The Plunket Shield begins

Wellington v Auckland, Basin Reserve, 11-14 November 2024

In common with the County Championship in Britain and the Sheffield Shield in Australia, the Plunket Shield bookends the season in New Zealand, four rounds before the shorter forms take over at the height of summer, four more as the leaves turn from green to brown. The difference between my experience at St Lawrence in April and the Basin Reserve in November was about 15 degrees celsius. It was most pleasant in the RA Vance, at least until mid-afternoon when the southerly turned up. I was there only for the first day of the opener between Wellington and Auckland.

The first thing we noticed was the sightscreens, installed at considerable cost, both financial and in terms of the view of play from the Royal Box. That at the southern end was out of action, replaced by something closely resembling an Imax screen, spread out over the grass bank. The screen at the northern end remained functional, though the white sheets attached to the framework flapped about as if they were washing hung on a line. They had not survived 130kph winds a few days before. It had not been thought worth checking the resilience of the screens in these conditions, presumably on the grounds that in Wellington they occur no more than three times a week. 

In preparation for the forthcoming series against England, Devon Conway, Rachin Ravindra and Tom Blundell all made rare appearances in the Wellington XI. All three might have been with the national white-ball team in Sri Lanka, but it was good to see priority given to their well-being and readiness for test cricket. Tim Robinson and Nathan Smith were on international duty in Asia. 

When I arrived, about 40 minutes in, Auckland were 26 for four. It might have been assumed that this was the consequence of an early-season greentop, but Auckland chose to bat after winning the toss on a pitch that was closer to grapefruit than lime in colour. There was a bit of movement, particularly before lunch, but nothing that approached impropriety for a first-day strip. There was extra bounce too, and that accounted for Cam Fletcher in particular. 

At 66 for seven we were reminded of the corresponding opening fixture seven years ago when Auckland were dismissed for 62, Wellington finishing the first day on 246 without loss. An eighth-wicket partnership of 87 between Jacobs and Ashok set aside the possibility of such a catastrophe for the visitors being repeated.

Bevon-John Jacobs is known as BJ, like Watling of that ilk. In common with the former Black Caps wicketkeeper he is South African by birth and a New Zealander by cricketing upbringing. Jacobs was making his first-class debut here, having appeared a few times in the shorter forms for Canterbury. His 75 came in 100 balls, and 58 came in boundaries, including three sixes, with hitting that was clean and judicious. 

For the 46th over, van Beek switched to the northern end, removed the close catchers, spread the fielders* around the boundary and started to dig them in. I was well into a homily on the subject of how foolish this was, and how nobody striking the ball as well as Jacobs could possibly fall for it when he hit the fourth ball of the over straight to deep mid-wicket. Any actor auditioning for the part of Othello and wanting to brush up on the portrayal of remorse would do well to study the video of Jacobs leaving the field at this point. Nevertheless, his innings gave Auckland a veneer of respectability that looked unlikely when he came in. They finished with 184.

Buoyed by our returning internationals, we anticipated a sizeable first-innings lead. What we got was an advantage of 86, to which the three returning heroes contributed 49 between them. Devon Conway chipped in with 36, but the fact that he was sixth out tells you much about the general progress of the innings. 

Conway batted much as he had in India: not looking in great touch, but scoring runs nevertheless. That is one measure of a good batter, I suppose. Rachin Ravindra was largely responsible for New Zealand’s victory in the first test in India, but lost form as the series went on. Here, he was leg before for seven. He left the field pointedly examining the edge of his bat like Thomas Chippendale handling a particularly fine chair leg, but if he had not played across the line it would have been the middle rather than the exterior that connected with the ball, and the question would not have arisen. It was seven more than he managed in the second innings. 

Blundell got six before getting an inside edge to an outswinger, the geometry of which suggests a player a distance from peak form. Some question his place in the test team after a poor time with the bat in south Asia, but his keeping remains proficient and he deserves the England series in home conditions. At the close of the first day, Wellington were 58 in arrears with four wickets left. 

Logan van Beek, with five for 53, was the main reason for Auckland’s low score, and on the second day became the driver of Wellington’s first-innings lead. Overnight, he was unbeaten on 37 from 32 balls, a fairly standard rate of van Beekian progress. In the morning, he was altogether calmer, requiring a further 126 deliveries to reach his century. He put on123 for the eighth wicket with Peter Younghusband. 

Van Beek is a cricketer who makes things happen, one way or the other. He is, I think, the only cricketer to both score and concede 30 or more in an over across first-class, List A and T20 cricket. He plays international cricket for the Netherlands so is currently unavailable to the New Zealand selectors, who would otherwise have him on their radar. This innings demonstrated a pleasing capacity for circumspection. 

The rest I will gloss over as I was not there, but Basin Reserve regulars who were present would want to do the same, given that Wellington blew their advantage to lose by 54 runs. When Auckland were seven down with the lead just 93, it seemed that the points were in the bag, but it was BJ Jacobs who turned things around with his second 70 of the game, though he had been infected with some of van Beek’s caution, as it took him 50 more deliveries than the first one. A name to watch. 

Even so, 232 should have been attainable, but Blundell’s 63 apart, Conway’s 28 was the highest score of the innings. I watched the end of the game on the YouTube feed. Seconds after Blundell left the field ninth out, the microphone on the solitary camera situated right next to the dressing rooms picked up a loud curse followed by one of summer’s most evocative sounds, that of willow on plaster. 

*It occurs to me that “fielder” has gradually taken the place of “fieldsman” in cricket’s vocabulary without any of the faux outrage that surrounds the emergence of “batter”. I have “batter” in my style guide partly because I write about women’s and men’s cricket and like to use the same language about both, but mostly because it annoys disproportionately precisely those who most deserve to be annoyed. I would take their protests more seriously if I had ever heard anybody object to the gender-neutral “bowler”, which I have not, even once, in six decades. 

Triumphs overseas as the season begins at home

Wellington v Canterbury, Ford Trophy

The first day of the season. A day of optimism and excitement for summer days to come; for the older spectators, of relief at having made it through another winter; and often of hot soup and overcoats. When I was last at the cricket, at St Lawrence in April, there were legs of lamb in the kitchen freezer that were warmer than my Blean correspondent and myself. So it was pleasant to find the Basin Reserve warm and windless, spectators able to sit outside in the RA Vance Stand without a sweater. If there is a better day to watch cricket this side of the New Year, we will be fortunate.

My Petone and Brooklyn correspondents have been occupying the same front row seats on the upper deck of the RA Vance Stand for several decades. We refer to it as the Royal Box. There was a crisis at the Australia test match earlier this year when NZ Cricket reserved the seats for dignitaries, forcing a move further up the stand. 

On the first day of the new season there was a shattering discovery. New sightscreens have been installed at both ends of the Basin. They are wider and, crucially, higher. On days where it is directly in line with the pitch, almost a third of the field is not now visible from the Royal Box. If a really quick bowler operates from the southern end it is possible that the slips would be obscured from view. Nevertheless, I was staggered, on arrival at the next game, to find that my Petone correspondent had moved back to the second row. The most apposite historical analogy that captures the magnitude of this shift that I can think of is Pope Clement V’s moving the papacy from Rome to Avignon in 1309.

 

The cause is the exponential growth of sightscreens through the years. I have been watching highlights of ODIs in Australia in the eighties and was reminded that screens in that era were often little wider than the pitch itself. Now, the screen itself is often merely the centrepiece of an installation that covers whole blocks of seats. Still batters are distracted by movement of flies at the edge of the construction. One day the screens at either end will meet on the mid-wicket boundaries, thus removing the inconvenience of providing accommodation for spectators altogether. 

For the first time in a while the opener was not the Plunket Shield, but the 50-over competition, the first four rounds of which precede the first-class fixtures. Wellington were at home to Canterbury, the reigning champions. 

The pitch was yellow-brown rather than the customary green, but there was a fair bit of early-season movement as Wellington opener Tim Robinson discovered when he edged the second ball of the match to second slip. Greenwood and Johnson put on 58 for the second wicket, but with a caution that suggested that a score of 250 or fewer would be enough. Wellington’s 129, with almost ten overs unused, was certainly not.

The collapse was begun by a splendid tumbling catch at deep mid-off by Canterbury skipper Cole McConchie to get rid of Greenwood. That was the first of a career-best five for 14 for Angus Mackenzie, who is barely on the brisk side of medium pace. It was a reward for competence rather than menace; he will often bowl as well without taking a wicket. Poor shot selection or execution helped him, Nick Kelly’s belated attempt to withdraw his bat from the  first ball he received being a prime example. 

Henry Nicholls was the first Canterbury batter to go, at 44 and the loss of three more for 20 gave Wellington hope, but Chad Bowes and Matthew Boyle took them home in the 23rd over without further loss. This was a circumspect Bowes, 48 from 49 deliveries. Later in the week he made the fastest double hundred in List A history. 

The day got better. Indeed, Sunday 20 October 2024 goes down as one of the most memorable in New Zealand’s cricketing story. The early finish at the Basin allowed us to get home in time for the first ball in Bengaluru, where New Zealand were chasing 107 for their first test victory in India in 36 years. Even more remarkably, this victory was followed by another at Pune that gave New Zealand a first series win in India, the first there by any team for 12 years. 

Then, still on Sunday in Dubai, the New Zealand women won the T20 World Cup by beating South Africa, rather easily, in the final. Both these triumphs were utterly unexpected. We in the south Pacific are all as surprised as everyone else.

The men played two tests at Galle in Sri Lanka a few weeks before going to India. Both were lost, the first honourably, falling 63 short of a target of 275,  the second catastrophically, replying to Sri Lanka’s 602 for five declared with 88 all out. They looked a shambles in the field too, as poor a performance in this respect as I could recall. 

Three weeks later they bowled India out for 46 in the first innings and won by eight wickets. How could this be? There was a change of captain. Tim Southee never looked at ease in the role, and has increasingly questionable value as a bowler. Tom Latham, effectively sacked when Kane Williamson stepped aside, given that he had led the team as much as Williamson in the previous two years or so, becomes the official skipper. Selecting the best bowler helps. Matt Henry was mysteriously omitted in Sri Lanka. He took eight wickets in Bengaluru. 

Henry was injured for the second test, where we expected India to put the world back on its axis on a pitch expected to turn like a cornered cat. It did, and Mitch Santner took 13 wickets to win the game. Santner has become one of the foremost slow bowlers in shorter forms, but that is how he has been best described; a slow bowler, not a spinner. Now he was Hedley Verity reinvented. An explanation is beyond me. I just delight in the cricket of it. 

The World Cup win was every bit as unexpected as the strange events in India. The White Ferns (ironically named given that they have not played a test match since 2003) had lost ten T20 internationals on the trot before the competition, all to either England or Australia. None of those games were close. Before that there was a series loss at home to Pakistan, a team years behind New Zealand in terms of coaching and finance. 

In the World Cup, they lost a group game to Australia, but were otherwise untroubled. Both nemeses, Australia and England, carelessly allowed themselves to be eliminated before facing the Kiwis in the knock-out stage, which helped.

What both unexpected triumphs had in common was the excellence of a Wellington player at their centre. I have been lauding Rachin Ravindra and Amelia Kerr since they first appeared for Wellington. In both cases, it took no special insight to discern their class. Ravindra had so much time, and Kerr astonishing control mixed with the ability to turn the ball both ways. Here, she was the leading wicket taker, made runs when they were most needed and was player of the tournament by a distance. Ravindra’s first innings 139 had the commentators in ecstasy at its class. In the second, he made batting look easy, when it had appeared anything but. One of cricket’s delights is spotting a good one early and watching them grow. 

It has been almost six months since I last posted, as long an interval as there has been since My Life in Cricket Scorecards was inaugurated in 2009. This was mainly a question of time. I have chosen to interpret the turfing out of the Labour Government here in New Zealand at last October’s election as the voters expressing a wish that I spend more time at the Basin Reserve, and have reduced my hours working in Parliament, creating a bit of space for writing, so more soon, hopefully.

Retirement and age mean that, despite having not lived there since 1997, I have to deal with officialdom in the UK. How you people over there get anything done, I just don’t know. I received a letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs telling me that I was due a refund on tax paid on my UK teacher’s pension, and that a cheque would arrive soon. 

I can tell that you have questions. In answer to that of younger readers, a cheque is how they paid for things in black-and-white films. And to the next, no, I don’t understand why they didn’t put the cheque in that envelope, rather than in another one two weeks later either. The currency, you ask? UK Sterling, making it unbankable in New Zealand. I could have asked that the money be paid direct into a UK bank account by stating as much on my tax return, had I been required to make one, which I was not. And I couldn’t use the website as I don’t have a UK postcode, so it wouldn’t let me register. I have a mental picture of HMRC officials wearing frock coats and sitting on high stools, quills in hand.

HSBC were easier to contact and much more helpful, but couldn’t accept a scanned copy of the cheque, so instructed that I should send it to them, with a paying-in slip, which they would send me, given that I had remissfully not equipped myself with one, not having paid a cheque into a UK account in the current millennium. Thus, in the era of AI, two bits of paper made their way halfway across the world, and back again. By the way, there is no windfall here. My role is merely that of intermediary between the tax authorities of both countries.

I have to say, as an infrequent visitor, that life in the UK seems, in most respects, to be a bit more complicated than it needs to be. When I was planning a day at Lord’s in May, I discovered the 21 steps that the Middlesex website makes the potential spectator go through to purchase a ticket. It was something of a relief that it rained. 

Cricket in England, April 2024

Kent v Surrey, County Championship, 19-22 April 2024

It was such a good plan. I would begin in Canterbury with two or three days under the Spring sun before heading west to Bristol to watch at the County Ground for the first time since leaving for New Zealand in 1997. Then a day at Lord’s, where I had last been that same summer, when I put on my suit for a day in the pavilion on my Kent member’s privilege. But England was grey, wet and, above all, cold this April, so my return to English cricket after a five-year interval ended up as two (slightly-less-than) half-days at St Lawrence, where champions Surrey were the visitors.

It was wet on the first morning, but I made my way up the Old Dover Road regardless. I am drawn to this place of memories and happiness whenever I return to Kent, especially today, when tributes were to be paid to Derek Underwood, who had died a few days before.

With no score to show, the big screen was playing a reel of highlights of Underwood picking off some of the best: the Oval ’68 (how well I remember that long afternoon waiting for the puddles to be erased from the Oval outfield and the black-and-white tension of the last hour); Australia in ’72, with Knotty taking a smart catch or two; Eddie Barlow yorked in the 55-over final at Lord’s in ’78.

There was supposed to be a tribute before the start of play, but with the delay they decided to hold it at midday instead (it embraced Ramon Subba Row too). I hope that they do it again when the ground is full and the sun is shining, but at least the few who were there had mostly seen him play. None of the players obviously. For them Derek Underwood would have been as distant a concept as Tich Freeman was to us. But Alec Stewart was there. He played against him and will have let the Surrey team know something of the man.

Those of us who stood and remembered all had stories that we wanted to tell. Mine was of another grey and wet day at St Lawrence, much like this one, forty years before. There were even fewer there that day, but I was one of them. Mark Nicholas was another, one of Underwood’s victims as he made a nonsense of Nick Pocock’s gleeful acceptance of Chris Tavaré’s offer of 179 off 59 overs. You see, rain had got under the covers, and it was bows and arrows against bombs. At least Underwood’s passing was the cause of some fine writing, Nicholas again to the fore. I’m pleased that I was there, in the cold.

There were things to do to pass the time. For an extra fiver, there was a tour of the ground, conducted by a young volunteer called Sam, one of Canterbury’s official guides, but doing this recreationally. He was excellent. I learned more than I expected to, given that I have been steeped in the place all my life. It had never occurred to me to find out why it bears St Lawrence’s name. Thanks to Sam, I now know. He was the second Archbishop of Canterbury after whom a leper hospital on the site of the ground was named, replaced by a mansion called St Lawrence House, which was demolished early in the nineteenth century, creating space for the cricket ground.

The fiver also gave access to a teatime talk in the Chiesman Pavilion (which surely should be renamed the Stevo Pavilion: the great man was present, ready for recall) by Kent’s curator, Ian Phipps. This is intended to be a regular feature, the starting point of each being an item or two from the club’s collection. Here, we went back to the origins of cricket in the county by looking at one of the sticks into which notches were cut to record the scores. Afterwards, I chatted to Ian and he showed me the scorebook in which Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth hundred was recorded in the copperplate hand of Claude Lewis in 1973.

Kent are to be congratulated on these initiatives, which I encourage anybody going to Canterbury to take advantage of. Now, more than ever, there is a need to celebrate cricket’s story and heritage.

Last time I was there, on the final pre-Covid day of cricket in 2019, I was a bit concerned for the old ground, which looked a little tired and uncared for. I am pleased to report that it now has more sparkle about it. There are new seats around the ground and the Frank Woolley no longer looks as if it might crumble out of use. They have done a good job of integrating the new buildings on the pavilion side of the ground; the new dressing rooms are a great improvement on the old. As Andrew Miller notes on a piece that has appeared on CricInfo while I was writing this, even the new apartments look as if they belong; what was there before was only a car park, after all (Miller appears to have had the day in the sun that I was hoping for, but was denied). Only the magnificent old analogue scoreboard over the Leslie Ames Stand, installed in 1971 if my memory is correct, looks as if it may be reaching the end of its life. The biting northerly introduced a random element by blowing the numbers about in a way that would please the North Koreans who run the Basin Reserve scoreboard. Neither this board nor the big screen can be seen from the Ames Stand, but as this is given over to a bar and hospitality boxes, I doubt that anybody notices.

When the covers were rolled back, I experienced culture shock. Living in New Zealand I have become so used to a first-morning pitch being a palette of greens that one comprising colours of the desert rather than the forest came as a surprise. Perhaps this made the scheduled use of the Kookaburra ball in this game somewhat superfluous as a equalising factor between bat and ball. County cricket, under threat as it is, must be able to sort the good players out from the moderate. Dobbing seamers producing unplayable deliveries in the Spring does not do this, but neither do centuries from mediocre batters against emasculated bowlers. It cannot be beyond the wit of science to produce a ball that combines the qualities of Dukes and Kookaburra. Failing that, a machine like those that choose the Lotto balls could be loaded with an equal number of both and present the fielding side with the ball of the day after the toss.

Zak Crawley might as well not bother if I am in the crowd. I have seen him bat “at the ground” five times including this day; only once, in the second innings of the Greatest Test of All, has he reached double figures (25 in that case). Here, he nicked off to third slip on five off Dan Worrall, who followed up by trapping Ben Compton lbw to reduce Kent to nine for two.

Daniel Bell-Drummond is club captain this year. At 30, his chance of the international preferment for which he was mooted as a youngster has probably gone. This is to Kent’s benefit if he continues to bat as he did here. From the start he showed the touch and eye of a man who has made two centuries already this year. He hit six fours in his first 34 runs, this off perhaps the best attack in the Championship. He was more measured thereafter, but not troubled. It was a surprise when he was out three overs before the close, lbw to Tom Lawes. If he follows in the tradition of Johnson, Ealham snr and Jarvis, to name but three, giving service to county alone, it will have been an honourable career.

It was a treat to watch cricket once more with my Blean correspondent, and to discover that the jokes and observations that originated in the glory years of the seventies have stood the test of time, as has our ability to clear the seats around us with the tedium of our conversation. But some things change, and we both found that the intense cold could not be shaken off as easily as it was in our (potato) salad days. It took us both the rest of the day to restore our body temperatures to normal.

This was my first time back to Kent since my mother passed away in 2021, so there were things to do and people to see. Nevertheless, a bright warm day would have brought about a change of schedule, but the weather continued to be delivered fresh from the Arctic.

We returned on the fourth morning with a short day in prospect. In the interim, Surrey had created a lead of 299, with centuries for Sibley and Lawrence. Kent resumed on 120 for five. It could all have been over very quickly, but the prospect of brevity was an incentive in these conditions. In fact, we found a place inside the Cowdrey Stand, where the bar was closed but the room open. It was much the same as watching from behind glass in the Long Room at the Basin Reserve. The company was similar too. Somebody was doing the stats and keeping us in touch with progress elsewhere. Football is a common topic. Given our location, and small numbers, a statistically unlikely number of the Basin faithful support East Anglian teams, creating an edge to proceedings when an Old Farm derby is in the offing.

There was an excellent discussion in Canterbury about the moral obligation on supporters to attend on days like these that could be all over quickly. It was agreed that it was an imperative for people in the city itself, and probably for Herne Bay and Whitstable, given the improved bus services. Those from the more remote coastal settlements were to be commended, and someone who had come down from Greenwich almost received a standing ovation. One odd trait shared in both locations is that applause continues to be offered as normal, even though we are behind glass and the players can’t hear us. A player who has done really well on a cold day at the Basin will know because the sliding windows of the Long Room will be unfurled like the unmuting of a Zoom call.

The money people who condemn the County Championship to the extremities of the season, and who plot to streamline/optimise/rationalise (or whatever business euphemism is in fashion) the number of matches, and the number of counties don’t know the currency that this stuff is counted in.

The cricket was better than expected, Kent fell only 33 short of making Surrey bat again. Ben Compton went quickly, but Joey Evison and Matt Parkinson put on 74 for the seventh wicket in 31 overs, taking us into an unexpected afternoon session. There was little that was spectacular, but I enjoyed it enormously. Two batters refusing to accept any inevitability about the result against a determined attack. I am pleased that Kent have signed Parkinson, more so that they are both picking and bowling him, even when he goes for a few. This will pay off as the season draws on.

Arafat Bhuiyan batted as all No 11s should, and took a six and two fours off successive deliveries from Kemar Roach, which few have done. Parkinson was out to the second outstanding short leg catch by Jamie Smith, and that was that. A pleasant day in good company.

The biting weather persisted, and I went down with the usual cold I get whenever I return to the old country, so I did not attend the County Ground in Bristol. I could have made a token visit but want what memories I have yet to form of cricket in England to be of shirtsleeves and lemonade, not bobble hats and Benylin. Lord’s was rained off, so I did not have to work my way through the 21 steps that the Middlesex website takes you through before sending you to the MCC website to buy the ticket.

I hope to be back one day, before too long, at a time of the year when the focus can be on enjoying the cricket, rather than the preservation of life. A gritty seventh-wicket stand and the chance to say goodbye to a hero will sustain me for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Zealand v Australia, first test, Basin Reserve, 29 February – 3 March 2024

Scorecard

Spare a thought for Jeetan Patel, watching this test match in a hotel room in India, where he was as England’s spin bowling coach. There was every indication that this was his old stomping ground of the Basin Reserve, with a pitch that was Shrek–green at the toss and spectators huddling together against the southerly. But it couldn’t be. To prosper In two decades as Wellington’s lead spinner at the Basin, Jeets had to learn flight, variation in pace, clever angles, any trick at all, because the ball would not deviate. Here it turned like cream in the desert, even when propelled by an ex-wicketkeeper.

Think also of Ajaz Patel, the Flying Dutchman of New Zealand cricket, condemned to sail the seven spinning seas without ever making it home. This pitch was made for him. People who have been watching at the Basin for many more years than my 18 had never seen the like. None of this was apparent to anybody at the start of the game. New Zealand left out Santner and put Australia in. It was all quicker bowling until Ravindra was given a go before the new ball was due and immediately got one to straighten past Cummins’ outside edge.

I missed the first two sessions but was there for the rest of the game. When I arrived at tea the locals were reasonably content with 147 for four, all the more so with 279 for nine at the close, the acceleration down to Cameron Green, who moved from 50 to 100 in 46 balls while the wickets kept falling at the other end.

Green came into the Australian side in 2020, talked up as the next big thing, particularly by the Fox commentators, in full cheerleading mode. The delivery remained short of the promise, and he was dropped during last year’s Ashes in favour of the more rustic-but-reliable skills of Mitch Marsh. David Warner’s retirement gave him a way back, though at the cost of booting Steve Smith up to the top of the order, a project that is not going well.

So we started the second morning more optimistically than we had expected. Once the formality of dismissing Australia for under 300 had been attended to, the work of matching, or even surpassing that total would begin. What fools we were.

The pre-lunch session was excruciating, and ended only in the extra time that is statutory when nine wickets are down. Green and Josh Hazlewood put on 116 for the tenth wicket, two runs more than the McGrath/Gillespie stand at Brisbane in 2004 that many Kiwi fans mark as a nadir of our fortunes, the image of Gillespie leaving the field riding his bat like a horse being engraved into our subconscious. At least Green is a proper batter who had a century on the board at the start of the partnership. He is, however, a notoriously poor starter, so putting a bit of pressure on for the first few overs of the new day seemed the obvious move. Instead, New Zealand focused entirely on getting Green off strike and Hazlewood on. Why, when there is one wicket to take to end the innings, captains give up trying to get one of the batters out, remains a mystery, all the more so when Southee maintained the strategy even as Hazlewood unleashed cover drives of Goweresque languidity.

The New Zealand cricketing psyche is a delicate thing when it sees baggy green caps on the same field. The cautious optimism that it had taken all the first day to nurture was shrivelling by the drinks break and dead by lunch. It was a comfort to us up in the RA Vance Stand that one of our group is a psychiatrist. Had he brought a portable couch with him, he could have made a mint.

Latham was the first to go, indecisive to a testing line just outside off by Starc, playing on. Two balls later, Williamson pushed to mid off and set off for a slightly risky single. One day, when gravity messes up and the moon crashes into Earth, those of us there at the Basin that afternoon will be reminded of the way in which Williamson and Young were drawn inevitably together in mid-pitch collision, leaving the former short as Labuschagne swooped in with a direct hit at the bowler’s end.

Three balls later, Ravindra drove at Hazlewood but did not get over the top of it and was caught by Lyon just backward of square on the offside. Whenever a batter under the age of 26 or so gets out in such a fashion early in their innings words like “impetuous” and “hot-headed” are bandied about, but the shot was a good response to the ball, but them went slightly wrong in the execution.

Up in the in the RA Vance we always note the passing of New Zealand’s all-time low of 26, but today did so with more-than-usual relief (we are not a cheery crew). But it was a grind. Mitchell went for 11 in 37 balls. Next ball, Young followed for a 50-ball nine. Twenty-nine for five.

Tom Blundell has mounted so many rescue missions for New Zealand that one expects him to be winched down from a helicopter at the start of his innings. He did it again here, in the company of Glenn Phillips. Before the match there was a discussion on the radio about whether Phillips or Young should take the last place in the New Zealand XI (as it turned out, the injury to Conway meant that both played). The expert vote went for Young because of his superior technique, but I would favour Phillips because of his obvious relish for the tussle. The kryptonite of the baggy green has no effect on him. He went on the attack, but judiciously so. His first six scoring shots were all fours, and all around the ground. Blundell matched him, and the 50 partnership came up in 48 balls.

Nathan Lyon now entered the attack. Phillips took him for three boundaries in his first two overs, but in his third over Lyon deceived Blundell coming down the pitch, resulting in a straightforward bat-pad catch. Two balls later, Kuggeleijn was caught on the legside boundary from a witless slog. Kuggeleijn should not be in the New Zealand team. First, he isn’t good enough. Geoff Lemon and Daisy Cutter explain the other reason.

The second and fourth balls that Matt Henry received from Lyon both went over the legside boundary for six. He made 27 of the eighth-wicket stand of 48, which ended when Phillips was caught at deep-square leg off Hazlewood. Southee copped the third duck of the innings, bamboozled by Lyon. Henry’s final flourish was 15 of four balls from Hazlewood before New Zealand were all out for 179.

The grim fact is that in the last four tests between these teams, the only time that New Zealand have avoided the follow on was in the final test in 2020, when five runs that Australia were penalised for running on the protected area of the pitch in the second innings saved it retrospectively.

Though the result of this match camouflaged it effectively, Australia have problems with their batting. It has a vulnerability to it that was absent a year or so ago. Moving Steve Smith to the top of the order has not yet paid off. Here, he played on to Southee for a duck from the third ball of the innings. The New Zealand captain also got Labuschagne with a legside strangle before the close of the second day, but the three fours from three balls that nightwatchman Lyon dispatched off him the following morning were a more accurate measure of his current form. I am always reluctant to write off quick bowlers since telling people that Willis was obviously done and should be dropped the week before Headingley ’81. But it does appear that a fine career is at its dusk, if not a little later.

At 81 for three it appeared that Australia were on the way to a big lead. Enter Glenn Phillips, New Zealand’s second choice part-time spinner after Ravindra, a bowler who has taken under one wicket a game in his first-class career, in the first part of which his second string was keeping wicket.

In his fourth over Phillips tossed one up well outside off—let’s say deliberately—and Khawaja came down the pitch to it, only for the ball to turn for Blundell to make an excellent stumping. Listen carefully, and you could hear the sound of a tea cup crashing to the floor in India.

After lunch, Phillips took the next four. Travis Head holed out at long off, Marsh was caught at short leg first ball, Carey drove a tempter outside off—let’s say it was deliberate—to short cover, and Green went to a bat-pad catch. Thus Phillips had his first five-for in any form of the game, and his test bowling average is half his first-class average. He makes things happen, and his celebrations (those of a six-year-old according to Phillips himself) became more exuberant with each victim. It would have been six had Cummins not been dropped twice in the deep. Matt Henry finished the innings off.

New Zealand’s target was 389 (273 without that tenth-wicket partnership). Frankly, there was never a chance. But many of us had been there a year before to see a triumph against England in the face of no lesser odds. It’s the hope that keeps you going, hope that was by no means extinguished when New Zealand finished the third day on 111 for three.

Ravindra had batted beautifully, reaching his fifty just before the close. It was better value than his double hundred against the own-brand South Africans a few weeks before. Now he was looking comfortable against the best attack in the world. He was shortly to be named New Zealand’s Player of the Year. Those of us who have been watching him for the last five years or so now share him with the world. Ravindra was well supported by Daryl Mitchell.

It was less surprising that the fourth day should be Nathan Lyon’s, than that the third belonged to Phillips. He had dismissed Latham and Williamson the previous evening. In the seventh over of the morning, he snuffed out the hope. He packed the field square on the offside, then dropped one short to Ravindra—this one we can say with some certainty was deliberate—but it was not quite what it seemed, the shot was marginally mistimed and the catch taken.

The rest was a procession, and we were done by lunchtime, only Mitchell resisting until he was caught and bowled by Hazlewood to finish the game. Lyon finished with ten, just as he did when I watched the previous test between the two sides, at Sydney in January 2020. By the end of the series, he had 530 test wickets, and until his injury at Lord’s last year had played 100 consecutive tests, which he would not have done had he been from England or New Zealand. The Australians do not look at the pitch and ask “do we need a spinner?”; their question is “who are our four best bowlers?”. A few weeks later, I shared the frustration of supporters in Somerset and elsewhere when Shoaib Bashir was left out of the first Championship game of the season in favour of a sixth dobbing seamer. Of course, allowing pitches to turn without the ECB reaching for the smelling salts and the points deductions would help.

The Basin continued to embrace its new status as a spinner’s paradise with a convert’s enthusiasm. In the Plunket Shield against Otago a couple of weeks later, 21 of the 30 wickets fell to spinners including eight for 41 for Michael Bracewell, another ex-keeper. We learned that Bruce Edgar, the former New Zealand opener who is Wellington’s director of cricket, did indeed receive a message from Jeetan Patel asking what the hell was going on.

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 Cricketer. December 1973 and January 1974

These days there is cricket everywhere you look. A few days ago here in New Zealand we could watch great finishes to simultaneous test matches overlapping with the finals of the domestic T20s (we are spared coverage of the franchise competitions in South Africa and UAE). 

It was not always thus. The Cricketer for December 1973 has virtually no cricket on which to report. The only account of a match is Alan Gibson’s on the final of the inter-diocesan Church Times Cup (triumph for the Gloucester diocese), though John Edrich files from South Africa on the tour of DH Robins’s [sic] XI of which he was a member. This report is notable for the absence of the word “apartheid”, a triumph of omission as striking as Basil Fawlty’s failure to mention the war, or the sabbatical taken by “sandpaper” during the recent canonisation of David Warner as he ended his test career, 

The magazine struggles to fill its 32 pages, and the grainy photo of Keith Fletcher is well below the usual standard for covers. The contents page contains promise, but this rarely translates into anything memorable. I was naturally  interested in Colin Cowdrey’s piece on Kent’s season, with wins in the 40 and 55-over competitions, but it was no more than an efficient summary that arranged the obvious into a cogent order. 

Much the same applies to Gordon Ross’s look at 11 seasons of the Gillette Cup, in which the first person singular shoulders far too much of the burden. 

There is a note from Australia on the waiting lists for membership at the MCG and the SCG, respectively 55,000 and 15,000 at that time. Those numbers have increased in the intervening half century; more than 200,000 now await their MCG member’s pass. A friend of mine had an application form for Melbourne Cricket Club membership filled in on his behalf as an infant, as so many Victorians do. Years passed. When he was 18 his mother rang him, distraught. She had found the application form, unposted, in a draw. This is the saddest story I know. 

There is poignancy aplenty in this edition. Jack Iverson’s death would feature in David Frith’s chronicling of cricketing suicides, but Frith does not mention cause in his obituary of the ultimate mystery spinner here. Sir Leonard Hutton contributes a coda in which he does not overwhelm Iverson with praise. The key, according to Hutton, was to play Iverson as an off spinner. He says that “most of our batsmen found themselves over-positioned to cope with this type of bowling” so does not appear to have shared this insight with teammates. 

David Frith interviews Colin Milburn, who had returned to county cricket in 1973, four years after the car crash that cost him an eye. The tone is optimistic, but there are enough portents that there would be no happy endings to the story of Milburn’s cricket, or his life. 

 

Back in the Northamptonshire middle order, there were a series of 30s and 40s, but not until the final game of the season did Milburn pass 50 for the first time, scraping an average of 20, which was double what he managed in 1974. He told Frith that batting at No 6 made things difficult and that he did better when opening because the shiny new ball was easier to see. In Perth when interviewed, Milburn hoped that the bright Western Australian light would have the same benefit and had hopes of playing in the Sheffield Shield, a fanciful notion even in a place where he was as much a hero as he was in Northampton.

Milburn was part of the BBC TV commentary team in 1969, when he must have still been in some sort of trauma following the accident, but was not asked back (though he was an occasional summariser on BBC Radio in the late 80s). At the time of the interview he was recently engaged, but that came to nothing. The considerable sum for 1973 of £19,000 from his testimonial was in trust: “on his own admission it would have been ‘chaotic’ to have given him the lump sum”, another sign of future troubles. 

In 1988, when I worked occasionally for Cricketcall (I had turned down the Gloucestershire contract, but that’s another story) one of my colleagues had recently worked with Milburn and reported that he gave the impression of having slept rough. He died in a pub car park in 1990, having inspired a love of cricket in so many so saw him play.

The January edition has tributes to Howard Marshall from EW Swanton and Alan Gibson, following a three-paragraph obituary in December. As Gibson says, had Marshall died in 1938 “there would have been a headline about him on the main page of every newspaper”. Marshall was then one of the BBC’s best-known voices, and was the leading commentator on cricket, rugby and ceremonial occasions. He was the first to give extended ball-by-ball commentary, famously on Verity’s match at Lord’s in 1934. 

Marshall devised the grammar of cricket commentary, and did the same for radio news reporting as the head of the BBC’s war reporting unit. He reported from the Normandy beaches on D-Day. But after the Victory Tests of 1945, and the occasional ceremonial commentary, he gave up broadcasting in favour of a career in commerce. He might have continued for another 25 years. 

Howard Marshall deserves a biography; he is important enough as a broadcaster and led an interesting private life. He left his first wife for the film critic Nerina Shute, who later deserted him with their French maid. 

The January edition is richer in content than its predecessor, and includes a couple of interesting investigations into cricket history. Gerald Brodribb, whose niche was the evolution of six hitting, questions the veracity of what the Guinness Book of Records and Wisden long accepted as the longest hit with a cricket bat, Walter Fellows’ 175-yard smite during practice at the Christ Church Ground in Oxford in 1856. Brodribb looks for evidence that the hit was measured properly and verified, and finds none.

David Frith’s ability to find sad stories in cricket’s past is further illustrated. Here, his subject is Billy Bates of Yorkshire and England. Bates toured Australia with great success. At Melbourne in January 1883 he made 55 at No 9, then took seven wickets in each innings as Australia followed on, taking the first English test hat-trick in the process. His name appears  on the Ashes urn, presented to the England captain, Hon Ivo Bligh, after on the tour. 

Bates’ first four tours of Australia were all successful. It was on the fifth that his life went suddenly wrong. He was hit in the eye in the nets, an injury that ended his career at the top level. There are parallels with Milburn here. The rest of Bates’ life was a struggle. He died at 44. 

On Scorecards, we have often talked about the Rest of the World series in England and Australia in this era. The January edition reminds us of a third, consisting of two matches in Pakistan to raise funds after devastating flooding. The World XI was a mix of English and West Indian players, topped up by a couple of locals. The Caribbean contingent were mostly world-class, or something near it, but has an unexpected opening partnership of Mike Brearley and Harry Pilling. Keeping was Keith Goodwin, then Farokh Engineer’s deputy at Lancashire.  

There were centuries for Brearley, Kallicharran, and Asif Iqbal, and two for Zaheer Abbas, as well as attractive innings from Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai and Colin Cowdrey, though the fact that Cowdrey’s rarely seen leg breaks nabbed two victims suggests that the level of competitiveness waxed and waned. Pakistan won both games.