A new season: Wellington v Auckland

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 23 October 2017 (day 1 of 4)

Scorecard

If ever asked to provide advice to the young of today, I say only one thing: never arrive late at the cricket.

Those who failed to note this wisdom, and arrived 40 minutes or so after the first ball of the New Zealand season was bowled at the Basin today, missed a treat. Ollie Newton, opening the bowling on first-class debut, began with a triple-wicket maiden and a little later the scoreboard read 12 for seven. That’s the thing about cricket: you can watch it for half a century and it still shows you things you haven’t seen before.

Newton took the new ball for the second over of the day, from the southern end. He has had a long wait for this moment. He is 29, and has been on the fringes for a while, but one T20 appearance almost two years ago was his only previous experience in the first team. Why it was decided to give him a go now, and with the new ball at that, I don’t know, but it was a decision of Brearleyesque foresight.

His first ball was a yorker that struck Michael Guptill-Bunce on the toe for a straightforward lbw decision. The second passed by the outside edge. The third, Robert O’Donnell decided to leave, but too late. He was bowled off the inside edge. The fourth was edged to fourth slip as Michael Barry played defensively off the back foot. The hattrick ball was another yorker, kept out—just—by Mark Chapman.

At the other end, Hamish Bennett had Jeet Ravel dropped at first slip by Jeetan Patel, but joined in the fun soon enough with three wickets across two overs. Another from Newton and there we were: 12 for seven. 

Tight bowling and vigilant fielding prevented further scoring for a couple more overs, so keeping alive the hope that Auckland would join Oxford University (v MCC and Ground in 1877) and Northamptonshire (v Gloucestershire in 1907) in being all out for 12 in a first-class match. This was not down to any ill will towards our friends in the north; simply that it would be a thing which any cricket buff would count as an achievement in spectating. A crisp off drive from Matt McEwan settled the matter. 

There were five ducks among the top seven, but as is often the case with dramatic top order collapses, the lower decks achieved what their betters could not and the last three wickets scraped together fifty with the tenth wicket stand of 23 between Nethula and Ferguson the biggest of the innings.

Newton finished with four for 26, but Bennett’s figures were the most remarkable: 5-4-2-3. Logan van Beek and Iain McPeake (are there other rhyming pairs of bowlers?) also took wickets in their first over, in the former’s case on Wellington debut having moved from Canterbury.

At this stage, fingers of blame were being pointed at the Basin Reserve pitch, which has a record as long as your arm of being over-helpful to bowlers on the first morning. But on this occasion, it was innocent. It was green, certainly. There was movement too, but nothing that was uncalled for on the first morning of a four-day game. Few of the Auckland batsmen could blame the pitch with any degree of justification. Raval played round a straight one, and there were several rash shots. 

The counsel for the defence of the Basin pitch could also call upon the close-of-play scoreboard to offer powerful evidence: Wellington 246 for no wicket. No pitch changes its character that quickly. 

The key was the quality of the bowling. The home bowlers were pinpoint accurate, challenging the batsmen throughout and forcing errors and misjudgement. On the other hand, if bowling were taxable, Auckland could claim a full refund on the grounds that theirs took the form of a charitable donation. 

Lockie Ferguson bowled one really good over to Luke Woodcock, troubling him with a series of short deliveries that he was fortunate to survive. But the score was 190 for none at that point and for the rest of the day Ferguson was fast but wayward.

Leg spinner Tarun Nethula had a poor day, which his figures (0 for 45 in 19 overs) do not reflect. At the start of one spell he bowled two wides, one to off and one to leg. For much of the last session he was bowling wide as a defensive measure. He also bowled four no-balls, puzzling given that his approach to the crease is a nine-step stroll.

Seamer Matt McEwan bowled without luck, though not to the extent of Dreyfusian injustice suggested by his loud and lengthy appeals and general demeanour, which was that of a mugging lead actor in a Victorian melodrama.

Michael Papps dominated the innings, unbeaten on 163. He was the epitome of judicious aggression. There was a lot of loose stuff to hit, but he did so in mid-season form. As usual, he was particularly unforgiving square of the wicket. Luke Woodcock’s 64 from 209 deliveries might appear mundane in comparison, but his resolution enabled Papps to plunder freely. Woodcock has a range and, to a greater extent than most players in domestic cricket, can play according to what the situation demands. Today, he equalled the record for appearances for one province, with 127 (shared for the moment with James Marshall).

It was as one-sided a day’s cricket, start to finish, as I can recall. The Basin was pleasant too, the RA Vance Stand offering protection from the north-wester and, as the beginning-of-season email to members boasted “we’re pretty sure it is an asbestos-free zone now”. Value for money there, to be sure.

The scoreboard was encased in scaffolding and plastic. Regular readers will be familiar with my theory that the Basin scoreboard is controlled by North Korea, spreading fake news to undermine the morale of the civilised cricketing world, so we should be worried about what is going on under there. The extraordinary scores of the day were conveyed on a replacement club-style board with players’ names large enough to be read clearly by spectators as many as three rows away. 

Altogether, a relishable start to the New Zealand season.

Capitulation at the Cake Tin: New Zealand v South Africa ODI

New Zealandv South Africa, ODI, The Cake Tin, 25 February 2017
The set up was as teasing as a Victorian melodrama. Two games, two last-over wins, one to each side. The dramatic tension was maintained throughout the first act, the audience divided as to which way the plot would go. But after the interval we went straight to the final scene, the one where the stage is filled with New Zealand corpses. South Africa won by 159 runs, the most lopsided match I have seen since Southee and McCullum filleted England in the World Cup two years ago.

South Africa won the toss and batted. Their openers were Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock. I first saw Amla as a CricInfo reporter when I covered some of South Africa Under 19s’ tour of New Zealand in 2001. His talent was as abundant as his fielding was inept. Today he went cheaply, caught at mid off from a leading edge having contributed just seven of an opening partnership of 41.

New Zealand fed de Kock’s strength by bowling him lots of short stuff. This isn’t as daft as it sounds, the theory being that the batsman will take more risks within his comfort zone. It didn’t work today though. De Kock made 68 at almost a run a ball. He put on 73 with Faf du Plessis before both went to soft dismissals in the 23^rd over, bowled by Colin de Grandhomme—the South Africans didn’t have a monopoly on the nobiliary particle today.

AB de Villiers was in at No 4 for his last game in Wellington (he’s not hanging around for the tests). I didn’t see the half century he made in the Basin test last time South Africa were here, and the empty 99 in the World Cup against UAE doesn’t count, so I was keen that one of the greats should leave behind a memory.

The regular loss of partners meant that de Villiers did not show us the full range of his inventiveness until the final few overs. He gets lower in the shot than anyone I can think of, which means that the bowler has to be precise to several decimal places in his pitching of the ball. An inch or too full and it might as well be a knee-high full toss; the same the other way becomes the easiest of half volleys. He made 85 from 80 balls and it was a treat.

The way the South Africans went about things from early in their innings suggested that they thought that a total of around 300 was going to be needed on a pitch that shimmered in the afternoon sun, so restricting them to 271 could be considered a good effort by the New Zealand attack.

Trent Boult was outstanding, every bit the leading one-day bowler in the world, conceding only 22 from his first seven overs. Tim Southee was more profligate. Mitch Santner was also very good with a mid-innings spell of seven overs going for just 28. Lockie Ferguson came in for Ish Sodhi, but did nothing to justify the selection. It is the nature of fast bowlers that they are hit and miss early in their careers as they learn that sheer speed is sometimes not enough. Today, the quicker he bowled, the quicker it came off the bat. He will have benefitted from studying the work of Kagiso Rabada later in the day.

But New Zealand’s best bowler, statistically at least, was the man least likely to be, Colin de Grandhomme, whose ambling medium pace accounted for du Plessis and de Kock. Having fought off a gang of muggers, they were felled by a handbag-wielding granny. He got de Kock with a long hop, but that was the worst ball he bowled. De Grandhomme made the best of a pitch that that was more balanced between bat and ball than most of us thought, bowling accurately and cannily. I am as enthusiastic about him as an ODI player as I am critical of his presence in the test team.

So how did Neesham, the all-rounder, do with the ball? Reader, we will never know, as he did not bowl. It appears that for Williamson, Neesham is a weapon of last resort, thrown in when all else has failed. He got away with it today, shuffling the five bowlers astutely (he didn’t put himself on either), but that is not a sustainable strategy for the one-day game.

Was 271 enough for South Africa? Most of us thought not, but as it turned out they could have gone to the pictures instead of facing the last 20 overs and still have won comfortably. I have often been critical of how the outcome of T20 games is too often obvious by an early stage of the second innings, but that can happen in 50-over cricket too, and so it did here.

Tom Latham would need the Hubble telescope to see his form at the moment. It should be David Attenborough rather than Ian Smith commentating when Latham bats, so closely do his innings resemble the pursuit of a limping gazelle by a pride of lionesses, the grizzly outcome inevitable. Today’s seven-ball duck left him with a series aggregate of two from 29 deliveries. There is almost always a penalty for giving the gloves to a specialist batsman. Latham’s keeping is satisfactory, though he did miss a straightforward stumping today. Let us hope that the test performance of New Zealand’s best opener since Mark Richardson is not the price to be paid.

Brownlie went caught behind off Rabada, so at 11 for two, Williamson and Taylor were together, usually as reassuring as a log fire in winter. Yet today it was as if they had something better to do and had sent a tribute band instead. They looked like Williamson and Taylor, but the music wasn’t the same. Both faced 40 balls, for 23 and 18 respectively, miserable strike rates by their standards. I often write that it was a surprise when Williamson got out, but today it wasn’t. Towards the end of their partnership both began to flail at the ball, so effective was the containment of the South African attack. Taylor was leg before soon after and seemed relieved, hurrying past Neil Broom at the other end so that there was no chance of being talked into a review. The rest was a procession, the last six wickets falling for 64.

As ever, there was talk about the pitch, on which 271 was a better score than at first appeared, and from which the South Africans got more help than New Zealand. But sometimes we look too closely at the pitch instead of the quality of the bowling. For various reasons the South Africans are missing Steyn, Morkel, Philander and Abbott, and chose not to play Morris, who has been taking wickets for fun so far on the tour. Yet the attack that took the field was superb.

The all-Kent opening team of Rabada and Parnell (two and five first-class appearances, seven years apart) was outstanding. The last time I saw Rabada he was attempting to coax some life out of the pitch at Tunbridge Wells, a task better suited to a spiritualist than a fast bowler. He is fast, accurate and—best of all—highly intelligent. Parnell was probing and accurate. In the first ten overs, between them they removed the openers and established the frustration of Williamson and Taylor.

The second wave was even better. Andile Phehlukwayo has something about him. He is not yet the finished article, but looks as if he absolutely belongs at the top level. He kept a cool head when bashing a couple of sixes to win the first game of the series. Today, he removed Williamson and Broom and conceded only 12 in his five-over spell. At the other end, Dwaine Pretorious was even meaner with two for five from five. Between them they put the match beyond New Zealand.

The home team came back strongly in the fourth game, winning by seven wickets with five overs to spare, thanks to a sublime unbeaten 180 by Martin Guptill. However at Eden Park in the series decider, another outstanding bowling performance gave South Africa a three-two series victory.

 

Wellington v Auckland, T20, Basin Reserve, 22 December 2016

Scorecard

It is twenty-twenty time in the southern hemisphere. On Wednesday, there were 38,000 at the Adelaide Oval to see the Adelaide Aardvarks play the Brisbane Bollweevils. The next day, about 300 of us turned up for the New Zealand equivalent at the Basin between Wellington and Auckland. Believe it or not, this represents an improvement on last season when the T20 competition was done by the time the school holidays started, played mostly in windswept grounds in front of handfuls of spectators dressed as Captain Oates. It culminated appropriately in a final on a near-empty provincial rugby ground that was home to neither team. It was a marketing catastrophe worthy of Gerald Ratner.

So this year the T20 is later with quite a few games at holiday venues, where  there should be decent crowds. There are mitigating factors for the modest attendance at the Basin on Thursday. The game started at 4 pm, the wind was as keen as a boy scout in bob-a-job week, and Wellington’s T20 season thus far had been a disaster, with four losses out of four, while Auckland had a 100% win record from the same number of games.

With Wellington 14 for three in the fourth over it appeared that the form book was being followed like a sacred text. Hamish Marshall—captain in this form of the game—led the way by attempting a single that was as self-deceiving as a Donald Trump tweet. He was run out by a couple of metres by a casual underarm direct hit by his opposite number Rob Nicol at mid off. Few were as quick as Marshall in his younger days, but age wearies us all.

Tom Blundell was next to go, to a good diving catch at mid wicket by Donovan Grobbelaar off Colin de Grandhomme, who took six wickets in the first innings of his maiden test in Christchurch against Pakistan recently. Do not be misled into thinking that he is the new Richard Hadlee; it was a performance that said more about the pitch than the bowler. I have been trying to think of a cricketer comparable to de Grandhomme and have come up with Keith Pont of Essex. This is not intended to be in any way derogatory; Pont was a good county all-rounder in a successful side. Like de Grandhomme his height could make his trundling medium-pacers a little more dangerous than face value suggested and he hit the ball hard as a batsman, but he was never (as far as I recall) spoken of as an international player and with good reason.

Auckland have potentially as quick a fast-bowling bowling combination as I can recall seeing in New Zealand. Tymal Mills, now of Sussex, partners Lockie Ferguson, recently seen bowling at 150 kph in the ODI series in Australia (a speed exceeded only by that at which it then came off the bat, alas).

Wellington’s two overseas players, Jade Dernbach of Surrey and Evan Gulbis of Tasmania were both dropped following a late night out on the evening prior to Wellington’s previous game (and let us forgo remarks about a late night in Nelson being any time after 9 pm). This was to have been Gulbis’s last game before returning to the Big Bash, but Dernbach now has the unexpected joy of New Year in the old country.

Mills’ speed accounted for Grant Elliott. The ball was on to him sooner than he expected, so his cut went straight to third man, one of only two fielders outside the circle at that stage of the game.

But things were not as grim for the home team as it appeared. Opener Michael Papps was joined by Luke Ronchi in a match-winning stand of 115 in 11 overs. Ronchi was omitted from the national one-day team for the series in Australia because of loss of form, but it is hard to recall him striking the ball more sweetly than he did here. He hit Mark Chapman’s slow-left-arm for three (big) sixes off successive balls in the eleventh over in an arc from long off to deep mid-wicket.

Papps batted right through the innings for 62 not out. I don’t think that it Is correct to say that he carried his bat, as that only applies when ten wickets have fallen, but it was a fine achievement whatever it is called. Though there was not the late-innings explosion for which Wellington would have hoped given that wickets were in hand, a total of 173 will win more games than it loses.

T20 captains these days change their bowlers like Imelda Marcos changed her shoes. By the ninth over Nicol had used six bowlers, but Marshall beat that with a different bowler for each of the first six overs of the Auckland innings. Sometimes this is more unsettling for the bowlers than for the batsmen, and can lead to some curious deployments of resources. Here, for example, de Grandhomme bowled two overs for ten runs, but was not used again.

Predictably this was all too much for the Basin Reserve scoreboard, a veteran purveyor of fake news. Today it insisted that Auckland wicket-keeper Glenn Phillips had bowled three overs when it was plain for all to see that he had retained the pads and gauntlets throughout.

Auckland started brightly but never got into the higher gear needed for a chase of this size. That Colin Munro—as pugilistic a practitioner as any in New Zealand—took 44 balls over his 38 sums it up.

Over the past year or so I have noted a retreat to orthodoxy among batsmen in T20. Here, there were only three reverse shots, including two dilscoops off successive deliveries from Patel to Chapman, perfectly executed for two boundaries (Patel was not subjected to the indignity of a long stop that befell some of the England attack at the Chennai test match). Perhaps my spectating is unrepresentative, but it seems that the high-risk trick shots are being left to those who are really good at them, like Sam Billings who demonstrated a complete array at the A ODI I saw at Canterbury in July.

There was a fine standard of catching in the Auckland innings, particularly two from Matt Taylor. Chapman went to a running, diving effort at long off, followed by Munro, caught at deep mid-wicket. Taylor caught the ball, threw it in the air, stepped over the boundary and back again, then completed the catch. I went more than four decades without seeing a catch taken like this, but now it happens several times a year. Taylor came in as one of the replacements for the carousing couple and his fine performance—20 at the end of the innings and three overs for 22 in addition to the catches—may have been a factor in persuading Wellington to hand Dernbach his boarding pass.

The best catch of the day was taken by Luke Woodcock who leapt in defiance of gravity, age and probability to take a catch that appeared to be well out of reach and already past him. Thinking that it had finished the game, Woodcock turned to crowd and raised his arms, soaking up the adulation. It was sometime before he realised that the shouts of his teammates were not to join in the veneration, but rather to persuade him to return the ball to them: Arnel had overstepped and it was a no ball.

Wellington won by 33 runs, but remained bottom of the table while Auckland were still top. The top three go into the two play-off games, so Wellington can afford only one more loss at most from the second half of the round-robin phase of the competition.