Wellington v Central Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 7 – 10 November 2013

The holidays are here at last, providing the opportunity to catch up with unfinished business. Here’s an account of the final two days of a Plunket Shield game earlier this season.

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/576/576393.html

The southerly was back at the Basin like a secret policeman enforcing a ban on summer, and kept me away until lunch on Saturday, the third day. In my absence the Wellington batting had collapsed from 149 for two overnight to 217 for eight, 72 behind Central Districts’ 289.

But a fightback was underway, and I took my seat just after the ninth-wicket partnership of Jeetan Patel and Andy McKay passed 50. Patel hit ten fours in his 76-ball 62; he is back to his best batting form this season, aggressive but rationally so. McKay has always looked better than his perennial last-man status would suggest. Even so, 35 against his name on the scoreboard can turn a tailender’s head and have him believing in false deities like the God of Knowing Where Your Off Stump Is. So it was with McKay, who made the usual sign of veneration—lifting his bat high above his head—and had his off stump removed by Doug Bracewell. Even so, the ninth-wicket partnership of 76 gave Wellington a two-run first-innings lead.

It is unusual these days for neither side to pass 300 in the first innings at the run-happy Basin, so I was keen to work out why. By the end of the afternoon I was none the wiser but able to state with some certainty what the reason was not. Wellington’s strategy at the start of Central Districts’ second innings consisted completely of short-pitched bowling, unusually with both the boundary fielders behind square on the legside fine of 45 degrees. This was spectacularly unsuccessful. After 15 overs Central Districts were 68 without loss, and the men in the deep might as well have kept their hands in their pockets so undeployed were they.

When Brent Arnel pitched the ball up he was immediately rewarded by trapping Jamie How leg before. Thereafter, Wellington concentrated on containment and waited for the declaration. Ben Smith scored a competent maiden hundred, Arnel took four wickets and Patel was the pick of the bowlers, conceding just 51 from 28 overs.

The declaration came at lunch on Sunday and, left Wellington 310 to win in a minimum of 64 overs, which seemed just on the generous side of about right. It would have been less munificent had Jesse Ryder still been a Wellington player. Josh Brodie was run out after a mix up and Michael Papps was bowled by Bracewell, but the afternoon was one that will make members of the Central Districts team wake screaming in the night years hence.

It was as inept a defence of a target in a run chase as I have seen in many a day. For a start Doug Bracewell, leader of the Central Districts attack, was terrible. Some have expressed surprise that Bracewell is not in the international team at the moment; they wouldn’t if they had seen him bowl that day. His line and length were all over the place, and he gave the batsmen far too many safe scoring opportunities. And dear God, the no-balls. Ten of them in 17 overs.

Tarun Nethula was even worse in this respect, bowling eight no-balls in 11 overs, from which he conceded 74 runs. And he’s a leg spinner! Murdoch was bowled by one of the illegal deliveries. Given that Wellington reached their target with just three overs to spare, the no-balls alone were decisive. That very morning I had heard Craig Cumming, a sound judge, touting Nethula for selection for the Test team. Again, nobody at the Basin for the fourth day would have selected him for anything.

The captaincy of Kieran Noema-Barnett was also odd. Early in the innings pacey Andrew Mathieson had caused some problems for the Wellington batsmen and had forced Stephen Murdoch to retire hurt on 30 with an egg-sized swelling below his eye. Yet Mathieson was kept out of the attack as Pollard, Franklin and Woodcock scored at liberty off Bracewell and Nethula. When a change was made it was Weston-super-Mare’s finest, Peter Trego, who was brought on to bowl a few overs of assorted nonsense, mostly down the legside, that did nothing to staunch the flow.

When Mathieson finally returned—into the wind, mark you— he removed both Franklin and Colson, but it was just too late to make a difference. Also, despite an economical early spell, left-arm medium-fast bowler Ben Wheeler was left in the outfield for most Wellington innings, being brought back with only 15 needed.

Noema-Barnett’s handling of his attack was unimaginative and inflexible. His field placing was no better. With fewer than 30 needed there were no close catchers for Woodcock even though by that stage there was no question of Central Districts being able to restrict Wellington in the time remaining. Jeetan Patel was aggressive and, despite numerous edges and lbw appeals, along with Woodcock he took Wellington home.

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Karori Park, 20 – 23 December 2013

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/576/576404.html

There were three games of cricket played on Karori Park last Saturday morning. Two, both between teams of eleven year olds, were attended by enthusiastic crowds of twenty or so. Half-an-hour into play your correspondent constituted a third of the crowd at the other match, a game of first-class cricket between the historic provinces of Wellington and Canterbury, a fixture contested regularly for 140 years or so, now ignored in the corner of a public park.

For unknown reasons the Basin Reserve was unavailable, so to Wellington’s western suburbs we came. In the afternoon a match was played on the adjoining block between two men’s teams, the boundaries within five metres or so of overlapping. This was not the only new experience to add to my lifetime of cricket watching; the bails were dispensed with for the first half of the second day, which did nothing to disperse the aura of rusticity that enveloped the game. It was certainly blustery, but no more so than on any number of days during the average summer in Wellington. Let us hope that the Wellington Cricket Association found two sets of lignite bails in its Christmas stocking.

For all this, I enjoyed my two days at Karori Park hugely and came to the view that it is a better venue for Plunket Shield cricket than the Basin. It is attractive, with hills on two sides of the park, big ones to the west. I was put in mind of the Pen-y-Pound ground in Abergavenny, which is overlooked by Sugar Loaf Mountain (which is merely a big hill—the Welsh are a small race, unduly impressed by elevation).  There is a good café with top-class coffee on the boundary’s edge and, on Sunday at least, the cricket was the centre of attention, not a brief diversion for pedestrians and cyclists passing through.

And there is excellent trudging, the best I have encountered at a cricket ground. It is to trudging around cricket grounds that my Blean correspondent and myself attribute our fine athletic figures. There is a 1 km path around the edge of the park and another track leading off it that takes you up onto the hill to the north of the ground with the oval still in view.

Canterbury’s Tom Latham had batted through the first day to be 137 not out when I turned up for the start of the second day. He was still there on 241 when Canterbury declared at 471 for eight. This was the second-highest individual score I have ever seen, and a deal more entertaining than the agonisingly dull 275 that Daryll Cullinan subjected us to on Eden Park’s glued pitch in 1999.  

Latham’s innings was most impressive, particularly for one who came to attention as a short-form dasher. He was disciplined and displayed excellent shot selection. He gave just one chance on the second day, pulling hard to square leg off McKay. With nether Hamish Rutherford nor (especially) Peter Fulton making the Test opening positions their own, Latham must be close to preferment; the next cab off the rank certainly.

Wellington had to make 222 to avoid the follow-on. They raced away with 35 from the first seven overs, when it started to go awfully wrong. Stephen Murdoch was first to go, caught at second slip by Brownlie off Hamish Bennett. Grant Elliott followed in the same over, lbw not getting forward. Papps was caught behind off Logan van Beek in the next over. Pollard was bowled offering no shot to van Beek and when Woodcock went the same way as Murdoch, Wellington had lost five for 19 in six overs.

Luke Ronchi counter-attacked to the tune of 20 in 19 balls, an approach that was too risky in the circumstances. Ronchi has not made much of an impact in the New Zealand ODI team; BJ Watling would seem a more dependable option. Here, he was out with 138 still needed to avoid the follow-on and only four wickets left.

Marshalled by James Franklin, the tail became the Maquis to the top order’s retreating French army. Jeetan Patel made 40 in 102 minutes before being caught at backward point by Latham off Ellis from the last ball of the second day.

Andy McKay occupied the first half-hour of day three before giving way to Mark Gillespie, who batted with his normal pugnacious aggression but for rather longer than usual, reaching 78 from 77 balls. He fell 21 short of the follow-on target, leaving Brent Arnel to support Franklin.

This was the most gripping cricket of the two days I watched. If Wellington could scramble past the target their chances of saving the game would be greatly enhanced, with a slim chance of being offered a target on the last afternoon. But my, it was perplexing. One might think that with one wicket left to take, all out attack at both ends would be the ticket. This is not the modern way. Fielders—eight at one point— retreated en masse to the boundary when Franklin was on strike. As curiously, Franklin turned down the singles on offer even though Arnel showed himself capable of obdurate defence. The standoff continued for some time before Franklin settled matters with a couple of big strikes, one of which rattled the roof of one of the neighbouring houses. Franklin also brought up his century, a clever, careful innings that showed how much he has come on as a batsman.

That pretty well finished the match as a contest. Canterbury batted for almost three sessions without ever quite reaching the heady heights of three an over. The target of 395 in around 50 overs was no more than notional, and Murdoch’s 122-ball 17 (which I am relieved not to have seen) may have been way of protest. If so, it was misplaced. No team has a right to have a gettable target set in the fourth innings. The only way of ensuring that is to take 20 wickets.

So why did Canterbury not make a contest of it? A look at the Plunket Shield table provides the answer. Canterbury lead Wellington by 12 points, the very number available for a win. Why risk that lead against team that has demonstrated proficiency in chasing large targets this season? Against Central Districts 310 was achieved with time to spare, while in the earlier fixture against Canterbury they fell short of a target of 470 by only 11.

Also, the pitch remained as flat as Holland. The propensity for outgrounds to offer randomness as the game goes on has largely disappeared, which is a shame as entertaining cricket was often the consequence. As well as making the pitch worse, those in charge of Karori Park should improve the outfield which was funereally slow. This apart, watching first-class cricket there was thoroughly pleasant and I look forward to returning when Wellington play Northern Districts in February.