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.  

New Zealand v Sri Lanka, First Test, Basin Reserve, 15 ­­– 19 December 2018

New Zealand v Sri Lanka, First Test, Basin Reserve, 15 ­­– 19 December 2018

Scorecard

Sri Lanka are here for a two-test “series” (two tests do not a series make) followed by three ODIs and a T20. I was at the Basin for the first two days of the first test.

The two teams start this tour having recently been on different ends of the pleasing recent trend of away teams winning test series. Sri Lanka received a 3­–0 drubbing at England’s hands, while New Zealand beat Pakistan 2­–1 in the UAE.

Play in the latter series began at 7pm New Zealand time, so I was able to watch quite a bit of it. The climax of the first test measured Headingley ’81 on the nerve-wrackingometer. It is common these days to measure the progress of tests in terms of which side has “won” each session. Pakistan had dominated on this count. Not many tests have been won by a side that has appeared doomed to defeat for so much of the game. Needing 175 for victory, Pakistan appeared to be sailing home at 130 for three, then 154 for five when a collective failure of nerve occurred against some fine bowling by slow left-armer Ajaz Patel, on debut after taking plenty of wickets over several seasons in domestic cricket. He was well-supported by Neil Wagner’s usual huff-puff-and-blow-your-house-down bowling.

As well as being unbearably tense, the final overs were also very strange. No 3 batsman Azhar Ali turned down considerably more easy singles than Pakistan lost by, even though Mohammad Abbas is a long way off the worst No 11 around. New Zealand continued to offer these up even as the target got into single figures, each team apparently trying to keep the other in the contest. The absurdity of this approach was underlined by the fact that it was Azhar Ali who finally fell, lbw to Patel, the wait for the DRS decision a child’s on Christmas Eve.

Pakistan won the second test by an innings and took a first-innings lead of 74 in the third match. With New Zealand 60 for four in the second innings, it seemed that home-team suzerainty would inevitably impose itself. A magnificent innings from a great player, Kane Williamson, changed the game and the series, with admirable support from Henry Nicholls. Before their fifth-wicket partnership of 212, the previous ten wickets had gone for 120; Pakistan were bowled out for 156 next day, so these were not easy runs. Williamson’s declaration, setting Pakistan 280 in five hours, was out of Brendon McCullum’s Attacking Captaincy textbook. A couple of early wickets shook Pakistan’s confidence: five down by lunchtime, all out by tea.

It was only the second series defeat Pakistan had suffered in the UAE since it became their home base in 2010. A 2­–0 win in the home series here would send New Zealand to an unprecedented second place in the test rankings.

Those of us present the last time Sri Lanka played a test at the Basin hoped for a contest to equal that one, a magnificent match with double centuries from two of the greats, Sangakkara and Williamson, a world-record partnership (Williamson and Watling) and a fifth-afternoon finish. Of the teams four years ago, Latham, Williamson, Taylor, Watling, Southee and Boult survive for New Zealand, Karunaratne, Mathews, Chandimal and Lakmal for Sri Lanka.

The Basin pitch usually behaves like a small child on Christmas morning, opening all its presents early, to become bored by mid-afternoon, so it is customary to put the opposition in on winning the toss, as Kane Williamson did here.

Sure enough, within four overs the gift wrapping had been torn off three wickets, all to Tim Southee. However, it was movement through the air rather than off the pitch that was responsible. First, Gunathilaka played around one that swung in late to be leg-before. DM de Silva got a thin edge to a ball that swung away, then Mendis hit lazily to give Patel, the only fielder in front of square on the legside, an easy catch.

At this point it seemed likely that Sri Lanka, morale low after their home defeat, would fold, but throughout the series they showed resilience. Karunaratne and Mathews put on 133 for the fourth wicket, their survival improbable at times, notably when Karunaratne clipped De Grandhomme to mid-wicket, only for the replay to reveal a no-ball. The edge of the bat either avoided the ball or directed it wide, short or high of fielders. Karunaratne started to play some attractive straight drives and both batsmen took on the short ball.

Inevitably, it was Wagner who led the bouncer barrage. As usual, he was not introduced into the attack until De Grandhomme had had a few overs. The theory is that he doesn’t get anything from the new ball, which, like most things about Wagner’s bowling, defies common sense. It may be more about keeping a hungry dog angry by denying it red meat for longer. The batsmen won the early skirmishes, but Wagner broke the partnership when Karunaratne gloved an attempted hook to Watling.

The weapon of choice continued to be the short ball for the rest of the day. The pitch provided bounce, which isn’t the same thing as pace. It worked for New Zealand, with three more batsman falling to short stuff during the evening session.

Wicketkeeper Dickwella played as well as anyone whatever the length of the delivery, intelligently mixing the orthodox and the unconventional. The sweep/glance/scoop that sent a Southee full-length ball to the fine-leg boundary was the shot of the day, as beautiful in its own way as a Gower cover drive.

Trent Boult’s first wicket came from the last ball of the first day, Rajitha caught behind. Southee had five by this stage and had pushed ahead of Boult in their contest to have taken most test wickets. By the end of the series, both were in the 230s with Southee retaining a four-wicket lead. Southee bowled superbly, but Boult’s performance might have been enough for a five-for on another day.

Dickwella resumed on the second morning on 73 and in the same vein, scooping Boult to the fine-third-man boundary, but any ambition that he might have had regarding a century was thwarted by Kumara, a No 11 possessed of the fatal combination of self-belief and concrete boots. He deftly glanced straight to leg slip to give Southee his sixth wicket and to leave Sri Lanka all out for 282.

The general feeling was that this was inadequate, but by how much? It could have been a good deal fewer had the ball found the edge more often on the first morning. Only four of the Sri Lankans had reached double figures, but three of them had gone on to 79, 80 not out and 83.

Latham and Raval looked very comfortable in the early overs of New Zealand’s innings, the Sri Lankan attack mundane, but getting little help from an increasingly sleepy pitch. Raval looked especially fluent through the offside, as confident as he was when he looked a class above everybody else in making a century for Auckland at the Basin earlier in the season. He needs a big score in a test sometime soon, having made seven 50s but no 100s from 16 tests to date, and this looked a good opportunity. But hooking at the last ball before lunch, he toe-ended a catch to Dickwella to be out for 43.

No cricket lover should miss any opportunity to watch Kane Williamson bat. It doesn’t much matter in which form of the game as his approach barely changes. His century in the ODI on a dodgy pitch at the Cake Tin was the best batting I watched in 2018. Here he resumed where he left off in the UAE a week before, as if he had paused for a drink rather than flying 14,000 km. Two rasping offside fours off the back foot off the second and third balls that he received made it clear that playing himself in was superfluous. Without showing the least sign of urgency or risk he made 91 at a run a ball, a big century looking as certain as Christmas.

For want of a better idea, Chandimal turned to Dhananjaya de Silva, whose soothing off spin had brought him seven wickets in 20 tests at an average of over 70. Possibly salivating a little, Williamson swept the second ball de Silva bowled him straight to backward square leg, where Rajitha took an easy catch. Wiliamson returned the rooms bearing the demeanour of a politician who has thrown away a 20-year career with a one-night dalliance in a seaside hotel.

Tom Latham ended the day on 121, having reached his century with overthrows, just like Alastair Cook at the Oval a few months ago. Latham looked as in control as Williamson and also had a pleasing range of shots around the field. The difference is that the intervals between them were longer.

These days Ross Taylor bats with a sort of impatient bustling, as if he knows that his time in the game is finite and he wants to make the most of it. He has a young family and it would be no surprise if after the World Cup he chooses the easy rewards of the T20 circuit, while he is still young enough to command a hefty price. He reached 50 by the close, though should have been caught at second slip. At the end of the day New Zealand were 29 ahead with seven wickets left, and the course of the match seemed clear.

I wasn’t there for the remaining three days, so missed Latham becoming only the second New Zealander to carry his bat in a test, his 264 not out being the highest score made in such circumstances for any team. He made another big hundred in the second test—his eighth century—and has risen to 14^th in the test batting rankings. With Warner out of commission, the only openers in the top ten are Karunaratne and Elgar, and on form Latham would get into a World XI ahead of either.

With a deficit of 296 and three down for 13 by the end of the third day, Sri Lanka’s only hope was a forecast of rain for day five, but the chances of the last seven partnerships lasting all day appeared remote. In fact, one partnership, between Mendis and Mathews, sufficed. They batted all day, and through the 13 overs that were possible the next day. I’m not sure if I’m pleased to have missed it or not. To see your team’s hopes receding, inevitably but so slowly, is the cricketing equivalent of watching global warming. But this was only the 22^nd time that a pair of batsmen had occupied the crease for a whole day, so on balance I’m sorry that I wasn’t there. Yes, the rain saved them in the end, but it would take a very mean spirit to think this undeserved.

Similar weather in Christchurch would have repeated the trick. Set 650 to win, Sri Lanka were 24 for two at the end of the third day, but were still there with 231 for six 24 hours later. This time the sun shone and New Zealand completed a 423-run victory. This is one of Sri Lanka’s weaker teams, but it is not short of spirit or fight.

The New Zealand season begins

Just two weeks after leading Warwickshire to victory over Kent to seal the Division Two title in the County Championship, Jeetan Patel began another domestic season back home at the Basin Reserve. Thus do the seasons merge into one another. To emphasise that cricket is a global game, nine of the Auckland team here were playing in a T20 tournament in Abu Dhabi on Saturday before dropping 25 degrees or so for a Wednesday start here.

The domestic first-class game in New Zealand is further down the road to extinction than the County Championship. This year we are reduced to eight games, replicating the uneven pattern of Division Two of the Championship, with teams playing some opponents twice and some only once. There was a rumour that the programme was going to be slashed back to the five games of amateur days, spread, perhaps, to make us grateful for being left with eight (cricket administrators can turn even the most rational of us into conspiracy theorists).

Compensation was offered by the expansion of the 50-over competition from eight games to ten, but only when the fixture list was published did it become apparent that the six additional games  were all to be played at the “high-performance” centre at Lincoln, deep enough in the Canterbury countryside to be inaccessible to all but the most intrepid spectator, exiled like a king’s mad brother.

As is traditional at this stage of the season, half of the Basin is a building site. The old dressing rooms have been demolished and the replacement building is half-complete, though having a working building site behind the bowler’s arm was not as disruptive as I expected it to be. The wooden pavilion that was the headquarters of Wellington Cricket has also gone, to be replaced, puzzlingly, by a children’s playground. So there will be swings at Basin, if not swing.

The playground will be in the shadow of what is now referred to as the Museum Stand, formerly the Grandstand. Built in the 1920s, the stand was right behind the line until the square was realigned in the late 1970s. It has been closed for the last five or so years because of its vulnerability to a strong earthquake (though the museum underneath remains open, so presumably it is calculated that the stand would fall to the side—where the playground is being built).

It had been thought that the stand would be demolished, but the money has now been found to strengthen it. Unfortunately, this was the cash that was to have paid for floodlights to be installed, so the ODIs and T20s that are the only matches that would fill the seats in the restored stand will remain at the Cake Tin.

Changes too on the field of play for Wellington. The Gladstonian first-class career of Michael Papps is over at last. Steven Murdoch, a stalwart at the top of the order for almost a decade, has also departed, for Canterbury. Jimmy Neesham joins from Otago. As well as being one of the most naturally talented cricketers in New Zealand, Neesham is much wittier and free-thinking than is usual for a professional sportsman, if his Twitter account (@JimmyNeesh) is anything to go by.

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 10 to 13 October 2018

Scorecard

I’m still working my way through recordings of the final Championship match at the Oval between Surrey and Essex. The crowds at the Oval are a re-creation of Live Aid compared to the faithful few who gathered at the Basin for the start of the New Zealand season.

The way the fixture list has worked out, this game represented my best chance of seeing a whole game of first-class cricket, so naturally it rained for quite a lot of the time.

Auckland won the toss (we still have the toss in New Zealand, quaint old things that we are) and elected to field, no doubt recalling that in last season’s opener at the Basin they found themselves 12 for seven with the season less than an hour old. The pitch resembled the palette of an artist using only shades of green, but, the odd ball apart, did not produce the degree of movement that its appearance presaged.

It was 45 minutes into the morning when the first wicket fell, the pitch blameless as Woodcock was accounted for by a McEwan yorker. Andrew Fletcher was the other opener. He is a local cricketer finally getting his chance. For years, local clubs have complained that runs and wickets for them don’t count for enough where provincial selection is concerned, so Fletcher is being willed to succeed by aspiring provincial cricketers around Wellington in the hope that would encourage the selectors to look more

Fletcher leg glanced a stylish four, but was out attempting a repeat, the ball deflecting from glove to stumps. An unusual played-on also accounted for Devon Conway, who had left balls millimetres from the off stump with impeccable judgement until he slashed at a short one from Lister only to see it uproot his middle stump.

This brought in Jimmy Neesham for his Wellington debut innings. Characteristically, he began with an off-driven boundary, and followed with eight more fours in a 64-ball 51. He put on ninety for the fourth wicket with Wellington captain Michael Bracewell, who hit the same number of boundaries as Neesham as he made 53, but not as memorably. Wellington supporters want Neesham to do well, but not that well, or he’ll be back in the national squad and we won’t see him.

The breaking of the Bracewell/Neesham partnership removed the structure from the Wellington innings; the last six wickets added only 102 between them, Matt McEwan’s four for 48 being the main reason. McEwan has made his way from Canterbury to Auckland via Wellington, much to the benefit of the fast-food industry in each location, judging by his near-spherical profile. What he lacks in conditioning, McEwan makes up for with bustle, bluster and willpower. His pace is well on the brisk side of medium, and his commitment in the field made me relieved that hard hats were required on the building site, as he charged towards it like a cable-knitted Exocet. He appeals like a pantomime villain (the umpires happy to join in with "oh no it isn't").

The performance of the game came from test opener Jeet Raval. Overnight he was 46 not out, reached his fifty during the short period of play possible on the second morning, and completed the hundred when play resumed for a marathon three-and-a-half-hour session after the rain. Raval was a class above any other batsman in the game, with some lovely shots through the off side and that little bit more time than anybody else.

The Raval/Latham opening partnership is the most settled that the test side has had for a while, though it is wrong to say that it provides continuity given the increasingly long test-free periods that we endure these days.

The third day was washed out completely. It is tempting to go down the predictable road of moaning that cricket shouldn’t be played at this time of year, but the four days before and after this game would  both have made for comfortable playing and watching.

Play began earlier than might have been expected on the last day, given the deluge. By God it was cold, four degrees taking account of the wind chill straight from the Antarctic. I did not move from the Long Room and the free members’ coffee. Once the first innings bonus points had been sorted out, the rest of the day was for practice, both at cricket and polar survival.

Over the winter, the Basin Reserve scoreboard has been working on new ways to infuriate. It was refurbished last year and has a new electronic section that can display a much wider range of information. Given the challenge that displaying with an approximation of accuracy just the total and batsmen’s scores has presented for some years past, this is akin to giving guns to a civilisation that has previously had only sticks.

Throughout this game it played a game of peek-a-boo with us, rotating the batsmen’s totals every six seconds with a variety of other information, including the progress of the over (useful in a one-day game, but not when it is one or two balls behind as it usually was here) and landmarks such as “Auckland 200” (this posted right next to the team total that had told us this already, often several overs ago).

Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 18–20 October

Scorecard

The sun returned to Wellington the following week, as I knew it would when I couldn’t get to the game before the third afternoon. By that time, the game was all but over, with Wellington needing six more wickets to complete a comfortable innings victory. This they did over the next three hours, making for a tension-free, but pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Wellington had made 509 for five declared thanks largely to the two South Africans, Conway with a double century and Nofal with a single. This may make Nofal nervous, as the last time he made a hundred he was dropped for the next game.

Otago are the Glamorgan of the Plunket Shield, or possibly—given how players that they produce invariably move on when their true talent becomes apparent—the Leicestershire. Of the team here, readers who do not make a study of New Zealand domestic cricket are likely to have heard only of Hamish Rutherford.

They were bowled out for 190 in the first innings, and were four down and still more than 250 short of making Wellington bat again when I got to the Basin.

Hamish Bennett took four in the first innings, and was enjoying his work with the assistance of the northerly now (the northerly is the good wind here, bringing warmth; it is the southerly that breaks bowlers’ and spectators’ hearts). New Zealand has more fast bowling strength now than at any time before. Boult, Southee and Wagner are all in or around the world top ten, and Kent’s Matt Henry stands in reserve, but Bennett in the form of the last two years would let nobody down if called upon. He has real pace and the experience to use it to maximum effect.

The Basin pitch was one of its best. On the third afternoon it still offered pace and bounce to Bennett, but also some assistance to Jeetan Patel. The balance between bat and ball was just as it should be at this stage of the game.

It was a treat to watch a long spell from Patel, just returned from another successful season at Edgbaston, this time as captain. When I hear English commentators talk about spin bowling, they tend to use Patel as their benchmark of excellence. He has never had that level of respect here, even being relegated to twelfth man duties once or twice. He has skippered Wellington only occasionally, when he would seem the obvious candidate in all forms, as he is for Warwickshire. At the time of writing, he has 817 first-class wickets. Could he get to a thousand, probably the last to achieve that?

So there we are, not yet Halloween and half Wellington’s domestic first-class programme done. The next Plunket Shield game at the Basin is four months hence.