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.

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.

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.