Sri Lanka Shivers

 New Zealand v Sri Lanka, ODI, Basin Reserve, 5 January 2025

Scorecard

Mrs Scorecards is in Toronto, Canada on grandma duty. The temperature rarely pokes its head above freezing point there at this time of year. Yesterday, a blanket that she put out to dry moulded itself into the shape of the chair it was placed upon, an instant ice sculpture. Yet, it would be valid to have a conversation about whether it would have been less pleasant watching cricket there or at the Basin Reserve for this ODI. The New Zealand summer, often a hard dog to keep on the porch, has absconded completely over the holiday period. Elsewhere on the North Island there has been fresh snow on both Mt Taranaki and the Desert Road, which should not happen at this time of year. 

Readers concerned for the welfare of My Life in Cricket Scorecards need not be. I was in the safety and warmth of the Long Room, along with all other sensible people. I did not share the view of my Petone and Brooklyn correspondents—the Scott and Oates of the Basin Reserve—that true supporters should put their lives on the line in the cause of sport by facing the southerly in the RA Vance Stand.

Williamson and Conway were both absent from the New Zealand team, giving preference to playing in the South African T20 franchise competition. It might seem odd that New Zealand Cricket is being so indulgent as to permit this, but we do not have the cash in the quantities needed to purchase the exclusivity of all the top players. They have done a good job of ensuring that key players are available for much of the time. Both Williamson and Conway will be available for all New Zealand’s cricket for the rest of this year. Of the other players not on full NZC contracts, only Lockie Ferguson might have been selected if not at the BBL. Tom Latham was injured, so Canterbury’s Mitch Hay took the gloves, and so was one of the few on the field or in the stands to retain feeling in his fingers throughout the game. 

Mitch Santner, now New Zealand’s captain in white-ball cricket, put Sri Lanka in, a decision that paid off to the extent of 23 for four after ten overs. For most of the sixty or so years of the limited-overs era, in this situation  the orthodoxy would have been to treat the innings like a first-class game in the hope that sufficient wickets would remain for a dash at the end. 

Here, the first ball of the eleventh over was pulled to the boundary by Avishka Fernando off Henry, caution excised from cricket’s dictionary. The approach was not reckless, but was underpinned by an acceptance that a gritty score fewer than 200 will not win a one-day game, so a level of risk that kept the boundaries coming was acceptable. 

It seemed to be working, for a time. Fernando and Liyanage put on 87 for the fifth wicket in 15 overs, but the last five wickets could muster only 68 between them, just over half of which came from Hasaranga, the only batter to exceed a run-a-ball strike rate. 

Any template for a report on a New Zealand match might as well include the phrase “Matt Henry bowled superbly”. Here, he finished with four for 19, with a combination of pace, movement and consistently putting the ball where the batter least wanted it. A word in favour too of Duffy and Smith, both of whom had to run into the gale, something that would probably be illegal if you made an animal do it. It is good to see both these players doing well after impressing in domestic cricket over several seasons. 

The New Zealand fielding was good too, which it has not always been in recent times. Of particular note were three catches from skyers, all tricky with the wind blowing the ball about like a leaf in autumn. 

Some of the Sri Lankans would never have experienced cold like they felt at the Basin. The wind made their trousers flap like flags at the top of a hill, and the interval between their hands emerging from pockets before, and being thrust back in after, the bowler delivered had become imperceptible by the end of the match. There was a rare consensus in the body language of fielders, spectators and even umpires that the sooner it was over the better. It pretty soon was, the target of 179 reached in the 27th over.

Will Young opened and batted throughout, finishing with a faultless 90 at a little over a run a ball. It was a reassuring, calming performance, though it reminded us of how much we had missed him at the recent test match against England when he was omitted despite having been player of the victorious series in India. There should be no question about his inclusion in the XI for the Champions Trophy. 

Rachin Ravindra batted like a billionaire, but a generous one who tips extravagantly, as he did when giving a catch to deepish square leg when well set on 45 from 36 balls. On the TV highlights it was said that he timed the ball too well, a problem that only the finest players have.

Mark Chapman accompanied Young to see New Zealand home, and it was hot soup all round to celebrate. 

Both the remaining games in the three-match series were won by wide margins: New Zealand by 113 runs at Seddon Park, and a consolation 140-run victory for Sri Lanka at Eden  Park. It was good to be watching men’s ODI cricket once more, even if there was a feel of a repertory company doing a final tour with the stars already left for Hollywood. 

Hat trick No 10: Gus Atkinson

 

Gus Atkinson, England v New Zealand, Basin Reserve, 7 December 2024

Scorecard

On the second morning of the second test between New Zealand and England at the Basin Reserve I achieved something that Zak Crawley managed for the first time in the series only the previous day: I reached double figures. It took him an over; it took me 60 years, though collecting hat tricks is a more patient process than blasting runs.

The response to these pieces among veteran cricket watchers suggests that my strike rate of roughly one hat trick every six spectating years is a pretty good one, luckier than average. This one was the second in test matches, and the first in first-class cricket, since that Ashes coup by Darren Gough at the SCG 25 years ago. All three in the interim were in 20-over cricket, the frenetic nature of which tends to make the exceptional mundane.

New Zealand were struggling at the start of the day at 86 for five, 195 in arrears. Tom Blundell, who has navigated New Zealand out of choppy waters so often that he should have a lifeboat named after him, was there so even the RA Vance Pessimists were not without hope. 

Not for long. In the fourth over Brydon Carse bowled Blundell with a cracker that moved away to hit the top of off. Nightwatchman Will O’Rourke followed two balls later, leg before for a 26-ball duck. Nathan Smith now joined Glenn Phillips. These two defy the stereotype of New Zealand cricketers as meek and self-effacing. Both are combative and free of the national inferiority complex, so aspirations towards a deficit under a hundred were not completely fanciful. 

Gus Atkinson has not so much entered test cricket as stormed in through the skylight, distributing grenades as he comes. He has taken more wickets in a debut year than any bowler before him and threw in a debut century at Lord’s as a premium. He is quick: the first and third balls of the hat trick were just short of 140kph, but is also accurate, has plans and can bowl to them. Carse could be similarly described, so if Wood, Stone and Archer can be persuaded to spend the next eleven months residing in large boxes of cotton wool, England will have quite an attack for the Ashes. 

It was the fifth over of Atkinson’s spell. Both batters were becoming established and had taken a boundary each off him. From the stand, it first appeared that Smith had shouldered arms to the third ball of the over and lost his middle stump by doing so. In fact, the ball had bounced more than expected and had come off the inside edge of the withdrawing bat, so still a bit embarrassing, but not nearly as much. 

Henry’s first ball was brutish, rising sharply at the throat. It was as much as he could do to fend it off to gully, where Duckett took a low catch, a delivery that would have got a good many top-order batters out. 

New Zealand fans have had an ambivalent attitude to Tim Southee this season. We are grateful to have the opportunity to salute an outstanding career as the series becomes his valedictory procession, but hardly any of us think that he should be playing, his bowling mojo having gone missing some 18 months ago. 

As a potential hat-trick victim he was interesting. Southee has never been averse to swinging away in defiance of the circumstances—a sideshow in this series has been his pursuit of a century of sixes—which prompted the setting of the oddest hat-trick ball field of the ten, with fielders dotted around the legside as if arranged according to where they were when the music stopped. 

Atkinson played the bluff and bowled fast, straight and full. Southee wafted at it vaguely as the ball thudded into the pad and there was the hat trick. There was a curious coda as Southee called for a review, as is now standard when there are unused reviews at the end of an innings. By the time the process had concluded all the players had left the field, leaving the umpire to confirm the decision in a void. If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound, and if an umpire raises the finger on an empty field, is it really out? 

Early Adventures in the Plunket Shield 2022

Wellington v Northern Districts, Basin Reserve, 18-21 October 2022

Wellington v Canterbury, Basin Reserve, 26­-28 October 2022

The early-season blogger faces a perennial challenge when reporting the first games at the Basin Reserve: how to convey the sheer greenness of the pitch. Peter Jackson’s movie studios are nearby. Having limbered up on Tolkien, are they applying their CGI artifice to Wellington’s cricket blocks, producing a verdance that nature cannot match?

As we have established before, a surface of that hue is not necessarily as pernicious as it would be in England. Northern Districts made 225 batting first in the season opener, and that was the lowest total of the match. The case for the pitch’s defence became more shaky for the second game, in which Wellington’s aggregate total was their lowest in 116 years of the Plunket Shield. However, their innings were punctuated by Canterbury’s 338 for eight declared, with a century for Tom Latham and a fifty from Henry Nicholls. Throw in Matt Henry’s seven for 44 in the match and it becomes clear that this was a pitch that sorted the wheat from the chaff with considerable efficiency.

I was able to be present for only one session of each match. For the Northern Districts game it was pre-lunch on the fourth day. ND started the day 225 ahead with six wickets remaining, apparently heading for a declaration close to lunchtime, but seamers McPeake and Sneddon expunged all six for just 23, leaving Wellington with a target of 250. It was one of those collapses that give the team that suffers it a greater chance of victory, closing the innings earlier than a more cautious declaration would have dared. This was a whisker from being the case here.

The highlight of both my mornings at the cricket was the batting of Rachin Ravindra. He puts me in mind of the young Ramprakash (though our man is left-handed) for the precocity and fluidity of his shots. Of course, that comparison raises questions about whether the class will translate to the top level. I hope that the national team management desists in using him as a No 7 who can bowl a bit of spin, and waits until he can be given a decent run in the top four. On this morning he hit several sumptuous cover drives before getting out to a legside strangle.

When I left at luncheon (as John Woodcock would say) Wellington were 77 for four, so ND would have considered themselves to be ahead. I caught up with the live stream (a more basic affair than in the UK, with just a single static camera) when Wellington were about 20 short with eight down. That they were this close was down to Tom Blundell, who performed an innings resurrection like those he undertook with Daryl Mitchell during the recent tests in England. Adam Leonard went in a manner similar to Ravindra with six left to get, and it was last man Hartshorn who secured an inside edge to the fine-leg boundary for the winning runs. This was four-day cricket at its best.

There was no such tension when I got to the Basin for the third morning of the match against Canterbury. The weather forecast was for rain in the late afternoon and for much of the following day, so the visitors had declared on the previous evening, setting Wellington a target of 378. They started the day on nine for two.

Again, Ravindra’s batting was worth the trouble of going to the Basin. He hit three offside fours off the otherwise near-unplayable Henry that were Goweresque in their languidity. This time it took a good one to get him, a ball from O’Rourke that rose a little and left him on off stump. With nightwatchman McPeake in support, that wicket did not fall until we were into the second hour, but thereafter only Blundell and the agricultural Newton made double figures. It was all over in time for lunch.

Despite the crushing defeat, Wellington have the same points as Canterbury and the two teams lead the Plunket Shield table after two of the eight games. 

Peaceful days in the sun: New Zealand v England in Hamilton

New Zealand v England, second test, Seddon Park in Hamilton, 29 November to 3 December 2019

Scorecard

Restful. That is how I would characterise my three days at the Hamilton test. There was plenty to enjoy, even though the action was not frenetic (apart from when Neil Wagner was bowling, obviously), and it was good to be back at Seddon Park, which was where I watched test cricket for the first half-decade or so of the new century.

There was plenty to remember, starting with Campbell and Griffiths putting on 276 for the West Indian first wicket, only for their team to lose. That was largely thanks to Chris Cairns, who has been airbrushed out of New Zealand’s cricket history since the lawyers got interested, but was a terrific cricketer.

The following year Australia were reduced to 29 for five, a situation that Adam Gilchrist dealt with by batting as if they were 400 for one. Australia won by six wickets.

There was the two-day test against India beginning on Friday afternoon and won by New Zealand soon after lunch on Sunday on a pitch that looked as if it had been transplanted from the centre court at Wimbledon. I always think of that match whenever I hear people moaning about the Indians and their home-team groundsmen.

Then the crater test against South Africa. A big hole appeared at one end, which the groundsman filled up, then, once he had been acquainted with the rules, emptied again. It was too far outside the right handers’ leg stump to be a threat, and when the ball did land there was as likely to scoot off the other way, but it had a mesmeric effect on the bowlers who wasted a couple of days aiming at it.

So the pitch as talking point is not a new thing for Seddon Park. The strip for this game was similar to that at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui for the series opener. That game finished in a New Zealand win well into the fifth afternoon, which is what a test pitch is supposed to facilitate. However, that the Hamilton pitch received an ICC rating of “good”, suggested that cricket needs a new dictionary for Christmas. It was easy for batsmen to stay in on unless they tried to score at more than two-and-a-little-bit an over, which is about as bad as a test-match pitch can be.

There was a historical curiosity about the scheduling of this game in Hamilton after that at the Mount, which is little more than an hour’s drive away. It can’t have happened often that successive tests have been staged on different grounds in the same province/county/state, Northern Districts in this case (though the profusion of venues in Colombo may have beaten ND to it). This was a precaution against New Zealand’s turbulent spring weather, and it paid off, with three balmy days, hot enough to trigger a storm that finished off the first day just after tea.

Hamilton’s new lights were shown off to good effect just before the rain fell. A switch was flicked and made a substantial and immediate difference, even though it wasn’t that dark. In the County Championship, the rule that that the artificial light cannot be stronger than the natural light would mean that their being switched on at all would mean that the players would have to come off there and then.

The previous lights had to come down because the towers were an earthquake risk, though shakes are mercifully rarer in the Waikato than in much of the country. I was CricInfo’s man in Northern Districts when they went up and turned down the chance to climb to the top of one of them.

It seems compulsory for the British cricketing press to preface the name of any New Zealand player other than Williamson, Taylor and Boult with “underrated”. BJ Watling might have been thought to have used up this year’s quota during his double hundred in the first test, but a new supply was rushed out in time for the underrated Tom Latham’s first-day hundred. Those who describe Latham thus have missed his presence in the top ten of the ICC batting rankings over the past year or more.

His batting in the first innings was the most fluent of the match. He scored faster than any specialist batsman on either side, but never appeared to hurry. Latham was helped by Broad’s wayward line in his opening spell. When he got one right it was to Jeet Raval, who edged to Root at first slip. It is so often the case that the man out of form gets the bowler’s best. Raval benefitted from New Zealand’s policy of picking a squad for both these two tests and the three to follow, but further failure in Perth has cost him his place in the Boxing Day test.

Root also caught Williamson, squared up by Woakes, but Ross Taylor became established and by mid-afternoon England looked dispirited, not helped by having two leg-before decisions overturned by the DRS. In just his second over Stokes resorted to three deep on the legside plus a fine third man to Taylor, who was out more conventionally from the ball after he reached his fifty, providing Root with his third catch of the day.

Latham reached his hundred shortly before the rain brought an early end to the first day. He was out early the next morning, leaving on length a Broad delivery that hit the top of off. He was replaced by the underrated Henry Nicholls, also hiding from the English media in plain sight in the top ten of the rankings.

Just when we had agreed that Sam Curran didn’t have the pace for test cricket, he succoured Nicholls into top edging a catch to deep fine leg. Next in was Daryl Mitchell, on test debut on his home ground. Mitchell was as close to a like-to-like replacement for the injured De Grandhomme as was available, which isn’t very close at all, De Grandhomme being more than the cube of his parts, let alone the sum. At 191 for five, England had restored the balance of the game, but Watling and Mitchell reclaimed it with a stand of 124.

It occupied a serene 53 overs. With the heat, the grass bank at the top end, and BJ Watling digging in, I may have dropped off for a few seconds and dreamt myself back at Mote Park in the late seventies, the great CJ Tavaré at the crease, sucking the will to live out of the opposition. Only the Tip Top ice cream signs where the Deal Beach Parlours van should have been returned me to the present.

Joe Root resorted to placing of fielders in odd positions, but it was too random to be convincing. His handling of the bowlers had a by-numbers feel to it, but with an attack consisting of four quicks and an all-rounder whose fitness was dodgy, that would be hard to avoid. It was strange that he put himself on with Latham on 96 and helped the batsman to his century with a friendly (as Jim Laker used to describe all full tosses) full toss.

Mitchell upped such tempo as there was and played well for 73 before going the same way as Nicholls, but off the bowling of Broad, who had got Watling four overs earlier with another short one that went of the shoulder of the bat to Burns in the gully. Late-order merriment took New Zealand to 375.

England had addressed their three-keeper problem by picking a fourth, Ollie Pope, in for the injured Buttler. He was athletic, which with no frontline spinner in the XI was all he needed to be, but he lacks the quality most prized in modern keepers—he doesn’t jabber on incessantly in praise of half volleys.

Jofra Archer had a dispiriting time from which he will learn, but is a fine sight. Anyone who grew up in the era of Willis, Holding and JSE Price finds it hard to understand that a bowler can call himself fast without a run up that embraces two time zones, but with Archer and Bumrah as models, the next generation will strive for brevity.

England lost two before the close of the second day. Writers better qualified in technical analysis than me have written off Dominic Sibley as a test player on the basis that he appears to abstain from the offside as if batting in a permanent Lent. I hope that he proves them wrong, if only to show that runs in county cricket are not irrelevant. Here, it was a relief to all concerned when Southee got him lbw for four.

This was the seventh New Zealand v England test at which I have been present since moving here, but the first time a Kent player has been in the England team. Here there were two, Joe Denly and Zak Crawley.  Denly may yet become the David Steele of our time, a middle-aged hero of the Resistance. Not here though. At least there was a Kentish dimension to the dismissal, caught behind for four off Matt Henry. Denly did achieve something memorable in Hamilton: late in the game he infamously dropped a Sun crossword clue of a chance offered by Williamson. I so hope that is not what he is remembered for when his test career is done.

England finished the day on an uncomfortable 39 for two, though it would have been worse had Rory Burns not been dropped twice, the easier chance to Taylor, the harder to Raval.

My notes for the third morning consist only of the following:

“Root and Burns in no trouble for the first half of the morning”. Then, an hour or so later, “Nor the second half”. Some stories are easily told.

Root was not at his best, or particularly close to it, but that he had to work at it more than he usually appears to made it all the more praiseworthy.

Burns survived another chance on 86 when Henry butchered a run out by trying and failing to intercept a throw that Latham was perfectly placed to collect beside the stumps. He reached his hundred in mid-afternoon. Steve James, in his The Art of Centuries, explained that there is a challenge to overcome for a batsman who survives a chance or chances; he has to convince himself that he retains the right to be there. To say that a batsman is gritty has an air of damning by faint praise about it, but that should not be so, especially for an opener. Burns has that quality and should have a good run at the top of England’s order. He has also shown (see comments re Sibley, above) that runs in county cricket do mean something.

Burns was run out the ball after he achieved three figures, but it took an age to confirm, the problem being to establish that there was separation of bail and stump before Burns had made his ground, though this appeared obvious enough on the big screen. Perhaps the ICC could spare some of its largesse to provide stumps that light up for all tests, and agree that illumination equals separation.

New Zealand’s attritional bowling and field settings meant that Ben Stokes never got going before he fell to a slip catch from a Southee delivery that was one of the few to move laterally.

This brought in Zak Crawley for his debut innings. This was only the second occasion on which I have been present to watch a Kent player at the crease for the first time in a test match. The other was at the very first day’s test cricket I attended, England v New Zealand at the Oval in 1969. Then it was Mike Denness who batted with agonising uncertainty for a 43-ball two. This time it was briefer, but no better.

Crawley was anxious to impose himself and get off the mark. He drove his fourth delivery hard, but Henry at mid on made a sharp stop to prevent the run. This wound Crawley up a little tighter and though he hit the next ball straight to Williamson, he set off for the run as if drawn by an irresistible law of physics. He needed every bit of his diving 6’5” to beat the direct hit.

He edged the second delivery of Wagner’s next over to Watling, so Crawley’s hard-won single will constitute his test record until the next time, perhaps after his domestic record has been fortified with more consistent scoring so as to match achievement with his undoubted promise.

Crawley was on of Wagner’s five wickets. As ever he bowled with such energy and fire as to raise the question of how much more Sisyphus might have achieved had he shown Wagner’s spirit.

I left for the airport soon after Crawley’s dismissal, just before more rain ended the day an hour or so prematurely. Though two days remained, a forecast of rain for much of the last day combined with the torpor of the pitch to make a draw appear all but certain. Centuries from Williamson and Taylor confirmed the result, giving New Zealand the series win, with the usual rider that two games do not a series make.

Early adventures in the Plunket Shield

As I write in mid-November (roughly the equivalent of mid-May in England), three-quarters of Wellington’s home programme in the Plunket Shield has been completed. The New Zealand domestic schedule is a warning to England as to what may be to come if resistance from county cricket’s defenders is less than staunch.

I could not get to the Basin for any of the opener against Otago, an eight-wicket win for Wellington, but was there on the first and fourth days of a memorable contest between Wellington and Canterbury: Conway’s match.

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 29 October – 1 November 2019

Scorecard

Devon Conway scored more runs here than anyone has done before in one match in New Zealand. He followed an unbeaten 327 in the first innings with 66 in the second to top Bert Sutcliffe’s single-innings 385 for Otago against Canterbury in 1952–3. His 53 boundaries were the most hit by a New Zealander (including aspiring New Zealanders). It was the highest individual score that I have ever watched, though I saw only (only!) the 261 he made on the first day. Conway—an immigrant from South Africa—qualifies for New Zealand in October 2020, so it would be well worth a county making him an offer for next season.

At 20 for three in the twelfth over, such profligate scoring appeared impossible after Wellington had been put in by Canterbury, but this was not an archetypal first-day Basin pitch. All three wickets were down to good bowling. Left-armer Nuttall swung one into Fletcher to have him leg-before, then Matt Henry, in Kent form, combined accuracy, movement with a little lift to account for Colson and Bracewell. However, even at this early stage very few deliveries beat the bat, particularly when Conway was holding it.

Tom Blundell joined Conway to put on 34 for the fourth wicket before being given leg-before to Williams. Blundell could not have advertised more widely his view that the ball had hit the inside edge had he taken a full page in the Dominion Post. He stared at the raised finger with the expression of a Pope whose infallibility is questioned. All the way back to the rooms his head shook from side to side as he examined the offending strip of wood. Had he widened the scope of this inquiry it would have revealed that the bat also had a middle, which, appropriately deployed, would have saved him a lot of trouble.

The umpire involved, Garth Stirrat, has been outed in as a retired porn star, so I’ll leave a space here for the reader to insert their own witticism.

One of the characteristics of a class batsman that Conway has is that watching him gives no inkling that the team may be in trouble, or that batting is anything other than the breeziest of activities. As we were to see, he has shots around the ground, but his go-to area is behind square on the offside. So productive was he in this area that Cole McConchie committed a heresy against the creed of modern captaincy by stationing a third man before lunch on the first day, and followed it with a second a few balls later. Conway reached his 50—out of a total of 72— with the first false shot he played, an edge over the slips.

The Canterbury bowling in the early part of the innings was exemplary, with Henry conceding only 11 off nine overs and Will Williams—a tall right-arm seamer with a bouncy approach—12 off eight. The rest of the Canterbury attack could not maintain the pressure. Left-armer Andrew Hazeldine was sufficiently pacey to have Malcolm Nofal caught at mid on when attempting a pull, but was profligate to the extent of reaching his bowler’s century in his eleventh over, as quickly as I have seen it done. Conway is so adept at telling the good ball from the almost-but-not-quite good ball and steered what he got from Hazeldine through the gaps like a pilot in a busy waterway. He reached his hundred with another rare mishit, a top-edged pull that fell just out of reach of the diving keeper, Fletcher.

Peter Younghusband joined Conway for the sixth-wicket partnership and took the role of defensive support seriously as may be judged by the fact that he did not contribute to the first 33 runs they put on, and was on only 14 when the century partnership was achieved.

There were no nervous 190s for Conway; a four followed at once by a six over deep mid-wicket saw to that. He reached 200 before the team had passed 300, which can’t have happened often.

Those two boundaries came off Todd Astle, who had been held back until Conway was well-established, which suggested a lack of confidence in a bowler who is a semi-regular member of the test squad, but asking a leg spinner to bowl in New Zealand in October is like bringing a bear out of hibernation a couple of months early, to forage with the snow still on the ground.

Younghusband’s blockade was breached by a fine catch by Tom Latham at second slip. He was replaced by Jamie Gibson, who took the opposite approach, striking out from the start. They were both right, in their contrasting ways. By the time Gibson came in, Conway had been batting for most of the day and was happy to let his partner man the guns.

The Canterbury attack operated like two economies, one managed by Margaret Thatcher, the other by Robert Mugabe. Henry and, especially, Williams (one for 52 from 28 overs) held fast against the inflation of batsmen’s scores, while the other bowlers printed runs.

In my absence on the second and third days, Conway reached his triple century and Wellington declared on 525 for seven an hour or so before lunch. Tom Latham then scored his traditional Wellington double hundred (one in the test match against Sri Lanka late last year and one in the Plunket at Karori in 2013). Nobody else reached 50 for Canterbury, who declared nine down 110 behind.

To what Bismarck said of sausages and laws, add the accumulation of runs needed for an agreed target: it is better not to see them being made. I was glad to have missed the first hour or so of the final morning when the formalities necessary for Wellington to set Canterbury 358 were completed.  

That many runs in a day less half an hour is tough even on a pitch that appeared truer than George Washington. But by the time I arrived late in the morning session, pessimism had already set in among the Wellington faithful, in whose company Eeyore would appear a cock-eyed optimist. Canterbury were 80 for one, with one of the world’s top-ten ranked test batsmen (Latham) in and another (Nicholls) to follow.

However, Bowes, who had opened with 40 from 27 deliveries, had already departed and three more followed in the short time before lunch. Stephen Murdoch was out lbw making room to cut a ball from slow left-armer Nofal that was quicker than he thought. The decision looked dubious, though Murdoch was well back in the crease. The scorecard has links to video of all dismissals, so readers can make up their own minds.

The day took a significant turn in Wellington’s direction in the following over when Latham was caught at second slip, driving loosely at van Beek.

The third to fall was McConchie who, mind straying to the impending ham salad, swept the last ball before lunch to be caught at short fine leg. The bowler was again Nofal, who once more put a little extra speed on the ball. Canterbury’s target at the start of the afternoon was 239 with six wickets and a minimum of 62 overs left.

Nofal has taken 15 wickets in the Plunket Shield so far this year, more than anyone except Neil Wagner, so has moved onwards and upwards from the “golden arm” category. Wellington captain Michael Bracewell, however, with three wickets in 78 first-class games, only aspires to that description. But he did get one to turn to Henry Nicholls, who knocked it cross-batted it to mid off. Only the bowler was more surprised than the batsman.

Now Wellington were ahead and expected to win, particularly as Canterbury had a longish tail. There was a time when a team in Canterbury’s situation would have abandoned hopes of victory and set about digging trenches, but the modern cricketer just runs quicker towards the machine guns. This is no criticism. Here, with two or three more lucky breaks, it would have won Canterbury the match, and it was good to watch.

Todd Astle hit 33 from 15 deliveries, including two splendid straight-driven sixes. On only four, Cam Fletcher hit a Rohan Kanhai-style fall-over hooked six off McPeake. Matt Henry struck three sixes as he made 43 from 40, before falling to an excellent catch by Bracewell, low to his left, which is not where a first slip expects to take a catch from a right-handed batsman. Fletcher followed soon after leaving Canterbury with 126 to get with only two wickets left.

Canterbury continued to press on, if a trifle more cautiously than before. Williams and Hazeldine restored Wellington’s anxietyometer to the high levels to which we are accustomed with a ninth-wicket stand of 64 before Hazeldine off drove straight to van Beek at mid off. Still they hit out; the game ended when Nuttall was caught at long on to give Nofal his fourth wicket. Wellington won a splendid game of cricket by 44 runs.

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 8 – 9 November 2019

Scorecard

The following week we were back at the Basin for the visit of Auckland. I arrived soon after lunch on the first day to discover that I had missed Wellington’s first innings, bowled out for 91 having been put in. Lockie Ferguson took four for 23. After his performances in the World Cup, readers will know that Ferguson is capable of bowling as fast as anybody, but now with added accuracy. He had been withdrawn from the T20 series against England to play here in preparation for a summer of test cricket.   

Soon after I took my seat Auckland’s reply was interrupted by the rain, and there you have the story of the rest of match. There were only 26 more overs that day, and 57 in total in the next. As had been forecast, the third and fourth days were washed away completely, so from the outset this was a game played for the small stakes of bonus points. No point then in recounting events in any detail, save to introduce readers who do not follow domestic cricket in New Zealand with the name of Ben Sears.

Sears is a local 21-year-old all-rounder less than a year into his first-class career. He took six for 43, three of them in the two overs he was able to bowl on the second morning before the rain fell. He bowls right arm on the brisk side of medium with a high action. Test opener Jeet Ravel was bowled by a ball that swung in, and was quick enough to hurry Horne into a head-protecting edge.

Wellington finish the first half of the Plunket Shield season with a comfortable lead of 15 points. Whether anybody remembers that when the competition resumes in late February remains to be seen.

I will next report from Hamilton, where I’m heading at the end of the week for the first three days of the test match.