Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 5 –
7 November 2022
Restful would be as good a description of this game as any.
The scoring rate clung to two an over like lion cubs fearful of straying too
far from their mother. I was there for the first two days. The Basin was a
picture in the sunshine, but the southerly kept me in the Long Room where the
main topic of conversation was whether the pies are as good as last year’s.
Wellington were put in. With spring moving into early
summer, the pitch was not such a radical shade of green, official rather than
provisional, if you will. The movement it provided was not extravagant, but was
constant. I have not, for a long time, seen the ball pass the outside edge as
often as it did on the first day. It was this that explains the slow scoring,
provoking the batsmen into an abundance of caution. The pitch was not
particularly slow, with good carry through to the keeper.
Auckland’s left-arm opening bowler Ben Lister was unlucky
to take only the wicket of Georgeson. On another day he could have had five or
six, but might his response to constantly beating the bat without finding the
edge have been to pitch it up a fraction more?
Tom Blundell was, yet again, top scorer. He came in at 102
for four, not a crisis, but the innings was in need of taking more exercise and
being put on a better diet. Troy Johnson, with 42, was the only other
Wellington batter to get more than 20. Somebody said that Johnson had scratched
about and looked out of form, but it takes a decent player to scratch about for
three hours.
The wickets were shared around the Auckland attack,
including two for off-spinner Will Somerville, who is the Flying Dutchman of
New Zealand cricket, doomed to sail the Seven Seas forever and never see home,
as a test player at least. All six of his test appearances have been in the
heat and dust, and he may get the call to go to Pakistan over the New Year.
Look at Somerville and the way the selectors have treated Jeetan and Ajaz Patel
over the years and you might conclude that in New Zealand we treat dogs better
than we do spinners.
Auckland’s first innings was, in many respects, a copy of
Wellington’s. Solia was the dogged presence at the top of the order, and Ben
Horne the keeper who bolstered the innings at No 6. But the chorus was more
vocal for the visitors, with 44 from George Worker (a member of the Aptly-named
XI, along with Boycott and PJ Hacker of Notts, among others) and a tenth-wicket
partnership of 55, so though it looked much the same, a lead of 124 was the
outcome.
The pace was just as stately. It was as if Derek
Shackleton was bowling at one end and Tom Cartwright at the other. It was 1969
all over again, cricket with Nixon in the White House and Harold Wilson in
Downing Street. I found it calming.
There was a short flurry of excitement when, after 96
overs Auckland found themselves 44 short of the second bonus point, available
for the first 110 overs of the first innings. Horne was provoked into a temporary
abandonment of pacifism and 250 was reached in just eight overs, after which tranquillity
was restored, with just nine from the next seven overs.
In my absence on the third day, Wellington were shot out
for 132, leaving Auckland with just seven for victory. Lister was more
successful in locating the edge of the bat, with four wickets, and Somerville
took three more.
And that is it for me and the Plunket Shield for this
season. Yes, in the equivalent of early May I have seen all the domestic
first-class cricket available to me in 2022/23. With two tests at the Basin
when the competition resumes next year, Wellington’s home fixtures are all
scheduled before Christmas. In fact, with India using the ground for practice
ahead of a T20 at the Cake Tin, the fourth (and final) “home” game was in
Palmerston North, two-and-a-half hours away and not in Wellington at all. Yet
Fitzherbert Park is an appropriate alternative to the Basin in that it is the
only other ground I know of on which the prevailing weather is a gale sufficiently
strong to gather up small dogs and children and deposit them in neighbouring
streets.
Shorter forms of the game dominate the fixture list for
the next couple of months.
