A Great Test Match: New Zealand v England, 2nd Test, Basin Reserve, 24-28 February 2023

 

Scorecard

As Richie Benaud would have said, “Blundell; Tucker; Anderson the man to go”.

Thus ended the finest test match that most of us have seen, a contest that joins Sydney 1894, Headingley 1981 and Kolkota 2001 as the only test matches to be won by a team following on; and Adelaide 1993 in being won by one run. One match on two of cricket’s most exclusive lists.

I was there (the three best words that anyone can write about a great sporting fixture), for the whole match, but let us focus on the extraordinary fifth day.

It began with England needing 210 more for victory with nine wickets standing, a situation that we New Zealanders would have grabbed thankfully had it been offered a day in advance, but which had become disappointing after the home team lost its last five wickets for 28.

The man out at the end of the fourth day was Zak Crawley, bowled through a gap big enough for a basketball. As a man of Kent I am naturally pleased to see the old club have a presence in the England team, but supporters of every county can propose a player or two who would have averaged more than 27 had they been given 33 tests. I’ll start: Darren Stevens. “James Hildreth” sings out from the Quantocks and the Mendips, and so on.

Ollie Robinson is in the great tradition of Sussex nightwatchmen inspired by Robin Marlar, apocryphally out second ball for six. Robinson took a single off the first ball of the penultimate over of the fourth day, so exposing Duckett, then attempted to put the ball over the Museum Stand before the scheduled close.

It was therefore no surprise when, early on the final day, Robinson scythed one in the air, finding Michael Bracewell under it.

Bracewell had been from triumph to disaster and was now making the return journey. On the first day he took the best slip catch that the Basin has seen in a long time, stretched full length parallel to the ground, collecting the ball in his left hand at the second attempt to dismiss Duckett.

But on the fourth day, Bracewell became a national villain when he was run out after omitting the most basic of cricketing protocols: grounding his bat when completing a run. Only five more were added to the total before New Zealand were all out, which left Bracewell’s face on the wanted poster seeking the man responsible for England’s target being fifty or so fewer than it might have been. What is more, he knew that, as the only spinner in the team, he was carrying a nation’s expectations, despite having been a serious bowler for only a couple of years.

Michael Bracewell had a good day, in the end.

It was when Ben Duckett was out six runs later, flashing at one outside the off stump off Henry, that we took the first tentative shuffle towards the edge of our seats. These days, whenever an English batter gets out to a shot that has not been in the MCC Coaching Book since Gladstone was prime minister, cynics are inclined to point to the moral failings of what, for convenience, we will call Bazball. This despite McCullum being responsible for reviving England’s test team from the frightened, failed state it was in less than a year ago. In fact, England’s approach to the chase was pretty conventional.

Tom Blundell took the catch. Second-highest scorer in both innings here, he has conducted more rescue operations in the past year than the average lifeboat crew. For once, he came in with what appeared to be a decent score on the board, 297 for five, but take the deficit into account and it was 71 for five, so it was carry on as normal. In England’s second innings, Blundell stood up to the quick bowlers more than I have seen any keeper do, and he did it superbly, like Godfrey Evans standing up to Alec Bedser.

Blundell put on 158 with Kane Williamson. For much of his career, you looked at the scoreboard 45 minutes after Williamson has come in and saw that he had 35, but couldn’t remember how he got them. For the time being he has lost this ability to accumulate by stealth, and here it was more of a battle, but the longer it went on the more fluent he became on his way to 132. The memories that this match gave us.

On the boundary, Neil Wagner waited. He may have been wondering if this was his last day as a test cricketer. England’s new, aggressive mindset had cost him 311 runs from just 50 overs, the trademark Wagner short-pitched delivery more of a threat to spectators on the boundary than it was to the batters. He had lost a few kph, just enough to take the aces out of the pack that he used to perform his trick that kidded his victims that he was genuinely quick. He had become Boxer, the carthorse from Animal Farm, whose “work harder” solution to every problem could no longer defy the advancing years.

Wagner came on first change. Ollie Pope swotted his third ball to mid-wicket boundary, and it seemed we would have to look elsewhere for our hero today. Confidence buttressed, Pope saw four more runs coming from the last ball of the over and shaped to cut, but Wagner was telling the old joke again. It was on Pope a tad quicker and a smidgen straighter than he anticipated. Latham took a good catch at second slip. Eighty for four.

Joe Root and Harry Brook were now together, the most reliable Yorkshire combo since Aunt Betty and puddings. Their first-innings partnership of 302 for the fourth wicket was the best batting that any of us had seen for a long time. Brook made 186 from 176 balls with a low level of risk and a near-perfect match of shot to delivery. The perfection of his placement suggested that he could earn a living threading needles.

In comparison to Brook, anything that might be said about Root’s innings is at risk of damning him with faint praise. At any other time in England’s test cricket history we would say that four an over, mostly on the first day, was a remarkable rate of scoring. It was a perfectly judged innings, and had New Zealand lost on the third or fourth day, as many of us expected, we would have treasured the memory of this test match for the batting of Root and Brook alone.

Root nudged the ball towards the gap between third slip and gully and seemed to set off. Maybe he had forgotten that Blundell was standing up to Southee, ready to collect Bracewell’s throw. It was Brook’s call, but it must be hard to tell your hero “no”. He didn’t face a ball.

With 173 to get and five wickets standing, the game had become New Zealand’s to win, but the combination of Root at his best and Stokes, who loves a cocktail of tension and pressure, was as good as the cricket world could offer in this situation.

A contact who spent time in the press box told us that the English writers are calling Stokes “Brearley”, and not in a nice way. If this is so they should be ashamed, so much has Stokes done for cricket in general and England’s cricket in particular. One of the many narratives of the epic story of this test match was that both Stokes (knee) and Henry (back) were struggling with injuries and pain that should properly have seen them in the dressing room attached to a small iceberg.

The tension and bottled-up emotion of the next three hours was worthy of Le Carré at his best. Every ball came wrapped in hope and fear, the balance for the home supporters ebbing away from the former until it seemed all gone. Root, his judgement making Solomon look a dabbler in the art, took on the role of run chaser and proceeded at close to a run a ball. He was harsh on Bracewell in particular. Stokes, cast against type, was putting the emphasis on defence, ready to take over the guns if Root went down.  

Southee was most effective in keeping the scoring rate down, and his effervescent first-innings 73 was critical in reducing the lead. It will seem a surprising observation to say that a knock of 49 balls that contained five fours and six sixes shows us (and ideally Southee himself) what a dusting of contemplation can do. His shot selection was more spot-on than at any time since his debut 77 in a lost cause at Napier in 2008, for which I was also present.

I wanted Wagner back on earlier. Root and Stokes had been reasonably respectful of him at the start of their partnership, as if they had heard a particularly apposite sermon on the dangers of temptation. Bracewell bowled admirably, but was always dependent on a batter’s error to take a wicket, which did not succeed in doing.

We didn’t see Wagner in the attack again until the target was below 60, and it seemed that our chance had gone. So depressed was the general mood that some people who had left their city-centre offices at 80 for five were sufficiently desperate as to contemplate returning to them.

Perhaps the gloomy miasma reached and infected Stokes. He took the fourth ball of Wagner’s first over back to be an invitation to disrupt the traffic to the Mt Victoria tunnel, but, from somewhere, Wagner summoned that extra bit of pace and up in the air it went, landing safely in the hands of Latham at backward-square leg.

Astonishingly, Root fell for the same old trick in Wagner’s next over, except that this one did not get up as much. Had the shot gone as planned it would have broken the Museum Stand clock and Root would have had his second hundred of the match, but instead it lobbed gently to Bracewell at mid on.

With 55 needed and three wickets left, the arrival of Stuart Broad at the crease was more likely to comfort the home, rather than the visiting, supporters. I recently re-read my unflattering view of Broad’s batting in the World Cup match between these teams in 2015, and thought it harsh (I compared his thinking to that of the local ovine population, to their benefit). Yet here he approached his task just as New Zealand were expecting and wanting, the only surprise being that it took him as long as nine balls to shovel a catch to deep third where, inevitably, Wagner was waiting. It needs to be said that it was a privilege to watch Broad and Anderson bowling together one last time in New Zealand.

Foakes and Leach were together with 43 needed and only Anderson to follow. Much of what happened in the remaining overs mystified me. I have never understood why, with two wickets left to win the game, a team would stop trying to get one of the incumbents out by conventional means, instead setting fielders on the boundary and relying on the batter making a mistake. But this, of all matches, is not in need of over-analysing.

Ben Foakes approached his task courageously and came so close to winning the game, yet amateur selectors continue to contemplate an England team without him. At the other end Jack Leach summoned the spirit of Headingley ’19 to give resolute support. The closer the target got, the bolder Foakes became. A pull to the mid-wicket boundary would have been caught by Bracewell, had he been on three metres further out. There was a no ball for three fielders behind square on the onside. Then were two successive fours off Wagner, the first of which might have decapitated umpire Tucker.

On and off the field, New Zealanders were struggling to hold their nerve as we counted the target down. Again, it appeared that all hope was lost. We were Tom Hanks, waiting to die on the raft in Castaway, all hope gone.

For the third time within the hour an English batter became over ambitious. With seven needed Foakes went for the big shot off Southee only to find the top edge. One of the best moments of spectating is when you follow a ball through the air and work out where it is going to fall. From my position high in the RA Vance Stand I could see that it would land about five metres inside the rope at fine leg, but that part of the boundary was obscured by television camera scaffolding, so I only at the last moment did I see Neil Wagner emerge, and throw himself towards the ball to take the catch. No possibility of drama on this day was omitted from its narrative.

In came Jimmy Anderson. Of course. That would be the story here, Anderson hitting the winning run. His clubbed four through mid on off Wagner to put England a single away from a tie supported this interpretation.

The next seven deliveries each encompassed the torment, guilt and despair of its own deadly sin. The fifth ball of Southee’s over was especially taxing as Leach made his only attempt to score in the over, stopped – just – by a diving Henry at mid on.

Then: Blundell; Tucker; Anderson the man to go, and it was done.

My Brooklyn correspondent, a man only a little younger than me, hurdled two chairs in the Long Room at the moment of victory. I myself leapt high in the air, several times, an expression of joy from which I had assumed myself to have retired in the late 1980s, but we all lost thirty years for a minute or two.

Strangers embraced, linked forever in a moment. One of the Basin regulars said that we would remember this day for the rest of our lives, and so we will. Given the choice between recalling this day and my own name, I will choose the former, with no hesitation at all.

Of all my days at the cricket, this was the best.

 

 

The End of the New Zealand Season

New Zealand v Bangladesh, third ODI (of three), Basin Reserve, 26 March 2021

Wellington v Northern Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 27–30 March 2021

The Bangladeshis have been here, the sixth and final international opponents to visit New Zealand this season (including the English and Australian women). To the pleasure of the capital’s cricket fans, their visit here was to the Basin Reserve rather than the Cake Tin. It was only the fourth ODI at the Basin since I moved to Wellington in 2006. The authorities are reluctant to shift short-form fixtures away from the stadium, perhaps because it would be tacit acceptance that the multi-sport concept behind it was flawed. Usually, it occurs only when there is a clash of events, but this time it seems to have been accepted that the crowd likely to be attracted to the fixture would look lost at the bigger venue. 

Bangladesh have a 100% loss record for international matches in New Zealand, and had maintained that in the first two games in the three-match ODI series. But we in Wellington look forward to their visits, as we so enjoyed the test match here in 2017, which had some brilliant cricket and a finish in the final session of the fifth day.

Regular readers will know that recent Basin Reserve pitches have varied wildly in their character. Early on in the new Zealand innings the difficulty that batsmen had in timing the ball suggested that this one was towards the bowler-friendly end of the spectrum. 

New Zealand won the toss and batted. Henry Nicholls, heaving like a ship in a typhoon, was dropped off a diving chance to keeper Mushfiqur Rahim, only to be caught in the gully two balls later. Something similar happened to Ross Taylor, first dropped, then caught, this time by the keeper, at the end of the same over. Rarely for him, Taylor is going through a bit of a dip in form. Is this age casting its long shadow? He wants to go through to the next 50-over World Cup, and has the botox of class with which to ward off the calendar’s attack. In the meantime, he has been impressive in the commentary box during the T20s.

Guptill and Latham, both in good form, were also out to mistimed shots, which made it hard to judge what an adequate score would be. At 120 for four from 23 overs it could have gone either way; that the final total was as high as 318 was down to an innings of some brilliance by Devon Conway.

Since he came to Wellington from South Africa in 2017, these columns have brought to readers’ attention his international class. This has required no special insight nor superior analytical ability; the weight of runs he has scored are evidence enough. Here, there were shots off the back foot and the front foot, on the offside and the legside, played with a precision of placement that made boundary fielders look as if they had weights strapped to their legs. 

My favourite shot was the straight drive he played early on…or maybe the late cut in his 40s between two fielders so close they might have danced…or perhaps the successive drives through the offside after he had reached his century…or even one of the other of the 17 boundaries he hit, each of which might have been hallmarked.

Conway has not yet played test cricket, but must do so in England. There has been some debate about where he will fit in. The middle order of Williamson, Taylor, Nicholls and Watling, followed by an all-rounder, is well-established. As a practised No 3, opener seems the best option for him, which would be tough on Tom Blundell, who averages just under 40 from ten tests, most of them at the top of the order, but it is a characteristic of a successful team that what was once good enough becomes no longer so. What is clear is that Devon Conway is too good to leave out. On both his entry and exit from the field Conway was hailed like the local hero he has become.

Conway was well-supported by Daryl Mitchell in a partnership of 159. Mitchell was 83 at the start of the fiftieth over, a century improbable, but three fours off Mustafizur’s first three balls, the last a no-ball, brought it within reach. A two and a single moved Mitchell to 98, but left him at the non-striker’s end with two balls left. It looked as if Santner had found the cover boundary with the next, but never has a home batsmen being denied a four been more warmly received; they ran three to give Mitchell one chance. A better throw would have run him out, but he scrambled the second and reached his maiden international hundred, the 21 accrued from the over apparently putting the total beyond Bangladesh’s aspirations. Only towards the end of the reply, when Mahmud Ulluh started hitting out, was a serious attempt made to score at the required rate, but it was far too late. New Zealand won by 164 runs.

The following day a select spectating elite returned to the Basin for the final home Plunket Shield fixture, against Northern Districts. As usual, the severe green of the pitch suggested that the groundsman had been under the impression that he was preparing a surface for snooker rather than cricket. It has been some time since a toss-winning captain chose to bat first here in a first-class game, and Northern Districts’ skipper Joe Carter was not going to buck the trend. But, as is usual these days, the pitch was like a fierce-looking guard dog that, upon being offered a chocolate, rolls over to have its tummy rubbed.

Anybody entering the ground during the 15th over with Wellington 40 without loss would have thought that they missed nothing the least bit out of the ordinary. Yet I have never seen anything like it before in the first hour of a first-class game. 

Twenty-four of those runs came in sixes, all pulls by Rachin Ravindra. I have written about 21-year-old Ravindra’s rich promise before. This was his first game for a couple of months after sustaining a shoulder injury in the T20, so peppering the bank was just working his way of working himself back in. The shots, perfectly executed, were impressive enough, but the best thing was that these were the only attacking shots he attempted in that first hour. Great shot selection, technical excellence, the audacity to go through with them and the mental discipline not to get carried away and try it too often all wrapped up in one young opener. 

None of the sixes came off Neil Wagner. An odd fact about contemporary New Zealand cricket is that Wagner has never played for the national team in either of the shorter forms, which is why he was able to be in the Northern Districts line-up here. One can understand why, sort of. He functions only when set to “attack” and asking him to throttle back to the containing mode required in the limited-overs game would be like recruiting Genghis Khan for a UN peacekeeping mission. 

Here, at first it appeared that Wagner had signed up with Bouncers Anonymous as, unusually, he forsook his natural length, located close to his toecaps, for the uncharted waters in the third of the pitch nearest to the batsman. There were signs that he was about to fall off the wagon—a fielder sent three-quarters of the way to the square-leg boundary—but not until the twelfth over did he go round the wicket to take his seat at the short-pitched bar. Even then, it was only to Georgeson; there was no greater compliment to Ravindra than Wagner’s reluctance to give him further opportunities to smite sixes.

Towards the end of the day Wagner struck Troy Johnson on the pad. The appeal was a theatrical masterpiece, so perfectly constructed as a three-act drama that halfway through I instinctively looked for an usherette from whom to buy a vanilla tub. 

He drew on some of the finest dramatic oeuvres, starting with the great tragic actors. Then a pirouette and a backwards progress down the pitch en pointe brought to mind Nureyev as Romeo, before a finale on one knee, arms spread wide in beseechment was Al Jolson reincarnate. All of us would have walked a million miles for one of Wagner’s smiles except the umpire, who ruled it not out.  

The context for Wagner’s performance here was a dead game (the Plunket Shield having been sealed by Canterbury before it began), and he was certain of his place for the forthcoming tour to England, so had nothing to prove. Yet his analysis for the innings was 24-7-34-1. He could not have tried harder. Neil Wagner is the most estimable of cricketers. 

Ravindra joins Wagner in the tour party. He went on to 138, first out with the score on 226. Blundell also made a hundred. Long-term, his international future may be as BJ Watling’s successor as keeper. Northern Districts had reached 97 for four in reply to Wellington’s 414 for four declared at the end of the second day, only rain to wash away the final two days.

So ended the New Zealand season. It has been a good one. The fixture list worked well for me, enabling me to see more Plunket Shield and domestic 50-over cricket than I have for a few years. There was a good test match, and I enjoyed the T20 competition more than before, especially the women. That, I think, was down to an appreciation that simply being at the cricket was a privilege in our world.

My mother, who more than half a century ago was so willing to foster a young boy’s unexpected fascination with cricket, was one of those taken by Covid as the Kent variation ravaged the county, three days after my aunt succumbed to it. It will be some time before I’m next at St Lawrence (if ever, I sometimes think) so it has been a real treat, this week, to watch county cricket on YouTube. The sight of Darren Stevens sauntering in with the new ball proved that the world is not turned completely upside down. 

I hope that those whose reports and reflections on county cricket and its players I so enjoy, and anybody else who knows the pleasure of a day at the cricket, have the sun shine on them this English summer.

New Zealand defeat the West Indies at the Basin Reserve

 New Zealand v West Indies, Second Test, Basin Reserve, 11–14 December 2020

Scorecard

As the West Indian fielders and the New Zealand openers took their positions for the first ball on the first day of this test match, they went down on one knee to affirm the universal truth that black lives matter. There had been no announcement of this beforehand so it took us by surprise. There was silence for a few seconds, then I and others started applauding, soon to be joined by a good proportion of the crowd. It was an emotional moment on a sunny morning with the red blooms of the pohutukawas leaking across the Basin’s panorama. Added to the privilege that we in New Zealand feel at simply being able to go to the cricket  was my personal reflection on the debt I have to West Indian cricketers. They were my Jesuits, capturing me at my most impressionable, inculcating me with an unshakeable faith in the passion and excitement of cricket to a degree that English cricket’s abstaining methodism of that time could not inspire. 

Regular readers will know that finding new ways of conveying the deep verdancy of New Zealand cricket pitches has proved a challenge to Scorecards over the years. The strip at Hamilton for the first test attracted a lot of social-media attention from the UK, mostly from people to whom it did not occur that the parameters of pitch behaviour 12,000 miles away might vary from those at the club down the road (the more strident the opinion about New Zealand, the less likely it is that the perpetrator has been here, or can locate the country on a map). The occasions on which these pitches produce the amount of assistance to the bowlers that their appearance might conventionally suggest are greatly outnumbered by those on which they do not. The score at the end of that first day at Seddon Park was 243 for two. Discussing this issue the other day, the TV commentators suggested that the green grass here might be so dense that the main effect is to cushion the ball. 

At the Basin, the first-morning pitch was about an eight on the international scale of greenness, and three-and-a-half measured domestically, still enough for Jason Holder to put New Zealand in upon winning the toss. Tom Latham was captain, as he was the last time Scorecards reported on the national team, in Sydney at the start of the year. This time, Kane Williamson’s absence was down to the impending arrival of his daughter. 

The sun had a ticket, but the wind is a life member at the Basin, and registered its presence by removing a bail at each end after the first ball of the match. The gale seemed to blow Shannon Gabriel off course. His first two overs went for 21, the ball pitched up too far with no consistent line. 

Gabriel adjusted to the conditions with the alacrity of an America’s Cup skipper. In his next 12 overs he took three for 17. The first of the three was Tom Blundell, the ball after he had cover driven a four. The next one came back just enough to find the gap between bat and pad and to hit the top of the off stump. Gabriel bowled with the wind, but that meant that he had to walk back to his mark into it, which he achieved at a speed of a retreating glacier. 

Showing himself to be an over-the-top-into-the guns sort of leader, Jason Holder opened the bowling into the wind. His opening spell was tight, but the first wicket from that southern end was taken by his namesake, Chemar Holder, at whom Latham drove to provide a first test dismissal not only for the bowler but also for replacement keeper Da Silva, in for the injured Dowrich.

Regular readers might expect that Devon Conway would have come in at No 3, so often has Scorecards extolled his credentials as an international batsman in the four years since he started playing for Wellington and qualifying for New Zealand. Despite Conway’s impressive start in the T20 side, Will Young of Central Districts got the call in this series. Young was close to selection for some time before making his debut in the first test. He was down to play in the Christchurch test against Bangladesh that was cancelled following the terrorist attack on the mosques in that city in 2019. He has a first-class average of 43, just four fewer than Conway. 

Ross Taylor was Gabriel’s second victim with another ball that straightened a little to provide a second catch to Da Silva. This brought in Henry Nicholls, another feeling the breath of Conway on his collar. It is a sign of the current health of New Zealand cricket that Nicholls’ current test average of 41 did not guarantee him a place for the rest of the season when not so long ago it would have done so for several summers. He and his fourth-wicket partner Young knew that a substantial innings by one would mean the other making way for Williamson on his return on Boxing Day against Pakistan.   

Young fell for 40 to a stunning diving catch by the captain at second slip (it was a surprise not to see Holder driving the team bus at the end of the day such had been his ubiquity in other roles). Nicholls finished with 174, but was missed four times, including two straightforward slip chances, and had edges go into gaps on any number of occasions. He showed great mental strength not to be undermined by his good fortune, but Young might be forgiven for shaking his fist at the fates. 

BJ Watling played an uncharacteristic innings that ended in an uncharacteristic way. Big shots replaced little nudges: 24 of his 30 runs came from boundaries.  He played on attempting to cut a ball that did not have the necessary width. 

Daryl Mitchell looked as comfortable as anybody and accompanied Nicholls to his century, achieved appropriately with an inside edge. It was the hundredth test century at the Basin, and one of the ropiest, not that Nicholls will care. New Zealand finished the day on 294 for six, much better than it would have been with average test-match catching.

The southerly always keeps its diary free for some of the Basin test, and was there for the second day, but without its usual icy venom. The Wellington summer wardrobe of two sweaters was sufficient.

The highlight of the first half of the day was Neil Wagner’s innings at eighth down. Wagner bats as he bowls, like a man writing an angry letter to the editor, in green ink with much underlining. After five balls to gain a sighter, he began with a little light legside slogging off Holder, then top-edged a six off Joseph, who was beginning to look a bit of a spare part, as Josephs will at this time of the year. 

Our hero was dropped twice at fine leg in three balls, neither easy, but both catchable. The joke du jour was that it had been a waste of money putting the West Indians in quarantine for a fortnight as they can’t catch anything. With a combination of the classical and the grotesque, the 50 partnership, 39 from Wagner, came up in 30 balls. In his 50th test, Wagner’s first test 50 was now close, but he had to wait until after lunch to push for two past point to get there. How we roared. There is no more popular cricketer in New Zealand than Wagner, for his enthusiasm, dedication and unkiwilike bad temper. He is Monty Python’s Black Knight made flesh. In the Boxing Day test a couple of weeks later he bowled 28 overs in the second innings with two broken toes. Here, Wagner marked the landmark by unrolling a cover drive of which Frank Woolley would have been proud. 

When Nicholls’ marathon ended, Wagner was joined by Trent Boult, the only batsman by comparison to whom he appears measured and orthodox. Anyone who has not seen Boult bat need only read some of Hardy’s descriptions of the bucolic folk of Wessex scything hay in the fields to get the flavour. He was off the mark first ball with a six over wide long on.

The innings finished two balls later at 460, Wagner unbeaten on 66. This was at least 200 more than the fielding should have allowed. 

West Indies had not taken a single step towards that total when Southee got one to hold its line close enough to off stump to force Brathwaite to edge to Watling. Along with Boult, Southee controlled and threatened throughout the opening spell. The inevitable second wicket came when Bravo did not go through with a drive, giving Southee an athletic return catch. Bravo’s departure from the field was Brexit slow.

These days, the New Zealand attack is no longer what Graham Gooch described as the World XI at one end and Ilford Seconds at the other. After Boult and Southee there was Wagner, who had got himself into a state about the price of fish, or global warming, or something, and was working it out with red-ball therapy. Then there was Kyle Jamieson, whose first over was one of the most memorable bowled in tests at the Basin.

Jamieson has made a dazzling start to his international career this year, having been on the domestic scene since 2014. He is 26, and it is hard to explain why he has suddenly become such a force. There was never a chorus of calls for him to be picked before he was. Yet here he is, with batting and bowling averages of 49 and 14 after five tests.

He came on, into the wind, for the 15th over. The first ball brought appeals from the slips, but not the bowler, for caught behind, but it had flicked the pad. Jamieson joined in the appeal for lbw from the second ball, but Latham did not review, rightly as there was an inside edge. Campbell drove at the third, full on off stump, and was caught behind. Chase’s first ball was an inswinging yorker that bowled him. 

The hattrick ball got the RA Vance Stand to its feet, as it clattered into Jermaine Blackwood’s pad, but the review showed that it was missing leg. The final ball was closer, again spearing into the back pad. It was turned down on review on the umpire’s call. 

Blackwood played for a while with the abandon of a man who has cheated death and is attempting to tick off his bucket list, reaching 30 from just 21 balls. At this point he drove hard to give Jamieson a tough return chance that was put down. This seemed to bring him back to his senses, and he took a further 43 balls to reach 50. With Shamarh Brooks he put on 68 for the fifth wicket.

Brooks was bowled by Jamieson playing no shot for a 92-ball 14, the first of the six remaining wickets to fall for the addition of only 34, leaving the West Indies with a deficit of 329. Southee and Jamieson divided the wickets equally between them, but this was a combined achievement of the whole attack. There was no let up in the pressure from either end.

The final two wickets were taken on the third morning. Since the abolition of the rest day, it has become unfashionable to enforce the follow on, but Tom Latham could feel what it was like to be Clive Lloyd, with four fast bowlers at his disposal, two of whom would always be fresh, so the West Indies openers were back in on a cold morning that had me watching the first session from the Long Room. 

The second innings went much better than the first for the visitors.There was more of an attacking intent, with 186 more runs scored in just 23 more overs compared to the first innings. The openers had almost seen off the opening spells from both ends when Boult removed Brathwaite and Bravo in the 11th over, the former to a fine catch by Young at leg gully off the middle of the bat. 

Campbell and Brooks put on 89 for the third wicket, but both fell within four runs of each other, interspersed with Chase picking up a pair. We expected the game to be wrapped up within the hour, but the West Indies lower order had more spirit, led by their estimable captain. I have written before of my admiration for Jason Holder, who has borne the burden of the West Indian captaincy with courage since the dark day of the World Cup quarter-final at the Cake Tin when he fielded lonely on the boundary as Martin Guptill tore his team apart. 

Holder found support from debutant Joshua Da Silva. They put on 82 for the seventh wicket in 18 overs, relying on the big hits rather than rotation of the strike and took the game into the fourth day helped by an early finish because of bad light, which, as ever, came when the batsmen were seeing the ball better than at any point in the match.

Holder was out in the first full over next morning to a cracker from Southee that left him just enough to take the off stump. Alzari Joseph got off the pair with a hooked six off Southee and made 24 entirely in boundaries before being caught behind off a legside strangle. Da Silva got a deserved half century on debut.

Wagner uprooted Gabriel’s middle stump to secure the victory with a margin of an innings and 12 runs. As usual, New Zealanders put the result down to how poor the opposition had been. As Holder acknowledged after the game, their catching was awful and spending so much of their lives in various degrees of quarantine over the past few months must take its toll, but we must overcome the natural humility that is central to our charm to acknowledge that we have a very good test cricket team. 

That as good a player as Devon Conway does not walk straight into the team shows the strength of the batting (Williamson returned to the team for Boxing Day and peeled off his 23rd century). We have added to this a four-man quick attack of high quality, even if, with loveable Kiwi diffidence, it lacks the speed of the great Caribbean attacks or England 2005. Of course, Wagner bowls as if at 150 kph rather than the mid 130s that the machine registers, a magnificent illusion worthy of membership of the Magic Circle. A quality spinning all-rounder would round things off nicely. Mitch Santner may fill this slot, but isn’t there yet. 

India’s defeat of Australia in the Boxing Day match in Melbourne means that New Zealand and Australia are level on points at the top of the ICC rankings, but, as we have come to expect from ICC contests, a technicality (most boundaries? wicketkeeper’s height? who knows?) keeps us in second place. 

This is different from the ICC test championship, with a final at Lord’s in prospect for the top two. New Zealand have a path to this, but it seems to depend on a decisive win for either Australia or India in the rest of their series, and for India against England. 

This may leave us in the awkward position of being on Australia’s side in the current series, though unprecedented choruses of C’mon Aussie, C’mon have yet to be heard this side of the Tasman.

I wish everyone a happy and safe 2021. 

Return to Sydney

Australia v New Zealand, third test, Sydney Cricket Ground, 3 – 6 January 2020

Scorecard

I last went to Sydney for a test match 21 years ago. It was the final match in the 1998-9 Ashes, and there was much fine cricket to see: a partnership of 190 by the Waugh brothers; Darren Gough’s hattrick; Michael Slater’s 123 that accounted for a greater proportion of his team’s total than any one batsman since Bannerman at the MCG in the very first; 12 wickets for Stuart MacGill. The history is palpable at the SCG; it is no effort to see Foster bouncing up the pavilion steps after his 287, to sense the anticipation as Bradman came down them, or to hear the sweetness of Trumper’s timing during any of his three Sydney Ashes centuries (or Woolley’s in his two).

First day

It was surprising to hear God Defend New Zealand struck up before play on the first morning when Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe might have more appropriate, given the Groundhog Day experiences of Perth and Melbourne, now to be repeated here at the SCG: Australia make a big score, New Zealand make a small score, Australia set a big target, New Zealand fall well short.

What’s more, the party was now depleted by illness, just as England’s was at the same time in Cape Town. Why are these fit young sportsmen so susceptible to bugs? More quinoa in the diet than the immune system can tolerate, perhaps? At least in Sydney there was no football match to further reduce the numbers, though this may have been only because there were not enough players left standing to make up two sides.

The biggest loss was the captain, Kane Williamson, not in his best form, but always the man most likely to make the substantial innings that New Zealand so badly needed. Henry Nicholls and Mitch Santner had also succumbed, though Santner would probably have been dropped anyway. Trent Boult was also out (though this was injury rather than illness) so the best bowler joined the best batsman on the sidelines.

There was no option but to bring back Jeet Raval, dropped for Melbourne after showing the form of a three-legged racehorse so far this season. The other batting place was filled by debutant Glenn Phillips of Auckland, the form player…in the 50-over competition. Phillips learned of his selection while surfing, and arrived in Sydney at about the same time as I did, the day before the game.

The New Zealand management chose to make one further change, omitting Tim Southee in favour of two spinners and the extra pace of Matt Henry. A comparison between the two teams in this respect would be that of a Ford Anglia to a Ferrari, but Southee had taken 12 wickets in the first two tests. It seemed odd at the time and nothing occurred over the next four days to change that view.

Had Southee played, he would have skippered, but it was Tom Latham who lost the toss to Tim Paine. New Zealand has been good over the years at knowing who the next captain will be and preparing them for the role, and Latham now fills this position. Williamson will, we hope, continue as a player for most of the 2020s, but may grow weary of the captaincy; Latham will be ready.

Paine’s decision to bat on winning the toss was an easy one. The pitch was expected to change as a test pitch should, becoming a spinner’s paradise on the fifth day; how true that was, we will never know.

With Wagner, for reasons that I have not heard explained, allergic to the new ball, it was Colin de Grandhomme who opened the bowling with Matt Henry. There was a certain amount of merriment about this from the Australian commentators, with Sunil Gavaskar being mentioned as a bowler of similar type of opening bowler, but de Grandhomme got Burns with a beauty that pitched on middle and off and moved away, to be caught by Taylor at first slip. Again and again he exceeds expectations. “Which of Henry and De Grandhomme will average under 30 with the ball and which around 50 at the end of the decade?” is a question we would all have got wrong at the outset of their careers.

De Grandhomme was also involved in the second wicket, straight after lunch. It was a legside long hop from Wagner that Warner hit pretty much as he intended only for de Grandhomme to snap it up at leg gully.

Steve Smith joined Marnus Labuschagne. The following half-hour or so was brilliant test cricket. No wickets fell and few runs were scored, but it was gripping. It was all about Steve Smith getting off the mark, which he took longer to do than any Australian for at least 20 years. Geoff Allott made a 77-ball duck against South Africa in 1998, and Godfrey Evans famously batted against type to remain scoreless for 90 minutes at Adelaide in 1946/7, but they weren’t trying to score. Smith was, and it took determined and skilful bowling, and sharp fielding to stop him. The best bit was the contest of pure will between Wagner and Smith. Even when Smith did manage to work one off his hip, a direct hit might have cost Labuschagne his wicket.

Smith continued to 63, with only four boundaries. He looked out-of-form, but he always does to a degree. There can’t be a club medium pacer anywhere who hasn’t seen Smith and thought that they would have him with a full-length ball on middle and leg, but the numbers tell us that is nothing but self-deception. If he were a building he would be of the brutalist school, stripped of all finery and elegance, but solid enough to withstand a nuclear explosion.

At the other end, Labuschagne was manifestly and magnificently in form, reaching his fourth century in seven innings after tea.

From mid-afternoon, New Zealand went more and more onto the defensive. On the radio, Mark Taylor said that Latham had set “a field looking for a bad shot”. In this, he was an authentic stand-in for Williamson, whose captaincy style is increasingly defensive. It was forced upon him by the inability of the spinners to exert pressure. Off-spinner Will Somerville was home; he grew up in Sydney from the age of nine and has moved between Australia and New Zealand as an adult. He had one successful season for New South Wales in 2016/17, taking 35 wickets in the Sheffield Shield. A late developer—he is 35—he is a chartered accountant, but didn’t bowl like one today. Leg-spinner Todd Astle was also wayward. Neither today nor at later stages of the match did Latham trust them enough to bowl them in tandem.

De Grandhomme took the third and last wicket to fall on the first day, getting Smith with a repeat of the Burns dismissal. The third-wicket partnership was worth 156. The day’s most rambunctious batting came from Matthew Wade, who took it to Wagner in the last few overs of the day, and was unafraid to hook and pull, depositing one ball among the members in the pavilion. Australia finished the day on 283 for three.

The comment by Mark Taylor referred to above, I came across on Macquarie Sport’s coverage. Radio rights are not exclusive in Australia, and three different teams provide ball-by-ball commentary on tests, an approach that the ECB should consider. Taylor shares the calling (describing the play) with the competent Bruce Eva, with the wonderful Ian Chappell leading the analysts, who included Geoff Lawson, Glenn McGrath and Ian Smith. Danny Morrison was there too, but nowhere near as irritating as he is on television. This was some of the best cricket broadcasting I have heard for some time, particularly when Taylor, Chappell and Smith were on together. They were very funny too, rich in anecdote and wit (which is not to be confused with banter, the curse of modern sports broadcasting). It was well worth putting up with the ads between overs and the in-commentary promotions (“on the MacDonald’s scoreboard…”). My enjoyment of the cricket was enhanced by having them in my ear telling me what was going on.

Second day

In the western suburbs of Sydney, pavements became frying pans and   and thermometers bulged as temperatures touched the high 40s, but at the SCG it peaked at a more temperate 35 degrees. I took my seat in the Victor Trumper Stand early and spent the hour before play applying sunscreen impasto.

At the start of the day all the talk was about the timing of the declaration, so Australia being bowled out represented progress. That the New Zealand openers survived until the end of the day made it the best day of the series for the tourists, though this is to damn it with faint praise.

Wade went in the first over of the day, attempting to sweep a Somerville delivery that did nothing more than to carry on in a straight line to take off stump.

The biggest partnership of the remainder of the innings was 79 between Labuschagne and Paine for the sixth wicket. Paine became a pantomime villain, dominating the strike as Labuschagne neared 200.  Astle received the custard pie in the face when a DRS referral for his lbw appeal to Paine was discovered not have hit the pad at all.

Labuschagne went on to complete his first test double hundred, reaching 215 before giving Astle a leading-edge return catch. On the first day the bulk of his runs had come square and behind on the legside, but today he became more expansive and attractive, using his feet to the spinners and unleashing drives as handsome as a matinee idol.

His dismissal triggered a mini-collapse, with four wickets falling for 20 runs. The Stakhanov of the South, Neil Wagner, was heavily involved. He bowled Pattinson via his glove, arm and bat and removed Starc’s middle stump to finish the innings at 454, a total that New Zealand would have taken at the start of play with the enthusiasm of Arthur Daley unloading a dodgy motor onto a naïve punter.

But my, we New Zealanders were nervous. As Latham and Blundell went out to bat our expressions were those of an anxious mother dropping off her choirboy sons on their first day at Bash Street Secondary. It was a close-run thing at times, but they survived to the close.

Latham showed yet again that his technique against the new ball is as good as anybody’s. Blundell drew heavily on raw determination and chapters from the Brian Close Book of Rash Bravado. I have seen quite a lot of Blundell for Wellington and have never spotted his potential as a test opener, something I have in common with coaches, commentators, selectors and probably Blundell himself. He made a century on debut, but that was against a tired and lacklustre West Indian attack. Selected as opener on Boxing Day as the last man standing, he made another century of an altogether different order. His unbeaten 34 here was as impressive, against the odds and expectation.

So we left the SCG in good heart, able to cope with the news that the heat had put Sydney’s brand new light rail out of action. Fifty busses were magiced from the air and within the hour I was at dinner, pleased with the day.

Third day

As the temperatures dropped, so did New Zealand’s hopes and self-esteem. The main reason for this was some terrific bowling by Australia, particularly Nathan Lyon, who it was a treat to watch. The pressure exerted by good bowling often results in dismissals to poorer deliveries, but several of the New Zealanders got out in ways that were uncharacteristic, almost as if they were overwhelmed by the place and occasion, as New Zealand cricketers can be in the palaces that the Australians play cricket in. It may be not be chance that New Zealand’s only test win in Australia in the past 35 years came at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, a ground and town that look like they belong more in New Zealand than Australia.

Blundell provided an early illustration of this phenomenon. He was unlucky that the ball found its way between his legs to the stumps, but it was a long hop, a ball that he could usually be relied upon to dispatch.

Raval played much more aggressively than usual, particularly off the back foot, as if he had decided to hit his way back into form. He looked good until on 31 he fell lbw to Lyon, well forward but confirmed by DRS.

Latham, solid as ever this morning, followed in the next over, dollying a catch to a surprised Mitchell Starc at mid on, the only out fielder forward of square on the legside.

At lunch a total of 143 for three appeared satisfactory, but the New Zealand supporters felt on the edge of a precipice, over which we teetered first ball after the interval when Ross Taylor—who had looked in good form to that point—was lbw to Cummins.

It seemed that Latham would win the prize for getting out in a way you would expect him to be the least likely to do, but Watling took it away from him with a loose drive to a ball well wide of off, a shot he does not usually play until the sun has risen twice.

Meanwhile, the debutant Phillips was trying to get out but failing, a kamikaze pilot who kept returning to base. Twice Lyon dropped return chances, the first, which ripped off the bowler’s thumbnail, explaining the second. When he was caught at deep midwicket the replay showed that Cummins had, by a whisker, failed to land any part of his boot behind the front line.

A couple of days before the game nobody would have predicted that either Raval or Phillips would be playing; even more improbable would have been Raval’s scoring rate being significantly higher than Phillips’. But test match cricket can be about character as much as ability and Phillips deserved the fifty he reached after tea because of the way the chances he offered did not diminish his sense of entitlement to be there. He became more fluent as his innings went on and he had the consolation of being out to a top-class delivery from Cummins that moved through the gap between bat and pad to hit the top of off.

Speaking of kamikaze pilots brings us to de Grandhomme, run out attempting a second that nobody apart from him thought was on.

With the tail invertebrate, New Zealand fell three short of saving the follow on. Or so we thought, naively underestimating the ability of cricket’s rules to bend the time-space continuum.

Warner and Burns made it to the close untroubled except by their own running between the wickets, which twice left the latter face down in the dirt like a defeated western dueller.

I made my way to the Guylian Belgian Chocolate Café for a medicinal dessert with views of the Bridge and the Opera House. If your team has to lose badly, Sydney is the place for it.

Fourth day

Inspired by Burns’ two close calls yesterday, New Zealand adopted a strategy of bowling for run outs. Warner and Burns batted with considerable urgency, adding 54 in the first ten overs.

No contemporary cricketer irritates opposing fans more than David Warner. Australia’s answer to Jeffrey Archer, he has bounced back from shame and humiliation, hubris and ego undiminished. But what a batsman he is. In the opening overs he played two shots that were as good as any in the match, the first a cover drive threaded between a straight extra cover and a wide mid off, the second a cut that scorched the grass in the split second it apparently took to reach the boundary. He weights his shot impeccably, enabling twos to be taken where others would only get singles.

The inevitable hundred came in 147 deliveries. I had promised myself that I would discover an urgent need to leave the stand as the moment approached so as to miss the vulgar extravagance of his celebration. But I stood and applauded with the rest of the crowd, compelled by the excellence of the performance.

Astle got Burns lbw from a googly via the DRS. That brought in Labuschagne who ghosted his way to fifty unnoticed, as the best can. He needed 69 to break Hammond’s 90-year record for a five-test season’s aggregate. This is stretching it a bit as Hammond made 903 in one Ashes series whereas Labuschange’s runs have been made over two series, but it would have been something to have been there and I was sorry that he fell ten short.

There was some distraction late in the innings as Aleem Dar became agitated about the batsmen running on forbidden parts of the pitch, like a father protecting a daughter’s honour. A warning was followed summarily by the imposition of a five-run penalty. Dar would have preferred to have had a shotgun with which he could have forced Labuschagne to marry the pitch to protect its reputation.

At first nobody knew whether the five runs were to be added or deducted, or to or from what. It emerged that New Zealand’s first innings gained five runs, so for the first time in the series New Zealand had saved the follow on! What a time to be alive!

The declaration came with Labuschagne’s dismissal, leaving New Zealand a notional target of 416, or to bat for four-and-a-half sessions. But willing either of these outcomes would be like going to Romeo and Juliet in the hope of seeing a wedding in the final scene. Instead, everybody knew that the ending would be painful. It was less spectating and more being at the bedside as the patient slipped away.

At 22 for four, passing New Zealand’s 65-year-old record low of 26 could not be taken for granted. Ross Taylor played some bold shots down the ground that took him past Stephen Fleming’s 7,172 to become New Zealand’s biggest scorer in tests. I first came across him almost two decades ago as a 16-year-old playing for the New Zealand Under 19s. No question about the talent, but he had and has the mental strength to go with it, and to carry on a while longer, apparently, keeping the record warm for Kane Williamson.

De Grandhomme and Watling put on 69 in their contrasting styles to show that the pitch was not necessarily as toxic as the top order had made it appear. In the batsmen’s defence more dismissals than in the first innings were down to quality deliveries, notably Cummins’ dismissal of Taylor. James Pattinson’s catch to dismiss Astle, sprinting 30 metres then a full-length dive, was the catch of this series and plenty of others.

Last time I watched a test at the SCG Stuart MacGill took 12 wickets; this time, Nathan Lyon had ten, a supreme display of spin bowling on a pitch that gave him no more than moderate help.

Final thoughts

Australia, once more, has a very fine cricket team. Warner and Smith have returned and Labuschagne has emerged, giving them three batsmen performing at world class. The pace attack contends with India’s as the best around, and Lyon is brilliant. Australia would have beaten any and all opponents over Christmas and the New Year (though the visit of India next season will be interesting).

Nevertheless, New Zealand’s performance in this series was hugely disappointing. Not just beaten three-nil, but beaten by such wide margins with such little fight, the second and third tests carbon copies of the first.

New Zealand began the series as the second-ranked test team. At least four of the team would be strong contenders for an All-Time New Zealand XI. We all knew that it would be difficult, but hoped for a performance that would erode our historical inferiority complex in trans-Tasman cricket, not augment it.

That all three tests finished in four days was awkward, at a time when the barbarians are at the gate, shouting for that to be the standard duration. It is difficult to explain that a test that finishes in four days might have had a different outcome if scheduled for four rather than five. New Zealand might have saved this game and perhaps one of the others had survival over four days been possible; the chasm between the two teams might have been disguised, which would have been wrong.

A strong performance might have brought New Zealand in from the fringes of international cricket, the country cousin surviving on the oxymoron of two-test series.

The strong turnout of New Zealanders means that we probably won’t have to wait another 32 years for an invitation to the Boxing Day/New Year party, assuming that it remains possible to play cricket in Australia at that time of year, something can’t be assumed given the sight of the Harbour Bridge shrouded in smoke haze on the day I departed.