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.

Serenity at the building site

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, 26 February to 1 March 2017

Each province has five home games in the Plunket Shield. This season, Wellington’s first was played in spring when the Basin Reserve was a sub-branch of the Antarctic; the second was played 550 kms away; the third was cancelled because of earthquakes; this game is the fourth; the fifth is a day-nighter during the working week. So this match represented the best chance this season of enjoying domestic first-class cricket in the sun. I was there for most of the first day, and after lunch on the second and third days.

Readers in Britain should understand that domestic first-class cricket in New Zealand has long since ceased to be regarded as an attraction for the paying spectator. There is no charge, but neither are there any spectator services (though it is possible for members to buy food in their lounge), or even a public address announcer. The Basin is a public thoroughfare unless there is a match that requires payment at the gate, so there is a constant stream of pedestrians and cyclists passing between the spectators (not always in the plural) and the field of play.

A couple of years ago this fixture was played at Karori Park in Wellington’s western suburbs, sharing the field with two kids’ games and getting a smaller audience than either.

Pleasant as it was sitting in the sun at the Basin last week, I still thought wistfully of my day at the Nevill in Tunbridge Wells last July when 3,000 plus sweltered watching a game of first-class county cricket with all the panoply that comes with it: the marquees, the scorecard sellers, the food stalls. How one yearned now for the seductive chime of the ice cream van.

Add to this that the Basin’s main stand remains a building site. Our friends in the full body suits and breathing masks were back on the third day to remind us of the risk we were taking in watching the cricket. There are currently no seats in the stand and the members’ lounge reverberated to hammering and drilling.

All this would be inconsequential were it not for the fact that New Zealand are to play South Africa in a test match here starting only two weeks after the end of this game. It would be nice if there were seats in the stand for people to sit in. The official word is that the new seats are “on the way from China”. Insert the phrase “slow boat” into that sentence at will. The Museum Stand is full of sturdy wooden benches, but is shut, being an earthquake risk (yet the museum beneath it remains open).

Canterbury have become the first New Zealand team to adopt the practice (now established in the County Championship) of putting numbers and names on white shirts. The names are too small to read, there is no publicly available list of which number belongs to which player, and on the first day nine of 11 numbers were covered by sweaters, but the thought’s the thing.

Wellington were put in by Canterbury and made 291 in 91 overs, built around two century partnerships: 117 for the third wicket by Papps and Borthwick and 108 from Marshall and Blundell for the fifth.

Michael Papps is in fine form in his nineteenth season of first-class cricket. He moved to his half-century with three fours in one over off Andrew Ellis. Scott Borthwick was less fluent. He was in many pundits’ squads for England’s test tour of India after consistent high scoring for Durham for the past three years, but not that of the selectors. Instead he finds himself playing in the local leagues for Johnsonville, where the Taj Mahal and Gateway of India are merely alternative sources of takeaway dinners. What’s more, Borthwick was unable to secure a regular place in Wellington 20 and 50-over teams, carrying the drinks on several occasions. Here he toughed it out for 47, the sort of innings that can turn a player’s form around.

Hamish Marshall started slowly but was soon cutting like Vidal Sassoon and reached his fifty from 82 balls. Aside from the two century partnerships, Wellington’s highest score was Jeetan Patel’s 14.

Before the game began, Patel was called up to the national ODI squad for the final two games of the South African series, so would play for the first two days here before being substituted by someone who can also bat and bowl. This, I don’t approve of. It’s different from having a player called up unexpectedly halfway through a game. One of the defining features of cricket is starting with a set of resources that cannot be varied.

Matt Henry, five for 62 from 26 overs, was Canterbury’s best bowler. It is hard to recall Henry bowling badly for New Zealand, and he is No 10 on the ICC ODI bowling rankings, but he is not in the national team for any form of the game currently. Here he bowled with pace and penetration, the rain breaks helping to keep him fresh.

On the second day I arrived just after lunch to find Canterbury 60 for two. Peter Fulton was in and looking good. A couple of weeks previously he had destroyed Wellington with magnificent century in the 20-over final of the 50-over competition. Here, he looked as if his form had been carried over. Unusually, it is Fulton’s onside shots that are all timing and those on the offside that rely on power. He was out for 79, poking at a ball well outside off, a tame way for one in such good touch to get out. Henry Nicholls went in similar fashion, suggesting that this was not a pitch that took kindly to being driven on. Anurag Verma’s skiddy fast-medium was responsible for both dismissals.

Jeetan Patel bowled a long spell, offering value before heading for the airport at the end of the day. For the greater part he bowled with no fielders on the boundary, something that you usually see only when a side is on all-out attack. Mid on and mid wicket were both two-thirds of the way back, an invitation to batsmen to have a go. Yet when Todd Astle accepted the offer it took only a couple of successful tonks to send the fielder back to long on. He stared, Patel (or maybe captain Papps) blinked.

Hamish Bennett bowled (another) hostile spell. He has Astle lbw and thought that he had Fletcher caught behind, but the umpire demurred. As well as being a quality bowler, Bennett is one of New Zealand’s finest appealers, fit to be measured against Robin Jackman of Surrey, always the gold standard of appealers.

Arnel, the grumpy grandad of the Wellington attack, was the meanest of the bowlers, not helped by the frustrated air kick that he aimed at the ball at the end of one over making unintended connection, giving the batsman a bonus overkick. He took just one wicket, as did Patel (27 overs) and Woodcock (three overs).

Wicketkeeper Cam Fletcher shepherded the tail to a total of 243, displaying the gnomic qualities of his distinguished Essex namesake, but a deficit of 54 seemed significant on a pitch that was (to borrow Scyld Berry’s description of a Caribbean pitch the other day) grudging.

Arriving at lunch on the third day, I discovered that Wellington’s second innings progress had been sedate, and continued to be so throughout the afternoon, 248 runs the day’s harvest. It was far from disagreeable, sitting in the sun enjoying a rare pleasant day in Wellington’s Bermuda Triangle of a summer, untroubled by events that might have obliged me to make a note for the later benefit of readers.

Hamish Marshall provided a shot of adrenaline, but of the batsmen who reached double figures, only Borthwick broke the three-an-over sound barrier, that only by a smidgen. So we snoozed happily in the sun, the pitch appearing to join us. Such boundaries as there were came square or backward of square. Wellington’s lead was over 300 by the end of the day, and stretched to 324 on the final morning.

Everything that I had seen over the first three days suggested that 324 at three-and-a-half an over would be too much for Canterbury, and that a serious attempt at a run chase would let Wellington in.

Canterbury won by seven wickets, their 325 made at four-and-a-half an over. Fulton, who might have been expected to lead the charge, was the slowest scorer. Chad Bowes, who had impressed in the T20 at the Basin earlier in the season, made 149 when he was third (and last) out with the score at 236, leaving Henry Nicholls and Cole McConchie to take them home.

I wasn’t there, so don’t know how they managed it, but Patel’s control was obviously missed, his replacement Peter Younghusband bowling eight overs at almost six an over. It is unlikely that the character of the pitch changed much, so it must have come down to attitude and a lot of skill.

It is the huge capacity of first-class cricket to surprise that is one of its chief attractions, no matter if there are calm spells along the way. Let’s hope that next year the weather and schedule makes it possible to enjoy a bit more of it.

Wellington v Canterbury, T20 semi-final, Basin Reserve, 5 February 2017

Scorecard

Arriving at the Basin with the bank already filling I was taken back to seventies mornings when the smell of bacon frying on campfires in the car park meant that a big knockout game was on at St Lawrence.

Marketing hyperbole has undermined the language of sport. Rugby league in this part of the world is particularly keen to pretend that every game is a final. This match was billed as the preliminary final. But this was the game to decide who would play in the final, so a semi-final is what it really was.

With a bit of imagination and a little licence this one could have been sold as over-35s v under-35s. Wellington had five players in the former category, plus Woodcock who is only a couple of months short. Canterbury had only Peter Fulton.

Both sides have had their progress in the competition aided by being largely untroubled by the selectors. Only Luke Ronchi was missing on international duty from the Wellington team, and the selectors thoughtfully allowed Matt Henry to return to the Canterbury team following an indifferent performance in the T20 against Bangladesh in Napier the previous evening.

However, Canterbury had three other players who have been selected for New Zealand in one form or another this season—Henry Nicholls, Todd Astle and Kent’s Tom Latham—and looked the stronger team on paper.

Not that Latham had much influence on the game; he went early, lbw to a full toss that was quite the worst ball that Hamish Bennett bowled in his opening spell. That brought together Henry Nicholls and Chad Bowes for the best batting of the game, a second-wicket partnership of 69 in nine overs. Nicholls we know about, but I’d not heard of Bowes before. He’s a member of the white South African cricketing diaspora, captain of the Proteas under-19 team in 2012. Now he wants to play for New Zealand (which is, at least, preferable to wanting to play for Hampshire).

Bowes is a proper batsman whose 56 from 41 balls was full of intelligent orthodox shots. He hit eight fours, three of which were from successive deliveries from Brent Arnel, an interest-free advance from a payday loan shark. Nicholls also scored fours from three successive balls, off Luke Woodcock, though they were his only boundaries. He is a bat-through sort of batsman, which can be a euphemism for not having that top gear that is needed to flay a bowler in T20.

When Bowes was out in the 13^th over, the score was 96 for two, so 180-plus was in prospect. But Jeetan Patel had already set about cutting off the blood supply. At last, Patel is getting the recognition as a master practitioner at home that he enjoys in England. When he came on the Canterbury innings was a roaring lion. When he finished, it was tamely eating from his hand.

Canterbury’s assistant coach Brendon Donkers was on the radio on the morning of the game saying that T20 was all about boundaries, there being a strong correlation between hitting the most boundaries and winning the game. He went as far as to say “forget about the singles”. A truism perhaps, and a petard to be hoisted by. Patel conceded only one four, a reverse sweep by Peter Fulton off the fourth ball of his fourth over.

Hamish Bennett was even more miserly, going for just 18 from his four overs with wickets from the last two balls of the innings. Canterbury’s total of 151 looked at least 15 short of a break-even score.

For many years Hamish Marshall was confused with his identical twin James. Now he has another doppelganger at the other end in Michael Papps. Both are short, old (in cricketing terms) and bat pugnaciously with a fusion of hard-hit conventional shots and new-fangled improvisation. Their fifty partnership for the first wicket came up from the first ball of the fifth over. Matt Henry took a particular pounding and may have wished that he had stayed in the Hawke’s Bay sun.

It seemed like a procession, but as has been related in these columns often enough, Wellington’s sports teams have a talent for escaping from match-winning situations that would spring them from Colditz. Here leg-spinner Todd Astle was the agent of change. He came on as soon as the fielding restrictions were relaxed and struck immediately taking a hard-hit return catch to get rid of Marshall.

We had a strong earthquake here in Wellington a couple of months ago that has led to the demolition of a couple of large buildings and design faults being exposed in others. Earthquake Astle revealed structural failings in the Wellington batting. The foundations were shaky and innings began to suffer from liquefaction. Papps was bowled by a perfect googly and 103 for one became 110 for five inside three overs.

Astle bowled his spell through, which supports my idea that sometimes captains meddle too much with the bowling roster in T20. Maybe he could have been risked during the powerplay.

With better support from the other end Astle would have won the game, but instead there was a curious effort from off-spinner Tim Johnston. I have been reading Jon Hotten’s The Meaning of Cricket, which contains accounts of the yips suffered by various bowlers, that describing the psychological implosion of Scott Boswell of Leicestershire in a one-day final at Lord’s being particularly harrowing:

“It took Scott Boswell a decade to rebuild his relationship with the game that had dominated his life.”

Perhaps because this was fresh in my mind, when Johnston failed to release the ball in the delivery stride a couple of times, I began to have my suspicions. He did so again, this time giving Papps a “Mankading” warning, which I thought might have been a cover story. Then came a slow beamer to Blundell. The resulting free hit went for six and ultimately made all the difference. Johnston was taken off after two overs, but surprisingly brought back later, when it was a choice between him and the out-of-touch Logan van Beek. The yips were not apparent this time, but a six by Taylor landed on the roof of the merchandising stall and a quicker delivery resulted in four byes.

The only bowler I have seen have a complete meltdown in this way was the great Australian quick Graham McKenzie, as unlikely a victim of the yips as could be imagined. It happened in a Sunday League game at Folkestone in 1971. McKenzie had bowled three overs with no hint that anything was awry, but in his fourth started to bowl front foot no-balls—called by his compatriot Bill Alley—and couldn’t stop, even when he reduced his run-up to three paces. Maybe the 15-yard restriction on run-ups that applied in the Sunday League at that time had an effect, but McKenzie’s was an economical approach to the crease that made it seem unlikely. The over was 14 deliveries long and went for 31, as many as I have seen come from one over. It was as strange a thing as I have witnessed as a spectator.

Two more wickets kept the collective blood pressure of Wellington supporters right up there, and the final over began with five needed and three wickets standing. Here I draw your attention to my comparison in my last post of Luke Woodcock to Darren Stevens in terms of reliability and reassurance. Two cover drives to the boundary off van Beek off the first two balls of the over and it was done.

Postscript:

The final took place just two days later, with Wellington travelling to Pukekura Park, New Plymouth to play Central Districts. I watched on TV. 4,000 were crammed into the most beautiful cricket ground I know of, spread out across one row of benches on each level of the grass ziggurats that tower over the ground on three sides.

Earlier this season a new world T20 record for a match aggregate was set on the ground, with CD falling one short of Otago’s 249. A runfest was expected, so when Wellington found themselves at eight for two, and later 114 for seven, hope had left the ground. An unbroken partnership of 58 by Taylor and Patel guided Wellington to the lower foothills of respectability, but a trouncing still appeared inevitable.

But by the end of the third over of the CD innings, Mahela Jayawardene and Jesse Ryder had both gone for ducks and the favourites never got going. Wellington won by 14 runs, a street in T20 terms.

I have enjoyed the later stages of the competition more than I thought I would because it has been less predictable than the shortest form can often be and there has been some good, thinking cricket. The fact that it is not presented in the overblown way that the Big Bash is also helps, particularly in the TV commentary which has been sensible and understated, as is the Kiwi way.

Next, the first of two test matches at the Basin this season, against Bangladesh.

A cricketing degustation

Wellington v Otago, T20, Basin Reserve, 3 January 2017

There is the danger with T20 of coming to resemble Mrs Mary Whitehouse, who spent the seventies scanning the Radio Times in search of programmes to watch and be offended by. She would then campaign to have these programmes banned so that others could not gain the pleasure from them that she had, in her own way.

Many of the readers of these pieces will share my reservations about T20, and we need not again rehearse what they are. I am aghast that the school summer holiday period in England will henceforth be almost entirely given over it. Had that been so in the seventies, my whole life might have taken a very different course.

But if you go to a T20 game (other than at gunpoint) you should enter into the spirit of the occasion and judge it on its own terms, like an uncle who maintains a broad smile while wearing the reindeer-decorated jersey he had for Christmas. So I watched a five-over game, which was decided by a one-over game, and reader, I enjoyed it.

The cricket itself was not the only factor, but then it never is. There was bureaucratic confusion worthy of the Byzantine Empire at its peak to enjoy, of which more later, and there was the Basin itself, which for a week or so at this time of year acquires a scarlet sash of pohutukawa flowers that wraps its eastern side and reaches up the hill to the Governor-General’s residence (we have a new GG, by the way; a country largely dependent upon dairy farming for its prosperity now has a vegan head of state).

The game was supposed to start at two, but it had rained for most of the day, so it came as a surprise to hear just after four that the captains were about to toss up for a five-overs-a-side contest. I wouldn’t usually bother in these circumstances, but this season I have signed up for a Wellington cricket membership, so could chalk up a new spectating experience at no cost. I have watched a few ten-over games on rainy Sunday afternoons in England, but nothing this truncated, a gobbet of a game.

Had it not rained I would have missed David Warner’s century before lunch on the first day in Sydney, only the fifth such achievement in test history, and a treat to watch, though it is sad to see Misbah-ul-Haq’s heroic tenure of the Pakistan captaincy (the cricketing equivalent of the Italian prime ministership) ending so badly, on and off the field.

On most days the cricket would have been called off after several hours’ rain, but different criteria apply to T20 games, and rightly so. As ever, the positions taken on whether there should be play bore no relation to the conditions, depending instead on the stakes for either team. This was the final day of round-robin games. Central Districts had already secured top place, so will host the final on the world’s most beautiful postage stamp, Pukekura Park in New Plymouth. Second and third will play off to be their opponents. A win for Wellington would take them into the semi-final. An abandonment would be of no use to them. Otago had already secured the wooden spoon, so had only a laundry bill to gain from playing the game.

Which explains why, when I arrived at the Basin, the umpires and the Wellington players were on the field ready to start, but the Otago batsman were nowhere to be seen. This remained the case for the next five minutes or so, until at last the newly agoraphobic Rutherford and Kitchen were coaxed from the dressing room. Then, something else that I had not seen before (today was a bran tub full of new experiences): Hamish Bennett was ready to bowl the first over from the southern end, with the umpire in place behind the stumps (you will recall that they had had some time to think about this while waiting for the batsmen). At the last minute the decision was made to switch to the northern end, with Arnel opening, which necessitated late rearrangement of fielders and umpires.

What is a par score in a five-over game? I thought about 60, but given that both sides here made 48, that must be it. The only wicket of the Otago innings came from its final delivery, which raises the question of whether the openers should have pushed it a bit more. In the circumstances, Anaru Kitchen’s 16 from 17 balls seems a bit thin.

Bowling is a losing lottery ticket in these circumstances, so Hamish Bennett’s effort in conceding only four runs in his over was particularly meritorious.  

Michael Papps hit the second ball of the Wellington innings onto the bank behind long leg and at 20 without loss after 11 balls it all seemed a bit of a procession. But Marshall was caught at mid on, and from the first two balls of the next over, Namibian international Christi Viljoen had Blundell caught at fine leg and then yorked Papps.

Michael Pollard deployed the heave over midwicket to great effect, with two sixes, but was plumb lbw trying to repeat. He will make seventies in longer forms that do not have the value that 14 did here.

Eight were needed from the last over, bowled by Duffy. But which one?  I assumed that it was Jacob Duffy, Otago’s young quick, but no. It was Ryan Duffy, who is listed as a wicketkeeper by CricInfo, and who has bowled just two overs in 18 first-class matches spread over three years. He had never played T20 until New Year’s Day, but now finds himself reinvented as a closer (to use a baseball term) in this format. I wonder how you find out that the reserve keeper is a secret death bowler? He did a decent job here.

A single from Elliott, then Taylor skyed a catch to mid on. Seven from four. Grant Elliott—the hero of the World Cup semi-final—lifted the next ball over mid off for four. Why bowl full with mid off up? With three needed from three it seemed that what was left were mere formalities, but Elliott left the next one hoping for a high wide call, which didn’t come. The umpires were bowler friendly in their application of this rule, but consistently so. A single off the fifth ball mean that it was two to win, one for a super over.

Luke Woodcock was on strike for the first time. He is a southern hemisphere Darren Stevens, a man who exudes reliability and reassurance. Duffy’s attempted yorker was a little under-pitched and was driven straight of long off. It looked a certain two, but Michael Bracewell was quickly to it and he threw to the keeper’s end with the precision of Phil Taylor going for double top. Woodcock was run out by a metre.

So it was to be a super over. Or was it? We now had one of those disputes that cricket, and cricket alone, can conjure out of the ether. It would be inconceivable that a drawn football match in a competition that had used penalty shoot-outs throughout the season would then be paused to consider whether, on this one occasion, there was something in the rulebook that meant that the shoot-out could not take place. Yet that was what happened here.

This was post-truth cricket. How the idea emerged that somehow there was a sub-subclause somewhere that said that there was no time left to bowl two overs, who knows? But it took hold and meant that there was a delay of more than 15 minutes—longer than it would take to get the super over done—during which the Middle East peace process was recreated on the outfield with no brow left unfurrowed. I hardly need add that as these discussions continued, the sun came out in Wellington for the first time this year, and spectators were shedding layers of clothing.

Eventually, the obvious decision was reached and the super over was on (the sub committee set up to establish the religion of the Pope will report this time next year).

Wellington batted first, with Neil Wagner bowling. The first ball was decisive. It was called as a no ball for being above waist height. Michael Pollard applied his legside heave to send the free hit out of the ground, and followed with another later in the over, setting 20 as the total to beat.

Hamish Bennett bowled a tight, thoughtful over for the second time this afternoon restricting Otago to eight and taking two wickets, which is all out in a super over.

Wellington were through to the knock out phase, an outcome that looked improbable after their first four matches, all of which were lost. Even better news followed. Auckland, who would claim the right to play the semi-final at home if they beat Central Districts, lost despite scoring 212 in their 20 overs. Rain intervened and CD’s 82 without loss in eight overs satisfied not only Mr Duckworth, but also Mr Lewis, so Wellington host Canterbury in the semi-final.

This was as unusual an hour or so as I have spent at the cricket. It was a cricketing degustation, tasty and intriguing, not as nourishing as a full plate, but enjoyable nonetheless.

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.

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 13 January 2016

Scorecard

Any day that begins with the acquisition of two new members of the primrose brotherhood is bound to be a good one, though may be prone to anti-climax. So it was at the Basin today. The Otago batting, then the weather, and finally the match, fizzled, which is not what you expect to say of a game that ended in a tie.

In the past month, five new Wisdens have been added to the shelves in the library at My Life in Cricket Scorecards Towers. My Khandallah Correspondent, in her wonderful way, presented me with the 1947 edition for our anniversary and followed up with 1948 and 1949 at Christmas. Today I persuaded the fine people at the New Zealand Cricket Museum to split a 1960s set to sell me 1963 (the centenary Wisden) and 1965 at NZ$30 (roughly £12) each, a snip. This means that 1962 is the earliest that I don’t have, and the grand total is 62.

Otago won the toss and chose to bat. Arnel was accurate and made the most of a hint of green about the pitch. That was how he induced an edge from Anaru Kitchen, well caught by Papps at second slip, low to his left.

Michael Bracewell dodged bullets with improbability of James Bond. He was dropped by Papps in the gully and Verma from a hard hit caught-and-bowled chance; almost played on; and played and missed numerous times, but also played some fine shots in between. He was finally caught by Murdoch from a steepler to deep mid-wicket that tested the fielder’s attention span as much as his catching.

This brought together Neil Broom and Hamish Rutherford, both batsmen who have not quite made it in the national side. Broom is in excellent form at the moment and glided to a half century at almost a run a ball. Rutherford hit hard and well. He is a good player who may have been miscast as a test opener, but could return to international cricket in the one-day team.

At 147 for two in the 27^th over, a score well past 300 seemed probable, but both batsmen were out on that score. Jeetan Patel scurried back to catch Broom’s top edge off his own bowling, and Rutherford was caught behind off a leg side strangle. The bowler was Alecz (sic) Day, who bowled only the one over in the innings, skipper Papps apparently regarding the ball aimed a yard down the leg side as having been exploited to its full potential.

Otago struggled to 249 thanks to a dogged de Boorder, who hit only one boundary in his 34, and test off spinner Mark Craig, who hit 46 from 41 balls. Hitting the ball out of the Basin is quite common, it being a small piece of real estate, but I have not seen the trees next to the Dempster Gates cleared before as Craig managed today.

Just like the pitch at the Plunket Shield game between the same teams last month, this one appeared pacier than we are used to at the Basin. However, more batsmen than usual were caught from catches that lobbed up off mistimed shots, which suggests that the ball was stopping, as they say.

Was 249 enough, or perhaps 30 or more short? We were never to find out. As the Wellington innings got under way the cloud began to darken and lower. By the 20^th over, the minimum required for a result, an interruption was obviously imminent.

Now the Basin Reserve scoreboard intervened crucially. This, you may recall, is what Mike Selvey described as the “ransom-note scoreboard” during England’s 2002 tour because of the eccentric collection of fonts that it used. If the North Koreans ever take up cricket their scoreboards will be modelled on the Basin’s, a cruel mixture of the hard-to-interpret and downright wrong. As ever, a few blown lightbulbs made it difficult to discern quite what numbers were showing for total and batsmen’s scores.  

At the start of the 23^rd over Wellington were 72 for one. A light drizzle was already in the air. Heavier rain was clearly close by and heading our way. This made the Duckworth-Lewis target  the most important piece of information on the scoreboard. As the first ball of the over was bowled, it read “74 to win”. Michael Papps and Steven Murdoch and Michael Papps are as experienced a combination as New Zealand cricket has to offer. They knew that the loss of a wicket in this over would inflate the D/L target, so were cautious, making just two singles from the over, so raising the total to 74.

But let’s look again at that phrase “74 to win”. Did it mean that 74 were needed to win? It did not. Seventy-four was the par score, which meant that 75 was the winning target. Hence, when the umpires took the players off at the end of the over, never to return, the match was tied, to the surprise of the batsmen.

This, of course, is much the same mistake that South Africa made in the 2003 World Cup, eschewing the chance to make single against Sri Lanka that would have kept them in the tournament.

My Blean correspondent will be reminded of the Essex match at Folkestone in ’77. Kent were 156 for three, apparently cruising to their target of 184, when beset with one of their more spectacular collapses. Within the hour, ashen-faced, we were watching Kevin Jarvis stride to the middle with the score 183 for nine.

I have written before that Jarvis was the worst batsman I have ever seen, and do not retreat from this judgement. The sole counter argument is that, once, he hit the winning run in a first-class game. Somehow, he got a bat on a delivery from JK Lever and completed the single, then, along with Derek Underwood, turned to walk back to the pavilion.

The Essex team, and the umpires (Jack Crapp and Ken Palmer) stayed where they were, looking surprised. You see, they had made the mistake that Murdoch and Papps were to repeat 39 years later; they believed what they saw on the scoreboard, which said that 185 were needed to win.

As well as our pleasure at the win, and our unlikely hero, we also enjoyed the out-foxing of Keith Fletcher, widely regarded as a Mike Brearley without the degrees when it came to canniness.

In the present, by the following Sunday, for the Auckland match the Basin scoreboard had replaced “to win” with “par score”.