerge from the second day was that, though there were no more than 100 watching the game, one of them was ejected for bad behaviour, trespassed no less, with police officers called. Is this the smallest crowd to have one of its number expelled? I suppose we should be grateful that the Plunket Shield still evokes such passion.

Wellington v Northern Districts, Basin Reserve, 25 – 28 March 2018

A week later I was back at the Basin for the first day of round nine. Northern Districts were the visitors. Tom Blundell returned from New Zealand A duty and Wellington chose to go in with an extra bowler, Alex Ridley. So Wellington’s seventh-wicket partnership was Newton and Ridley. There’s a Rovers Return joke in there somewhere.

The selection meant that Malcolm Nofal’s 175 was not enough to keep him in the side. Wellington’s scorer Ian Smith (no relation to the keeper-commentator of the same name) was prompted to recall that as a boy he had seen Dickie Bird’s famous 181 not out for Yorkshire against Glamorgan at Bradford, after which Bird was dropped as we have heard so often since.  

The spirit of HD Bird was certainly with us today. Twenty-five minutes in, Wellington, put in by Northern, were 15 without loss. It was as uneventful an opening half-hour as we have seen at the Basin for a long time, the pitch offering none of its customary early-morning spite. Then Anton Devcich slipped on the opposite edge of the square to the pitch and it was all on. Umpires Dempsey and Gillies stood over the damp patch with the solemnity of statesmen dividing a small country. The players were sent back to the rooms while deliberations continued.  Dempsey has recent form in the cricket-prevention stakes. He was officiating at Rangiora the week before, when the game was abandoned on the second day because of a pitch so dangerous that Canterbury had scored no more than 485 for six declared a few hours before.

Umpires and groundstaff stood around the quagmire doing nothing that might affect the situation beyond blocking out the sun. Nevertheless, twenty minutes of this did the trick and play resumed. Cricket, eh?

Michael Papps followed one down the legside to be caught behind, but otherwise Wellington proceeded to 90 for one shortly before lunch with no reason to think that the pitch wouldn’t offer up the easy runs that are the norm on the first afternoon at the Basin.

We were unprepared for Ish Sodhi destroying Wellington’s season in a couple of hours. In my view Sodhi should not have been in Wellington; his proper place was in the test team in Auckland rather than Todd Astle, who is a fair leg-spinner, but who could not have treated us to the masterly display of the art that Sodhi offered us here. Bowling unchanged from the southern end, he took seven for 30 from 15.3 overs.

Sodhi didn’t just get the Wellington batsmen out; he made them look hapless and clueless, children bewildered by a magician at a birthday party. He was magnificent. The last nine wickets added only 47.

By the end of the day Northern were 168 for four. Corey Anderson made 61 of these from 65 balls with three sixes. He is a wonderfully clean striker of a cricket ball, and if Somerset can lay their hands on sufficient cotton wool to wrap his fragile physique in between games he will be a real asset in the T20.

I wasn’t there on the second day, which was all Northern needed to wrap it up. Jeetan Patel took five, but Northern still had a lead of 186, which Wellington couldn’t match second time round. Sodhi took five more. Meanwhile in Napier, Central were beating Canterbury by an innings to takeover at the top of the table. Wellington were beaten in the last round, so a draw was enough to secure the Plunket Shield for Central Districts.

Those two hours of magic from Ish Sodhi had cost Wellington the prize. I saw Sodhi play again later that week, in the test at Christchurch. I thought that Kane Williamson might have given him longer spells. His match-saving 56 not out should ensure that his batting will no longer be a negative factor at selectors’ meetings.

As we in New Zealand embark on our annual endeavour to winter well, we hand the responsibility of serious cricket watching over to our friends in the north.