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? 

The Basin Reserve Test: First Day

New Zealand v England, 2nd test, first day, Basin Reserve, 6 December 2024

Scorecard

It is some time since I wrote on a single day of a test match, and I may not do so for the remainder of this game, but today at the Basin was so relishable that I could not resist.

Two trends in modern selection could be observed in the composition of the teams here. The first is a degree of loyalty to current members of the XI that makes the average labrador look like Philby, Burgess or Maclean in comparison. Marnus Labuschagne is a beneficiary of this approach in the Australian XI, Tim Southee, and possibly Devon Conway, in the New Zealand team, and Zak Crawley for England. 

I have noted previously that my face in the crowd means that Crawley may as well not bother. This was the seventh time I had seen him in the middle and on only one of the previous occasions had he breached double figures. In Canterbury in April (the last time I was as cold as I was in the final hour today, incidentally) he nicked off for five. But today, with England put in by Tom Latham, Crawley reached ten with a six off Southee’s final delivery of the first over. Was the hoodoo broken? I had with me my Kent sunhat, which I intended to put on to mark Crawley reaching his hundred, sometime around the first drinks break at the rate at which he set off. 

There is much talk here in Wellington about the planning of a second tunnel through Mt Victoria, adjacent to the Basin. Now we found that it already exists, in the form of the two-lane highway down which Matt Henry’s delivery passed between Crawley’s bat and pad as he swished at his old Kent teammate to be bowled for 17. Crawley on the attack is a thrilling sight, but he has a pacifist’s defence, which is why, after 50 tests, he has an average barely above 30 and only four centuries. 

Ben Duckett was already out, for an eight-ball duck, a period of self-denial in Duckett’s terms equivalent to St Simon Stylites, who lived on a pillar near Aleppo for 26 years. This brought together Harry Brook and Jacob Bethall, potentially one of the great partnerships from now to c2040. Bethall hit a couple of gorgeous off drives before falling to a legside strangle off Nathan Smith. Joe Root was caught spectacularly by Daryl Mitchell at first slip, also off Smith. At the moment, New Zealand seem able to catch only the really difficult ones. 

England were 43 for four and in deep trouble. Fortunately for the visitors, the fifth-wicket pair that turned the game in Christchurch last week were together again, and this time they did not need the collaboration of the New Zealand fielders. 

The last time Harry Brook played at the Basin was in the Greatest Test of All, almost two years ago. Then he made 180, an innings that was the best that we had seen there for some years before, or since. It was elegant, precise  and technically not far from perfect. Today’s innings contained examples of all those elements, but with raw power and apparently (but not actually) reckless attack. At one stage it appeared that an air-raid siren should be sounded when Brook faced bowling from the southern end, so under bombardment was the food truck area. In its audacity, confidence, and domination of and contempt for the bowling it reminded me of Viv Richards, who I saw score three one-day final centuries at Lord’s, the best of which won a World Cup. I have no praise higher than that at my disposal.

Brook’s partner, Ollie Pope, continued where he left off at Hagley, Only in comparison with Brook was he laggardly as they put on 174 in just 26 overs. The innings became a runaway thoroughbred at which the home attack could only wave their arms at as it thundered past them. The other nine partnerships collectively mustered only 106. Pope succumbed to the extra pace of O’Rourke, top edging a pull to go for 66. If he does not want to keep the gloves and bat at No 6 he needs to drop a couple of sitters before the series is out.

Brook’s magnificence ended absurdly. Just before tea he nudged one into the legside and inexplicably set off for a single, the possibility of which had no more status than a QAnon rumour. Smith, following through, casually flicked the ball at the stumps to effect the run out by several metres. He made 123 from 115 deliveries. There was no wag of the tail; the last three wickets put on only 21, fpr a total of 280 (or 279, depending what scoreboard you were looking at and when; the North Koreans who undermine western morale through their control of the Basin Reserve scoreboard were in peak form today). 

Matt Henry was New Zealand’s best bowler, by quite a distance. After four overs his figures were 4-4-0-2, Will O’Rourke finished with three for 49, a much more accurate measure of his value than he attained in the first test. His pace makes a difference. 

Putting Nathan Smith on to bowl places the captain in the position of Aristotle Onassis asking Jackie Kennedy to marry him. It will be fun, but my God, the expense. Four for 86 off 12, plus the run out.

Which brings us to the other trend of modern selection, that of players announcing their own farewell. David Warner is the most egregious example, initiating a rolling national holiday culminating at the SCG where he left the team mid-series. Then Jimmy Anderson had his celebration test at Lord’s. He is here, joining in the warm ups, reminding me of those folk who retire then turn up two days a week and sit in the corner drinking tea, Can the ECB not get him an allotment, or something, to keep him occupied? 

Now Tim Southee, to go at home at Seddon Park next week. Twice in one over he was effortlessly driven to the cover boundary by Brook. No disgrace there, Then I looked again. It wasn’t Brook, but Woakes, who had just come in at No 8, but able to treat Southee with disdain. Mitch Santner was in the squad here. I do not think that his 13 wickets at Pune are enough to refute the lack of evidence of his previous 28 tests regarding him as a test-class spinner. But there was a case for picking him because of his defensive white-ball qualities, to stem the English torrent. With four right-arm quicker bowlers there is an element of Trevor Bailey’s dictum that you can change the bowler, but not the bowling. 

Then there is Will Young, player of the series in the three-nil win in India, lauded by Sunil Gavaskar as the most technically proficient New Zealand batter, but omitted for the first two tests because of that loyalty factor. There was almost nobody in the ground who believed this to be the correct decision except for those who pick the New Zealand side. With New Zealand five down and 194 behind at the close, they must surely relent. Only Williamson looked in anything like top form, and he was bowled by a no ball before edging a good ball by Carse to the keeper.

It might be thought, after 19 seasons watching at the Basin, that I would have paid more attention to the small print of the weather forecast. I was scammed by the predicted 20 degrees and failed to look at the wind direction, which was southerly, and roaring. I was at least three layers short of the minimum in such conditions. Furthermore, I forgot that in Wellington it is possible to shiver from the cold while burning from the sun, even though you are in the shade. Perhaps the memory of the three-nil series win in India just a month ago is a collective hallucination, brought on by these extreme conditions. 

Skullduggery at the Basin as the North Koreans return

Wellington v Central Districts, Basin Reserve, 50 overs, 2 February 2024

Scorecard

We knew that it would rain. The forecast wes decisive. Yet still we turned up at the Basin. Rain is to cricket people what death is to everybody else. We know that it is inevitable, but we carry on as if it wasn’t there. This game at the Basin showed why we behave in this curious way.

The match was abandoned, as we always expected it to be, with the points shared. But we saw some fine batting and bowling, some terrible batting and bowling, collapse, recovery, and (possibly) skullduggery. A brilliant day.

Wellington won the toss and chose to bat, defying the convention that when Duckworth, Lewis and Stern are about you bat last so that they show you their working as you go. Central demonstrated later why that is a good plan. 

Nor did the top and middle order justify the decision. When the rain first came, after 20 overs, Wellington were 76 for six. There was some good bowling, notably from Basin Reserve anti-hero Blair Tickner who nagged away on an off stump line and conceded only eight from his first four overs. Central skipper Dane Cleaver (cousin of Kane Williamson) maintained attacking fields, thinking that rolling Wellington cheaply would be the best chance of beating the weather. 

This was the first round of matches in the resumed 50-over competition following T20s that started just before Christmas, but the home batters seemed unaware of the change of format, apparently competing in recklessness. There was Severin’s hoick to deep mid-wicket, Kelly’s shovel to deep third, McLachlan’s first-ball waft outside off and Smith’s catching-practice glide to slip (all of which can be viewed via the scorecard link, above).

The rain came first after 20 overs, causing an interruption of 70 minutes. As they resumed one of the Basin regulars asked which of us would take 130 as Wellington’s total. I was inclined to accept. Resuming for Wellington were Muhammad Abbas and Logan van Beek. Here, readers need to be aware of a backstory. A week before, Wellington played Canterbury in the elimination final of the T20 competition. With an over to go, Canterbury required 21 for victory. Van Beek was the bowler. He has been Wellington’s death bowler of choice, but the memory of his being hit for 33 off an over at the end of the match against Central a week earlier fluttered at the back of my mind. 

The first two balls both went for a single, so with 19 wanted off four, Wellington’s place in the final seemed booked. The trouble was that van Beek relied completely on yorkers, but could not quite land them, so it was all low full tosses, two of which Matt Henry hit for six, and as in that disastrous over at the Basin, there were a couple of wides. With just a single from the penultimate ball it was Zac Foulkes who faced the last, needing three to win. Another full toss was sent to mingle with the trees, and Wellington were out. So if redemption was available, van Beek wanted a share. 

In the T20s, 20-year-old Muhammad Abbas has made a name as a strokeplayer. Here he showed that judgment and the ability to bespeak his game to the occasion is part of his package. Van Beek matched him in restraint; no boundaries were hit, or attempted, in the first seven overs after the resumption. 

Gradually, they increased the pace. In the 30th over Abbas twice straight drove Small to the boundary. In the 41st, Abbas went down the pitch to hit slow left-armer Lennox for six over long on. Van Beek did the same from the last ball of the over, and hit seven more sixes in the remaining six overs. The Central bowlers, so disciplined and accurate earlier, now became the opposite. 

Abbas was out for 65 from 77 balls. His seventh-wicket partnership with van Beek was worth 159, beating the previous Wellington record of 130 by Bell and Mather against Northern at Blake Park, Mt Maunganui. I was there for that one, on New Year’s Day in my first summer in New Zealand. 

Van Beek was out in the final over, for 136 from 99 balls including 11 fours and eight sixes. It was the second-highest score ever made by a No 8 in List A cricket worldwide, beaten only by an innings in the domestic competition in Bangladesh. 

DLS got to work on Wellington’s 281 for eight, and reduced it to a target of 274. Usually an interruption to the innings of the team batting first results in an increased target, but the loss of so many early wickets meant that the algorithm determined that to have fewer overs in which to preserve scarce resources was an advantage. 

It was clear from the start of the Central reply that there was no chance of the innings lasting its course. It is essential in these circumstances that the players have accurate information about DLS targets; it is with regret, therefore, that I inform you that the North Koreans are once more in control of the Basin Reserve scoreboard. 

Long-time readers will recall that for some years the amount of fake news purveyed by the board led me to believe that Kim Jung Un and his mates were using it to undermine the moral fibre of the western world. It has improved more recently, but now they are back.

What do we ask of a board? The basics are the team score; who the batters are and what they have; and who is bowling. Only the first is consistently available at the Basin this season. Batters’ scores flash on for six seconds before disappearing; the bowler’s name does the same, except during the second half of the T20 innings when it was not shown at all. A miscellany  of other information is there instead, including what had happened earlier in the over, a comparison of progress in each innings (always a useless statistic), even how many balls were left after one over of the 47 had been bowled, and the weather in Pyongyang, all instead of what we actually wanted to know (I made the last one up, but the rest were there). At one point, the number of wickets lost was shown in three places, but the batters’ names nowhere. People who knew anything at all about cricket would not commit these atrocities of misinformation, so the North Koreans it must be.

In the circumstances the DLS target, updated every ball, would also have been useful, but this was left to the hand-operated board, and was changed only at the end of each over. With the rain getting ever closer, the Central openers, Boyle and Heaphy, made good use of this information, and made sure that they were ahead as they approached the 20 overs that are the minimum needed to allow a win by one side or the other. This is when the trouble started. 

The rain was timing its approach as precisely as the Central batters. As the 20th over began we were in the transition from damp to wet. Nathan Smith was bowling from the southern end, into the northerly (I had not mentioned that a gale was blowing at the Basin as regular readers will assume that). Three runs came off the first three balls. The umpires were starting to look at the sky, each other, and the sky again, but were prepared to stay long enough for the bowler to run in three times more to give us a match. The first of these was a legside wide. 

Smith ran in for the second time, only to pull out as he reached the umpire, protesting at the gale, the King Lear of the South. At the next attempt he managed to let go of the ball, landing it mid-pitch, then watched it bounce high and wide to the boundary for five wides. This was enough for the umpires, who called a halt, rightly given the strength of the rain. 

Words were exchanged between the teams, with Smith protesting that (and I remove a couple of adverbs here) the wides were not deliberate, and that the last one slipped. Here it is; decide for yourselves. Had the incident become more widely known, the keyboard protectors of the Spirit of Cricket would, no doubt, have had little sleep over the last few days. Up in the RA Vance Stand we thought it rather clever. Had a Central bowler done the same we would doubtless have been outraged, but so it is with most of these tests of the game’s tenuous morality. 

It was a good day at the cricket.

The 2021/22 Season in New Zealand So Far

The 2021/2 Plunket Shield began with the unexpected but glorious distinction of being the domestic first-class competition of the World Test Match Champions. As the world’s cricketing media sought to account for this unlikely turn of events, the strength of New Zealand’s domestic game was cited by many as a significant factor, particularly the pitches that are, we learn from the overseas press, balanced perfectly between bat and ball.

Well, I’m as surprised as you are. We devotees of the Plunket Shield (we are a select band) are puzzled that a competition consisting (in normal times)  of eight matches a team (not enough for a double round-robin), played in the season’s dawn and dusk, should have propelled us to the summit. It is like finding that your loved but unexceptional child Wolfgang Amadeus is a fair piano player. I should not be surprised. Almost everything that I read about New Zealand in the foreign media is wildly inaccurate. 

But the Plunket Shield is still something to be treasured, especially in these times. This season started with only four of New Zealand’s six cricketing provinces able to participate, Auckland and the bigger part of Northern Districts being in lockdown. 

In the Basin Reserve’s Long Room we were all masked, even though Wellington remained Covid-free. I am astonished, when I look at sports fixtures elsewhere in the world, that hardly anybody is wearing a mask. How have those who find a small square of cloth such a challenge coped all these years with trousers, not to mention the myriad challenges that  underwear brings? New Zealanders, much more than most people, believe that the common good is a common responsibility. As I write, fifty people have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand since the whole thing kicked off (which does not stop people in places with thousands and thousands dead telling us how we are getting it wrong).

Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 23-26 October 2021

The Basin Reserve will be hosting international cricket when the Plunket Shield concludes next February and March, so Wellington’s four home games were done with by mid-November. So this account represents not just the start, but also the totality of my domestic first-class spectating for this season. 

Wellington were without Jimmy Neesham and Devon Conway, both at the T20 World Cup. Hamish Bennett has given up red-ball cricket so as to extend his career in the national limited-overs teams. Wellington will miss him, but have found a replacement in Nathan Smith, a 23-year-old all-rounder who has represented the national Under-19 and A sides. Smith made a fine start against his old team, trapping Hamish Rutherford lbw with his second ball. Rutherford offered no shot. As ever I invoked the words that the great Arthur Jepson would deliver as he raised the finger in such circumstances: “there’s a reason why tha’s got a bat in thy ‘and lad”.

Smith continued to impress, with two more wickets in the first innings and six in the second. He is skiddy and slippery, at a decent pace too. 

Wickets fell regularly. The biggest partnership of the innings was 49 for the seventh wicket. This naturally raises the question of the pitch, which was the Basin’s traditional first-day green, but with a yellow tinge down the middle, as if to profess its love for Norwich City. Otago’s 207 was the highest total of the match, the difference between that and the lowest being only 27, so the pitch was at least consistent in its capriciousness, which was no more than might be expected of the early season in a temperate climate. 

This being the context, a target of 193 was an anxious one for the home supporters, the more so when Rachin Ravindra went off holding his arm gingerly, having been hit. He missed a good deal of last season with a shoulder injury so we feared a repeat. Happily no damage was done, and has since made his test debut in the two tests in India, saving New Zealand from defeat in the first test by blocking for the last 90 minutes of the match and taking the catch that completed Ajaz Patel’s miraculous ten-wicket haul in the second. Regular readers will know that I have been tipping Ravindra for success for a while, though that requires no more insight than predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Now we know that he has the temperament as well as the talent.

The most memorable moment of the match was Luke Georgeson’s catch at third man off Rutherford’s ramped cut in the second innings. The ball went towards the boundary in a flat arc. Georgeson had to make a fair distance backwards before diving to take a one-handed, over-the-shoulder catch, always aware of the proximity of the boundary. This initiated a discussion among the stalwarts of the Long Room about the best catch seen at the Basin. The consensus was for  Mayu Pasupati’s full-length dive in the 50-over final in 2000, though Trent Boult has multiple entries in for consideration, as CricInfo has recorded. Georgeson’s was at least the equal of any of them. 

Rutherford was seventh out, having raised then dashed my hopes of seeing an opener carrying his bat through a first-class innings. A man needs an ambition in his declining years. 

Throughout the game in the Long Room there was an empty chair with a reserved sign on it in the name of Fred Goodall, New Zealand’s most famous pre-Bowden umpire, mostly for being body checked by Colin Croft. Fred had passed away a week or so before. He was a regular attender right up to the end of last season, despite declining health. On the first morning, Otago’s top three were all out leg-before, as fitting a tribute to Fred as could be. 

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 31 October-3 November 2021

This fixture was scheduled to be against the quarantined Northern Districts, so Canterbury, unable to host Auckland, filled in, so we had successive first-class matches between the same teams on the same ground. Canterbury won both resoundingly, their Shield-winning form continuing from last season. 

Five wickets fell in the first session after Canterbury were put in by Michael Bracewell, and it seemed that we were in for a repeat of the moderate scores of the Otago game. But none followed between lunch and tea as Canterbury took control. It was a match in which class told, first in the form of Henry Nicholls, who made 97 while he second-highest score from either top six in the first innings was 26. Nicholls is Mr Imperturbable, unfazed by what is happening at the other end or by any ball except the one he is about to face. 

There was a strong performance from the bottom half of the Canterbury order, most notably from keeper Cam Fletcher, who made 110. Fletcher kept beautifully too, standing up impeccably to the sharp medium pace of Will Williams. Tom Blundell played here before heading off to India as successor to BJ Watling as the national team’s custodian (a term worthy of rehabilitation). During this first phase of the Plunket Shield I also saw Max Chu of Otago (another recent centurion) and Wellington’s reserve Callum McLachlan. Of the four, Blundell was the least impressive with the gloves. He will need to improve, or score a stack of runs, or both to keep his place. 

A lead of 218 was not enough to tempt Canterbury to enforce the follow on. Instead, Tom Latham’s unbeaten 127 was the innings of the season so far, and gave context to the challenges that the pitch presented to those of lesser ability. Ravindra’s second-innings 70 approached its quality, and constituted not far off half of Wellington’s second innings.

Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 7-9 November 2021

An hour or so into the first day, most of the players on the field dived to the ground and lay flat, reminiscent of that photo of Lord’s during World War Two when a doodlebug cut out above them. Here, it was bees. There was a story on the radio the other day about the tradition of telling bees the news. PL Travers wrote about her aunt doing this. “ ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man.’ ” I’m sure that the bees were interested in the state of the Basin Reserve pitch. Someone should have faced them and said “Bees, it’s another one in which you could hide an emerald in plain sight, but batting of quality can still produce runs, and that will decide the game”.

I was present only for the first day of this one, but, in terms of wickets down  that constituted almost half the match. With the test players gone, it was Canterbury’s opener Ken McClure who stepped up, with 130, four fewer than Wellington managed in their first innings, and 15 more than their second. 

The fourth match of the series, against Central Districts, was during the working week, so I didn’t get to any of it. For the first time this season Wellington scaled the heady heights of 200, and in both innings, but Central’s first-innings lead of 120 was the foundation of a seven-wicket victory. 

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 1 December 2021

It was something of a relief for us Wellington folk to send the Plunket Shield into summer hibernation and to turn to the shorter forms. The 50-over Ford Trophy began with another visit from Otago, who put Wellington in. This year the longer shorter form is mixed in with the T20, As every match in the latter is on TV, they have first call on the pitches in the centre of the block, so as to be aligned with the camera towers. Thus the Ford Trophy finds itself in the cheap seats at the edge, where the pitches have a shifty countenance, coloured like a damaged car with a hasty respray. This is no bad thing as it produces a balance between bat and ball and a fuller test of skills that is much preferable to a 370 v 370 slugfest. This game was a fine example. 

Here, Wellington reached 255, more than looked likely for much of the innings, thanks to some effective hitting from Nathan Smith in the final overs. Otago’s slow bowlers were their most effective. Left-arm wrist spinner Michael Rippon took four for 41 while Anaru Kitchen conceded only 26 from his ten overs. 

So Michael Bracewell’s early exit from the field after a blow on the fingers seemed decisive, depriving Wellington of ten overs of slow stuff (a better representation of Bracewell’s oeuvre than “spin”). Bracewell returned to the field periodically, unsuccessfully trying to persuade the umpires that the binding on his hand would not assist his bowling, the cricketing equivalent of claiming that the Norwegian Blue remained sentient. 

For the greater part of their innings it seemed that Otago were coasting it, led by Neil Broom’s 72. Broom has reached that stage when people ask if the Broom playing today is the son, or maybe grandson, of the former Otago player Neil Broom, but it is still the original, accumulating away in the cause of the South. When he was fifth out Otago had to score 54 to win in ten overs. As so often, it was a run out that undid them, as Rippon sold non-striker Kitchen a dummy of which any Otago outside half might have been proud. Jakob Bhula, slow bowling stand-in for Bracewell, did a fine job in the final phase with five overs for just 19 as Wellington picked the match from Otago’s pocket. 

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 21 December 2021

The Ford Trophy has a veneer of equity about it, with each province playing all the others twice. However, eccentricity lies underneath. In each pair of fixtures, the same side is at home for both games. This is supposed to be cost-saving, with two matches in three days. Three weeks separated the two fixtures between Wellington and Otago, yet  the southerners were asked to make the long journey to the capital once more, when a reversal of venues would have meant that each team played five at home and five away. 

It was an enjoyable day in the sun, without there being much of note to report. Wellington made 333 with solid contributions from most of the batters led by the increasingly impressive Troy Johnson with 88. Otago lost wickets regularly and soon fell irredeemably behind the required rate. I left early, something I rarely do out of fear of missing the extraordinary, but nothing of that nature occurred in my absence. 

To finish this round up of the first half of the season, four T20 games.

Wellington v Central Districts, T20, Basin Reserve, 5 December 2021 Women Men 

Wellington v Canterbury, T20, Basin Reserve, 19 December 2021

Women Men  

New Zealand Cricket continues its admirable policy of making every match day a double header, with a women’s and a men’s game. The inclusion of the women widens considerably the range of approaches and skills to be seen, a pleasing degree of aestheticism replacing an over-reliance on power.

Regular readers will know that, for several seasons now, Amelia Kerr’s legspin bowling has been one of the great pleasures of my cricket watching. To this she has added consistent and heavy scoring. Her lowest score in the five games so far is 42, the only time she has fallen short of a half century, which goes some way to explaining why Wellington are the only team with an unbeaten record at the halfway stage. 

The same cannot be said for the men. The chances of a home final as top-placed team in the round robin are remote, with just two wins from five. 

We begin 2022 with a 50-over game on New Year’s Day; I can’t think of a better way.

Peak McPeake at the Basin

Wellington v Otago, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 4 February 2017

Watching one-day cricket these days is akin to following the later career of Frank Sinatra. You think he’s done, but he makes another comeback and you are grateful for it, but the pleasure is tempered; you know that he will die one day soon.

In England the 50-over competition is to become an early-season event, best sponsored by a manufacturer of thermal foundation garments. And this is just a holding position before it becomes a means of occupying players who not good—or rather marketable—enough to get a city T20 contract.

Here in New Zealand we have our own ingenious methods of counter-marketing, the art of putting people off going to the cricket. The main stand at the Basin is currently out of commission, so there is no chance a seat behind the arm. The members’ lounge is open, but gaining admission to it has been a challenge worthy of one of those eighties game shows like The Krypton Factor or The Crystal Maze, such were the number of fences and locked doors placed in the path of the member thirsting for their complementary coffee.

On Wednesday for the Central Districts game, an added disincentive was the presence on the upper deck of three sinister figures clad in orange full-body suits complete with breathing masks. The sign reading “Danger asbestos removal in progress” was short on reassurance on a day when Wellington’s gale-force winds were in full voice.

Today, another refinement in spectator deterrence: the sign outside the ground advertising the fixture said that it was playing played on Sunday rather than Saturday, as was actually the case.

But the biggest weapon in spectator counter-insurgence is, of course, the Wellington weather. When the fixtures for this season were published, I looked forward to seeing all four of Wellington’s home games in this competition. How touchingly naïve. We all know that summer’s lease hath all too short a date, but even so, in Wellington it needs to get a decent lawyer to look at the small print.

The first of these games, against Auckland, was scheduled for a day on which Wellington appeared to be staging a city-wide performance of The Tempest. My Khandallah correspondent, who has flown into Wellington hundreds of times, ranked her landing that afternoon as the second-worst ever, on the basis that the plane made its way down a considerable portion of the runway at a perilous angle with only one wheel in contact with the ground. Abandoned without a ball bowled.

The second, against Canterbury, began in mid-afternoon as a 27-over game, but the rain returned to leave the result in the hands of Messrs Duckworth and Lewis, who ruled in favour of the home team.

The third, against Central Districts, began in a gale strong enough to redistribute the markers for the 30-metre circle randomly around the field. The rain returned after 30 overs of the CD innings and that was that. Or was it rain? The Met Service data records rainfall of only 0.4 mm that day, possibly a record for the least amount ever to cause a game to be abandoned. Yet nobody disputed the decision to keep the players off the field, the evidence being there before our eyes. The thing is that to be measured, rain has to fall to earth. The moisture here was driven horizontally by the gale, condemned like the wandering albatross to spend most of its existence in flight. Either that or it was asbestos flakes.

Remarkably, this spell of cricket as played by Noah left Wellington top of the table, each curtailment or abandonment working in their favour. Clearly, Wellington’s mistake all these years has been to take the field when prosperity lay in staying in the changing sheds.

So it was wonderful just to sit in the sun at the Basin today, never mind the cricket. A win for Wellington would keep them at the top of the table with one more to play, while Otago needed a victory to maintain their interest in the competition. The visitors won the toss and elected to bat.

With Hamish Rutherford injured, Croudis and Rippon were an unfamiliar opening pair, both having made their Otago debuts only in the last couple of weeks. Rippon is the epitome of the modern cricketer: a South African who has represented the Netherlands, kolpaked for Sussex, and is now trying his luck on the South Island.

Wanting to know more about him, I looked Croudis up on CricInfo, only to discover that it doesn’t know where or when he was born, or even what his names are. The Otago Daily Times was better informed. Gregor Croudis is 23 and was preparing to start his first teaching job when called up by the province.

The pair made a slow start against the accuracy of Arnel and Bennett, who removed Rippon’s off stump in the eighth over with the score only 25. Bennett is bowling superbly at the moment, quite as well as when he was picked for New Zealand a few seasons ago.

Arnel tired in the last of his five-over spell and was twice driven to the cover boundary by Croudis, who also lifted Taylor over square leg for the first six of the game. At 72 for one in the fifteenth over Otago were well-placed but the entry of Jeetan Patel into the attack changed the game as it so often does on either side of the world.

The off spinner immediately trapped Croudon lbw, punishing the batsman’s temerity in coming down the pitch. In the coming weeks Croudon will often see the same expression of truculent disbelief that he displayed here on the faces of his new students.

Patel had Eathorne caught behind cutting in his next over, but it was Ian McPeake who took out the middle order, winning the game for Wellington in the process. McPeake was twelfth man for the early games in the 50-over competition, until an injury to Anurag Verma gave him a chance.

Today, we experienced peak McPeake. Bowling his ten-over spell straight through, he accounted for numbers four to seven in the Otago order. Three were caught behind by Luke Ronchi, the other at second slip by Michael Papps. There was a touch of green and good bounce in the pitch but only as a reward for spot-on bowling, which is what McPeake produced, at a decent pace too. He finished with four for 33.

Luke Woodcock replaced Patel (two for 11 at that stage) at the southern end, which released the pressure a little, with the left-armer going for two fours in his second over. Hamish Marshall might have kept Patel going with the aim of bowling Otago out, but Woodcock removed de Boorder caught at mid-wicket from a half-hearted shot after the batsman came down the wicket, leaving Otago at 114 for eight.

Christi Viljoen—another lost Vortrekker—hit brightly for a few overs, but Arnel returned to have Smith leg before, and Viljoen was caught at deep mid-wicket to end the innings. Pollard misjudged the catch completely, but held on thanks to a last-second sprawl. Patel, exemplary as ever, finished with three for 23. The target was 154, with a bonus point available if it was achieved within 40 overs.

Even after all this time cricket produces surprises, something I have not seen before. Today it was a left-arm wrist spinner—Rippon—opening the bowling. I haven’t seen many of this genre bowl at all: Sobers possibly, Bernard Julien occasionally, Paul Adams inconsequentially. I saw the South African twice in tests, and checking the records it seems that I witnessed his final test spell, at Hamilton in 2004, all three overs of it, but that’s all. There must have been others, but I can’t think who offhand.

Rippon bowled one over for three runs but was then taken off. Given that it was such a noteworthy event it was a surprise that the official record still (at the time of writing) claims that Josh Finnie bowled that over. Finnie is an off spinner, so not easily confused with a left-arm bowler of any kind. Besides, the bowler had “Rippon” on the back of his shirt which I’d have thought would have been helpful.

Viljoen took the new ball from the northern end. He bowls with a front-on windmill action reminiscent of Max Walker or, for older readers, AL “Froggy” Thomson, whose brief international career included taking the first ODI wicket. Viljoen had Papps caught behind, flailing at a wide one in his second over.

Tom Blundell was the other opener. This time last week Blundell thought that he was first-choice keeper for the national one-day side; now he is second-choice for Wellington, having been supplanted by Latham and Ronchi (returning from injury) respectively. Here, with Hamish Marshall, he moved things along quickly, with five fours off seven balls at one point.

Rippon returned (or, as the scorers would have it, came on) but was a caricature of a wrist spinner, pitching the ball (if at all) anywhere but a length.

The introduction of 18-year-old Nathan Smith (right-arm medium fast) was more successful. He accounted for both Marshall and Blundell in his first over, the first lbw and the second caught at mid on. There was an element of variable bounce and pace about both dismissals.

Ronchi and Taylor chose the direct route to victory, with three sixes between them. They put on 52 for the fourth wicket, 21 short of victory when Pollard was bowled by another ball that kept very low. 200 would have been a challenging target with the pitch deflating by the minute. Ronchi and Woodcock both went before the end, leaving the margin of four wickets look closer than it was.

With only 26 overs needed, the bonus point was achieved, leaving Wellington two points clear at the top of the table with one round-robin game to play. The knock-out phase takes the form of 1 v 2 (winner hosts the final), 3 v 4 (loser out), then the loser of the first game v the winner of the second for the other final place. Wellington have to beat Canterbury in midweek, but thoughts turned to a semi-final at the Basin next weekend.

But the Stop Cricket at the Basin (SCAB) group is cleverer than we thought. There is a concert featuring some of New Zealand’s best-known artistes scheduled for the Basin on semi-final day. Presumably the local authorities regarded the possibility of Wellington gaining a top-three place as being too fanciful to take into consideration. There being no other venue available (and why would there be in a city of 400,000 people, the nation’s capital?), Wellington would take the game far enough away not to need the men in orange suits to deter the Basin faithful.