Pitches and sixes

It only occurred to me the other day that I was among those present when Kent fans were last able to watch their team play. It was a disappointing day on which to see cricket at St Lawrence for the first time in three years. The rain that ended it early did not relent sufficiently for play to resume over the following three days. As the faithful few made their way home that afternoon, none could have imagined what was to follow, or that it would be so very long before almost everybody would again be able to celebrate again the ritual of going to the cricket.

I have had two full New Zealand seasons as a spectator since then, and am thankful for it every time I walk through the gates at the Basin Reserve. Covid-19 finally cost me a day a couple of weeks ago, when New Zealand upped its alert levels after a small number of community cases appeared in Auckland, meaning that a domestic one-day game at the Basin was played behind closed doors (once more, New Zealand’s strong response has eliminated Covid in the community, and restrictions were soon lifted). This piece is drawn from three domestic one-day matches that were open to spectators, a double-header of international T20s, and games from several continents on TV.

The New Zealand domestic season is, like those in most jurisdictions, structured with the T20 at the heart of summer, the 50-over and first-class competitions in orbit around it. The longer one-day form has an odd format this season. All six teams play each other twice, with both games at the same venue with a day between them, presumably a cheaper option.

So Wellington played their first six games away from home before Christmas (Scorecards reported on their contest with Central Districts in Palmerston North) and now had four at the Basin, the first pair against Northern Districts, the second versus Otago. All featured some terrific cricket.

On both weekends, the pair of matches was played on the same pitch. That against ND found a near-perfect balance between bat and ball, while the one for Otago was an instrument of torture for the bowlers. I’d call only the former a good pitch.

Speaking of pitches, the India v England test series was on at this time, causing a spike in the sales of smelling salts across England to revive the cricket aficionados on whom the sight of a ball turning on the first day had the same effect as that of a bare calf on a Victorian debutante. The strip produced at Ahmedabad’s (ridiculously oversized) stadium for the third test was particularly provocative. Clearly, the scales measuring the balance between bat and ball had a heavy thumb placed on them in the bowlers’ favour, but it was nowhere near as bad as much of the comment from the UK suggested.

I now pause to don my smoking jacket, clench my pipe above a firmly set jaw and say “gather round, my young friends, as I speak of uncovered pitches in the time of Underwood”. The thing with those soggy pitches was not that they turned, though they did, copiously. The real danger lay in how the ball would randomly rear up or shoot through. There was little or none of this in Ahmedabad, the main issue being whether the ball would turn or not. Michael Atherton, among whose many qualities as a writer is a sense of perspective, wrote a series of pieces about the pitch. He talked about the effects of DRS in limiting the batsmen’s options, and how their priority should be protecting the stumps rather than playing the ball, thus closing the chasms evident between some English bats and pads. We would all agree that it would help not to take points off Somerset, or anybody else, for producing pitches on which batsmen learn to play spin.

The Basin strip for the Northern Districts games was not spiteful, just a bit shady, the sort of pitch that might try to sell you a cheap bottle of whisky or some nylons. Yet it produced a splendid game of cricket that defied prediction from first ball to last.

At 90 for one after 20 overs, Northern Districts seemed set for a routine 270-plus, but the wickets started fall, first to the spinners then the seamers, mistimed shots disclosing the pitch’s duplicitous character. ND struggled to 205, thanks to Colin de Grandhomme’s typically low-exercise approach to batting—32 of 43 in boundaries—and some late-order nudging.

When Wellington were 24 for four in reply, ND’s 205 looked more than enough, but Troy Johnson and Fraser Colson batted for 23 overs with full adherence to the health and safety manual, but just fast enough to give the later batsmen a margin. Every time it looked as if Wellington were ahead, a wicket would fall, until when the ninth went five short of the target with two overs left. The build up in tension in these tight, lower-scoring 50-over games is, at its best, Shakesperian. I heard recently some commentators in Australia, where hyping is habit, say that it seemed that almost every game in the Big Bash was a tight finish. If so, that merely reduces the outstanding to the ordinary. Here, Colson finished it with a leg glance to the boundary with nine balls remaining.

The second game between these two teams, played on the same pitch two days later, followed a similar pattern, but with Wellington batting first. Two down for 115 became 188 all out. Of the last seven batsmen, only Younghusband reached double figures. This time it was Bracewell who batted through, unbeaten for 64 at the end.

At 91 for three in the 18th, an ND victory should have been a formality, but four wickets fell for 23, and we began gnawing on what was left of our fingernails. With 11 overs left, 48 were needed, but with only two wickets remaining. Henry [sic] Cooper and Joe Walker did well to survive through the next nine overs, but could not maintain the required rate, leaving them with 18 to get from the last two overs.

Troy Johnson took over the Wellington captaincy for the second half of the 50-over season, impressively so. His choice of Bhula’s occasional slow left-arm for two of the three final overs made Wellington supporters jittery, but we need not have worried. The bowler held his nerve and both Cooper and Walker were caught in the deep in the 49th over. We had five days to get our pulse rates back down for the visit of Otago.

The action now moved to the eastern side of the block, which for the bowlers was a change of sentence from community service to a term in the gulag. Over the two matches, 1,454 runs were scored at an average cost of just under 50 a wicket.

As might be expected, Finn Allen got Wellington off to a sprint start. Only six of his 46 from 21 balls were not from boundaries. Nobody got a century, but there were three half-centuries for a total of 340, doubted by nobody among the home supporters to be a match-winning score.

It quickly became evident that we were wrong. With 20 overs gone, Otago needed 230 off 30 with all wickets intact. In the T20 era, on this pitch, that made them favourites. Four wickets were lost, but each time the new batsman took over without any impact on the scoring rate. Though the winning run was not hit until the first ball of the 50th over, there was never the level of tension that either of the ND games had induced. It as the biggest successful run chase that I have seen as a spectator.

The brief Covid restrictions meant that the second game against our southern visitors was played in camera. I followed on the live video feed from one fixed view that shows only the pitch. I invented a new game: Was That Six?, where the viewer has to judge whether a six has been hit based on the shot played and the trajectory of the ball as it left the bat. There were 35 in total, so a guess that it would be six was likely to be correct.

Eleven of them were struck by Finn Allen, who consolidated his reputation as a thunderous striker of the ball . He made 128 from 59 balls, reaching his century from 50. It seems that the evidence of the fixed camera was enough to impress overseas audiences, as contracts in the IPL and with Lancashire for the T20 have followed.

Even if I had been there, Allen’s effort would not have become my fastest spectating century. That notable record remains Mark Ealham’s, for his 44-ball innings in the Sunday League against Derbyshire at Mote Park in 1995. I have never seen more ferocious batting (though the latter section of Martin Guptill’s 2015 World Cup quarter-final double century was its equal). Dominic Cork took a fearful pounding. Ealham came in with only 14 overs left and Kent in trouble. Without his innings, the Sunday League would not have become the first title won in 17 years.

Tom Blundell made a less frenetic century with only one six, but 17 fours, as Wellington reached 427 for eight, the highest List A score ever seen in New Zealand. Otago’s reply of 345 was bold, but futile.

It is always fun to see sixes raining down on the popular seats, but if I had to choose between watching cricket on the ND pitch, or that for the Otago games, I would opt for the former every time. The great thing is that the choice does not have to be made. If you watch for a season, you want to see the game in as great a range of conditions and circumstances as you can, including a road at the Basin or a snake pit in Ahmedabad.

Wellington lost the play-off to Northern Districts, who were in turn beaten by Canterbury in the final.

T20 Internationals

Those of us who spend a fair amount of our summers at the Basin Reserve don’t care much for the Cake Tin. Opened at the start of the 21^st century, it was the last throw of the 20^th century concept of sports venue design here in New Zealand, one which aimed to fit as many sports into the one venue as possible. As well as a stack of cricket, I have seen both codes of rugby, World Cup soccer and even Australian Rules there. Only the last, cleverly conceived to occupy whatever space is available, is a good fit. Wellington had been the only major centre in New Zealand to separate cricket and rugby, but in an attempt to arrange a forced marriage between the two, the Cake Tin is an oval arena. This means that the rectangular sports are remote from their spectators, and the stadium has to be near-full to create an atmosphere that does not imitate that of the moon.

It is also a concert venue, which means that it has a sound system that could wake the dead, operated by people who consider the cricket a sideshow to the main entertainment of the day: themselves. As it turned out, the crowd for the double header against Australia’s men and England’s women, was disappointing, given that this fifth game in the men’s series stood at two-two, so providing a rare opportunity of seeing New Zealand beat Australia at cricket. We could have fitted into the Basin comfortably.

But there was great consolation in the batting of Martin Guptill. He had been through a poor run and many amateur selectors would have dropped him. Not me. Guptill in touch is as glorious a sight as anything I have seen in cricket. I mentioned earlier the World Cup quarter-final innings against the West Indies. Here, he played as sweetly, if more briefly. I have seen any number of players who hit the ball as far and as hard as Guptill, but none who do so more cleanly. He put the ball on the roof, the third time he has done so at this venue. He reaches this peak with the frequency of total eclipses of the sun; both are worth going a long way to see.

New Zealand were chasing only 142. At 74 for one in the tenth, it looked like being a lot higher, but under pressure from Ish Sodhi in particular, the middle order crumpled.

When he came in at No 4, we thought that Glenn Maxwell would impose himself on the innings. My wife was taken by Maxwell’s nickname, the Big Show, thinking it rather insulting. On the other side of the Tasman Sea, it is nothing but a compliment. She forgot that if Ned Kelly had been guilty only of irony, rather than robbery and murder, the Australians would still have hanged him. Here, the Big Show was caught second ball and the matinee was cancelled.

One of my regrets as a spectator is that I never saw Sarah Taylor keep wicket. Watching Amy Jones here was not far off. She executed three stumpings with a deftness of hand almost too fast to see. England’s 128 for nine appeared chaseable, but Katherine Brunt removed both openers in the opening over and that was pretty much it. Of the six games in this series—three in each shorter format—New Zealand won only the final ODI. In none of the other five did they come close. There is a lot of ground to make up if they are to be competitive in the rescheduled World Cup early next year.

 

Summer days at the T20

The first-class season in New Zealand used to begin at Christmas, sometimes on Christmas Day itself, which must have been the cause of tense negotiations in households across the country. Now the tinsel and reindeer bring with them the start of the domestic T20. I watched the opener at the Basin Reserve on Christmas Eve on television, and was at the ground for the remaining four home rounds of the round robin, and for the finals. 

One of the problems with T20 is that it does not offer a whole day at the cricket. There is barely time to put away a third scotch egg before stumps are pulled and you’re back on the bus. New Zealand Cricket have put this right by staging the domestic T20 as double headers, with a women’s and men’s game together offering a full day’s play, or at least the overs equivalent of a Sunday League game. 

In those distant times they managed to get through 80 overs in well under five hours of playing time rather than the six-plus it now takes. The biggest reason for this is that captains find it as irresistible to pick at their fields as does an infant its nose, often preceded by a conference that starts with the agreement of the minutes to the last one. So what about—either as an imposition once the over-rate falls below a proscribed level, or as standard practice—saying that the field set at the start of an over stays in place for the whole over, unless a left-hander replaces a right-hander on strike (or vice versa)? A harsher variant might be that captains submit a standard field at the start of the game and have to revert to that if they don’t get on with it. 

Both Wellington teams started the competition as reigning champions. The men have gone from strength-to-strength, and this year lost only away to Canterbury during the ten-game preliminary stage. Wellington supporters are doing a reasonable impression of the meek on the day when the title deeds to the Earth finally drop through the letter box. The women have experienced a levelling-up in the standard of competition. Last year they were unbeaten; this, they finished only third in the group stage and hosted the final because TV wanted it on the same ground as the men’s rather than on merit. 

Sophie Devine missed the early games but was devastating when she returned, starting with 108 from 38 balls in a total of 131 in a ten-wicket win away to Otago, followed by 59 off 26 in Christchurch. Her first appearance at the Basin, in the return against Otago, she made 80 from 44 and put on 110 for the second wicket with Melie Kerr. 

A young boy of about nine years of age who, when asked by a TV reporter if Finn Allen (see later) should be in the Black Caps squad replied that he judged Allen “not better than Sophie Devine, but still pretty good”, the quote of the season so far. It reflected not only the growing profile of women’s cricket here, but also how fortunate we are here in New Zealand, in these alarming times, to be so short of material to fill the news hour that we resort to seeking the opinions of primary schoolkids on the selection of national sports teams. 

Wellington’s women are the best fielding side in the competition, but when a Wellington player made a fielding error in a televised game, one of commentators said that the fielding was “not what you expect from a professional”. The excellent Frankie Mackay reminded him that there were only two professionals—Kerr and Devine—in the team. 

Mackay—also captain of Canterbury—is a prime example of a general truth that when a woman commentator comes to the microphone the average IQ in the commentary box increases significantly. This is never more true than on the Fox Sports coverage in Australia, which rarely rises above the level of tiresome banter other than when Isa Guha is there to guide and coax the boys into saying something intelligent about the cricket. Mackay is a librarian. When asked how many books she had read in 2020 she replied that it had been a busy year, so the total was a below-average 70. The incredulous response of her co-commentator suggested that he didn’t know that there were that many books in the world.

The aforementioned Finn Allen moved to Wellington from Auckland last year. In the early-season Plunket Shield games he could hardly put bat to ball and was dropped for the final match of the opening half of the programme. Restored for the shorter forms, he scored more runs than anybody else in the T20 competition (512), at the third-highest strike rate, with most fours and sixes. If he gets beyond single figures his innings explodes like a violation of the Test Ban Treaty. He combines timing and power in a way that is often spectacular. Alex Hales or Jason Roy might be playalikes in England. 

Against Central Districts, chasing 164, he reached his fifty in just 16 balls. This was the quickest half century I had seen since Matthew Fleming got one from the same number in a Sunday League game reduced by rain to ten overs for Kent against Yorkshire at Canterbury in 1996. Hearing that the game was soon to start, I hurried to the ground with my son, then aged eight. He was impressed. A couple of weeks later, we watched on TV as Sachin Tendulkar made an elegant century in a test match. He reached fifty in a little over a run-a-ball. “That’s four times slower than Matthew Fleming” said the boy, lifting the bar too high in a trice for any of the game’s subsequent great players to clear.

The second-highest T20 aggregate was Devon Conway’s, and his opening partnership with Allen goes much of the way towards accounting for Wellington’s success. One uses the power of a jack hammer, the other the finesse of the dentist’s drill. Conway has already been successful in the national T20 team, and would have walked straight into the test team in any other era. Expect to see him there in England in June.

The only loss that Wellington experienced in the home preliminaries was that of the women to Canterbury, thanks to the batting of Amy Satterthwaite, whose unbeaten 71 took the South Islanders to a nine-wicket win. Satterthwaite is Devine’s only contender as New Zealand’s best woman batter. The comparison is like that between the power and forcefulness of Graham Gooch and the elegance and security of Graham Thorpe. Like Thorpe, Satterthwaite is a left-hander, a rare thing among women cricketers here. Why this should be, and why there are more left-handers in the men’s game than there used to be, is a puzzle. Something to do with how they are coached when very young, perhaps. 

So to the finals, with Canterbury the visitors for both games. The women’s match was very entertaining. Three times, Wellington looked well on the way to victory, only for the game to turn on them. The first was when they were 100 for one, with Devine still there, slightly subdued but ready to press on the pedal for the final six overs of the innings until she was bowled by Melissa Banks, the first of seven wickets to fall for just 25 runs.

Satterthwaite’s loopy off spin accounted for three of the wickets, with three more falling to run outs, the best of which was a direct hit by eagle-eye Mackay. But that was the sum of Satterthwaite’s contribution; she was second out, for a duck. Melie Kerr’s hattrick, as previously reported, then reduced Canterbury to 40 for five, which became 60 for six with seven-and-a-half overs left.

Lea Tahuhu joined Kate Ebrahim. From that point, only four deliveries were not scored from. The shot selection of both players was exceptional, Ebrahim working the ball around while Tahuhu supplied the power, with two sixes off Jess Kerr in the 17th over. Six came from the next over, so 19 were needed from the last two. 

Only singles from the first three balls of the 19th, bowled by Devine. Wellington were back ahead, decisively we thought. But Ebrahim hit the next two deliveries to the boundary, one flicked to mid-wicket, the other lifted to the vacant third man. Ebrahim should have been run out off the last ball of that over, but Devine missed the stumps from four metres away. The Wellington fielding got a bit shaky as the game got more tense. Still, nine were needed from the last, bowled by Kasperek. 

Tahuhu charged the second ball of the over, sending it back over the bowler’s head to the straight boundary. Two more singles and the game was Canterbury’s, with two balls to spare. The rest of the Canterbury team rushed onto the field, first encircling Ebrahim. Satterthwaite broke away and rushed to Tahuhu, to whom she is married and with whom she had reversed roles today, batsman and bowler. Their embrace was as emotional a thing as I have seen on a cricket field for some time, sharpened by the appearance soon after of their one-year-old daughter. 

The men’s game was every bit as tense without quite as many giddy twists and turns. Canterbury batted first and for the first half of their innings made it look easy. At 106 for two in the twelfth, 200 looked probable. 

Wellington’s spinners, Bracewell and Younghusband (though slow bowler would be a truer representation of the former’s oeuvre), intervened decisively, gouging out Canterbury’s middle order and damming the flow of runs. Some end-of-innings biffing by Shipley took Canterbury to 175, fewer than they should have got, but still a challenge. There was some exceptional catching by Wellington. 

If Allen got going, it would be a cinch, but the tension of the final knocked his timing off, and he went for 16 off (by his standards) a dawdling ten deliveries. When Blundell was caught first ball by the diving Bowes at backward point, the tide of pessimism, never far from these shores, seemed about to engulf the local faithful. 

Devon Conway is one of those rare batsmen who goes about his job in the same way in all forms of cricket. The speed of scoring quickens to fit the format, but the foundation of judgement, temperament and, above all, technique is what his game is built on no matter what the context. 

As usual, it would have taken a while for the observer to discern what form of cricket was being played if the only evidence available to them was Conway’s batting. No chance of making runs was spurned and his risks were calculated, apparently to several decimal places. He paced his innings superbly, though he knew this better than most supporters when 29 were required from the last three overs, 15 from the final nine balls. 

Successive fours off the next two deliveries were executed as if they had been in Conway's diary for months. Another, his eleventh (just the one six today, more evidence of Conway's actuarial approach to batting) completed a five-wicket win with two balls to spare.

The Basin was fairly full for both finals, and, like last year, it was the family occasion that T20 competitions are said to enable, but, in some parts of the world, rarely do. T20’s limitations are well-known, but it can still provide a good day at the cricket, as it did here at a time when going to any cricket is a privilege.

Men’s final scorecard

Women’s final scorecard

 

Hat tricks I have seen No 9

Amelia Kerr for Wellington v Canterbury, T20 Final, Basin Reserve, 13 February 2021

After a twenty-year wait between hattricks Nos 7 and 8, No 9 came along a mere 13 months later. It was distinctive among my collection of hattricks in several ways. It was the first by a woman cricketer, the first by a leg spinner, the first in a final and the first to be all bowled (indeed, the first where all three victims fell in the same manner).

Melie Kerr’s cricketing pedigree is as distinguished as any in New Zealand, including the Hadlees and the Bracewells. Her sister Jess was alongside her in the Wellington team here, as she will be in the national team in the forthcoming series against Australia. Both her parents, Robbie and Jo, were Wellington representatives. Robbie played as a batsman and sometime keeper 59 times in the 90s, mostly in one-day cricket.

Her grandfather Bruce Murray (often known as “Bag” because of his initials—BAG Murray) played 13 tests as an opener from 1969 to 1972. He played in the first test I ever watched, at the Oval in 1969, though I don’t think that I saw him bat on that day.

The family trade is teaching. Bruce Murray was a high-school principal for 20 years. Jess has just started as an intermediate school teacher (11–13 year olds) and Melie, according to Wikipedia, works as a teacher aide, supporting autistic children.

Watching Melie Kerr bowl leg spin has become one of the delights of the Wellington summer. She has great accuracy and turns it both ways. She also holds the record for the highest individual score in women’s ODI cricket (232 against Ireland). She is 20.

The game was the T20 final between Wellington and Canterbury. At 40 for two in the tenth over chasing 125, Canterbury needed to increase their scoring rate urgently.

The dangerous Amy Satterthwaite was already out, but captain Frankie Mackay was still there. She tried to sweep the third ball of Kerr’s second over. It was a googly, but she was beaten through the air rather than off the pitch and was bowled off stump.

The next delivery was another wrong’un, which Kirsty Nation failed to read, going back with room to play a desperate prod at the ball as it followed her. Top of off, again.

Emma Kench played a similar shot to the hattrick delivery, which went on quicker rather than turning. Kerr was, for a couple of seconds, the only person in the ground who did not know that the ball had again found its way to the top of the off stump, and was undertaking an operatic appeal for leg before when a swarm of teammates put her right.

There was nobody in the ground who thought that this was anything other than a match-winning piece of bowling, except the non-striking batter Kate Ebrahim, and No 8 Leah Tahuhu. Their thrilling partnership of 66 in six overs deprived Wellington of a fourth successive T20 trophy. More of that soon.

 

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. 

Thank you for watching my little show

Central Districts v Wellington, 50 overs, Fitzherbert Park in Palmerston North, 6 December 2020

Scorecard

I have written about cricket at Fitzherbert Park before. Nineteen years ago next March I covered a first-class match there between Central Districts and Auckland for CricInfo (the daily reports, or, if you prefer to relive the drama hour-by-hour, live reports, are still available). It was an odd game played on a pitch so treacherous that it might have been educated at Cambridge in the thirties.

Initially, the problem was sudden, rearing bounce. As the game progressed, this was varied by an increasing number that kept low, the mix trending towards the latter. At tea on the first day, I raised the possibility that the match could become the first anywhere in the world to be over on day one since Kent v Worcestershire at Tunbridge Wells in 1960 (you may sense in the angry-young-man tone of the reports the concern of a writer fearing that he will be paid for one day’s work when he had budgeted for four). In fact, it just stretched into the third, the obduracy and skill of Mark Richardson being decisive.

Palmerston North (Palmerston is a small town in the South Island) is a couple of hours’ drive north of Wellington, and in cricketing geography is part of Central Districts, which cover the bottom half of the North Island except Wellington, and the top bit of the South Island. It is the only serious contender for Wellington’s claim to be the windiest place in the country. That is due to its flatness, something that presents the navigationally challenged such as myself with difficulties, depriving us of topographical clues. Once, I made three attempts to leave the city, but arrived back in the centre each time, as if I were staging the Hampton Court maze scene in Three Men in a Boat in a modern setting.

Fitzherbert Park is one of five venues Central use during the course of the season, the others being the sublime Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, the Saxton Oval in Nelson, McLean Park in Napier, and Nelson Park in Napier when McLean Park needs time to recover from the rugby season (as you will see from the recycling of Palmerston and Nelson, New Zealand’s English placenames were selected from a narrow range of nineteenth century imperial figures, one reason why the current trend towards the use of Māori placenames is a good thing),

Fitzherbert Park is a pleasant venue, though not an outstanding one by New Zealand standards. Thinking of a similar ground in the UK, the best I could come up with was Archdeacon's Meadow in Gloucester, to which Gloucestershire switched when the Wagon Works Ground became unfit for first-class cricket (or rather when it was recognised that it had been unfit for that purpose for some time). It has a main road running down one side but is otherwise tree-lined. The stand being full of excited young players—commendable, but noisy—I took my place on some raised seats under a tree at deep extra cover.

This was the third of the ten-match league stage of the 50-over competition. The winner hosts the final. Second and third play off to meet them. Both Central and Wellington had lost their first two games, so the loser here would face a tough challenge to finish in the top three. Both sides were without key personnel in the test and New Zealand A teams.

Central won the toss and decided to bat. Wellington attacked early on, with four close catchers. This was good to see, but to no avail as both McPeake and Bennett were both expensive in their opening spells. In the fourth over Bayley Wiggins cut Bennett for six. Central reached 50 in the ninth over.

The introduction of Sears brought some control—just ten came from his first four overs—and the first wicket. Wiggins drove casually to mid off to be caught by Bracewell.

George Worker has been on the fringe of the international team for a while, and has made ten appearances in shorter forms. He showed his value with bat and ball here. In partnership with Ben Smith the hundred mark was passed in the 20th over and it seemed as if a total of around 300 was a realistic aspiration, but Worker also fell to a casual shot, to be caught at mid-wicket off legspinner Younghusband.

Around this time, two ducks were observed circling the ground, an ominous portent in the superstitious mind of the cricketer. Nobody went scoreless, but from that time on wickets fell regularly enough to deny Central the resource and momentum needed for a big score.

Tom Bruce’s was a key wicket. He can be as devastating a batsman as any in the final overs, but he had his middle stump knocked back by Younghusband when coming down the pitch. Hamish Bennett left the field after his first three expensive overs, and did not return, so the leggie was promoted from luxury to essential status. He responded well with three for 42. I hope that this encourages Bracewell to prefer Younghusband to his own rustic off spin more often.

Smith top scored with 79. He dispatched Younghusband into the flowerbed across the main road, but was caught on the mid-wicket boundary trying a repeat two overs later.

That Central finished with as many as 261 was thanks to some judicious late hitting by Clarkson, who took four fours off McPeake in the 47th over, and Dudding, who left no part of the bat unused in making 15 off the final over of the innings. I made a note that Central were 20 short, and, for once, I was about right.

The early part of the Wellington reply was a game of two ends. From the City End, Seth Rance kept it tight, conceding 19 from his first five overs, while profligacy from the River End meant that Wellington had made 60 by the end of the tenth.

Andrew Fletcher hit four boundaries off Liam Dudding’s opening over, all driven through the covers. The only wicket to fall in this period was that of Lauchie Johns, run out backing up when the ball flicked of Rance’s finger as he followed through.

Slow left-armer Jayden Lennox, playing the seventh match of a career so far limited to 50-over cricket, came on for the 14th over. I had not heard of him, but was greatly impressed by his performance here. He took one for 20 from his initial seven-over spell, the wicket being that of Fletcher, bowled by a ball that hurried on as he stepped back to cut.

With 97 to get from 17 overs and eight wickets standing a position from which Wellington should have won with something to spare. Win they did, but easy it was not. Bracewell and Johnson both fell to catches off Worker, to short fine leg and short third man respectively.

Jakob Bhula had come in at the fall of the first wicket, but hit not a single boundary between the 21st and 41st overs, when an inside edge bounced over the keeper’s head. He was a Morris Minor obdurately doing 30 with no higher gear available, slowing down the following traffic.

Fraser Colson joined Bhula and initially found it as hard to meet the desired scoring rate. Lennox was as abstemious as he had been earlier, but George Worker struggled to find his length and line on returning to the attack and Colson hit two fours in the first over of his spell before being bowled coming down the pitch to Lennox, who appears to relish a challenge.

Forty were needed from seven overs. A required rate of a little under seven an over is usually inconsequential these days, but Bhula was as becalmed as Ben Ainslie’s yacht has been in the pre-America’s Cup races so far, and though the new batsman, Gibson, hit the ball hard from the start, every one went straight to a fielder in the inner ring. One came from the 45th over.

It seemed when Gibson mishit an on drive off Field that Wellington’s last hope was gone, but the ball went high enough for the strengthening wind to carry it towards the mid-wicket boundary, which happened to be the shortest on the ground, and it dropped just over the rope for six to keep Wellington in the race.

With 22 needed from the last three overs, two of which were to be delivered by the reliable Rance, Central remained marginal favourites, but 16 came from the 48th over including two fours and a six from Gibson, who was growing fond of the short legside boundary.

Now, and only now, did Bhula find his boldness and touch, completing the paperwork with two fours off the first two balls of the 49th over. The image that sprung into my mind was that of Janet Webb sweeping into view as the credits rolled at the end of Morecambe and Wise, thanking people for watching her show, for this was a victory won despite Bhula’s unbeaten 97, rather than because of it.

The unusual structure of the competition had the two teams back at Fitzherbert Park for a second game two days later, but it was rained off. Both registered one victory in the two rounds that followed before the competition made way for the T20 during the summer holidays. Wellington are fourth, just two points behind third-placed Otago. With all four of their remaining fixture at the Basin Reserve, they can still make the play offs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early Adventures in the Plunket Shield 2020

 Wellington v Canterbury, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 19—22 October 2020

Wellington v Otago, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 5—8 November 2020

Wellington v Auckland, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 14—17 November 2020

“I’m off to the cricket.”

There’s a phrase to quicken the pulse of the cricket enthusiast, especially when uttered for the first time in a new season. This time, it comes with a new sense of privilege and responsibility, for New Zealand is presently the only place in the world where fans can freely watch their first-class team on their home ground.

As I have walked through the gates of the Basin Reserve these last few weeks I have had a sense of being at the cricket on behalf of those who can’t be, particularly those who blog on going to the cricket in the UK, on whom I have come to rely for a vicarious experience of county cricket, but who are, for now, excluded from it themselves. I’m lucky. Covid-19 hasn’t cost me a day’s spectating, save for what I might have seen had a planned visit to the UK gone ahead.

Traditionally, the season opens at the Basin Reserve to the sound of jack hammers and buzzsaws, but the renovation of the Museum Stand, or Old Pavilion as it is now called, is complete, and a great adornment it is. We look forward to an updated New Zealand Cricket Museum being opened in the New Year, and, I hope, the return of the second-hand bookstall.

My first cricket of the new season was a brief after-work visit to the third day of the opening Plunket Shield fixture, with Canterbury the visitors. Photos of the first-day pitch attracted a good deal of attention on social media due to its being greener than David Attenborough. Wellington were duly skittled for 65.

The rest of the game consisted of expanding totals as the pitch made its journey from spring to early summer. My visit coincided with the end of Wellington’s second innings. Devon Conway was batting. Wellington are making the most of Conway while they can. Top scorer nationally in all three forms of domestic cricket last season, he qualified for New Zealand in August, and was in the national squad for the T20s against the West Indies. Here, he was top scorer in both innings, not enough to prevent a seven-wicket win for Canterbury.

Conway, and the other international players apart from those in the IPL, were available for their provinces for the first half of the Plunket Shield, in theory at least. But while we are free of Covid-19 in New Zealand another plague is rampant, that of the “slight strain”, to which these internationals appear especially vulnerable, and which keeps them in social isolation away from dressing rooms.

The uneven structure of the New Zealand domestic programme sent the two teams to Christchurch the following week for the return fixture. Canterbury won even more easily, the prospect of Wellington retaining the Plunket Shield heading for the hills with summer not yet begun.

Otago were the visitors for the next match, at the Basin. This was a rare opportunity to see a first-class game in its entirety (or so I thought). The pitch wasn’t quite as green as that against Canterbury, but neither is the Amazon Rain Forest, so Michael Bracewell still put Otago in upon winning the toss.

Wellington’s customary breeze was unusually warm, and offered the prospect of swing, which may have had a hand in the first wicket of the match, Kitchen playing on to a Newton delivery that came back at him. 

With four right-arm seamers, Bracewell, as Trevor Bailey used to say about England in the 80s, could change the bowler, but not the bowling. Hamish Bennett has led the Wellington attack with distinction for the past few years, and in any other era but the pace-rich current one, would have been in the test team. He has yet to hit the rhythm of the recent past, and struggled for luck as well as form, having Hawkins dropped at second slip. The good fortune was monopolised by Sears, who got Hawkins in his first over, caught behind heaving at a wide ball.

The best batting of the innings came from Dale Phillips, who scored a maiden first-class fifty at a run a ball. I enjoyed his fluent driving through the offside, and so did the Wellington bowlers, judging from the opportunities they kept giving him to repeat the shot.

Phillips was joined by Hamish Rutherford, well-known in county circles. I saw him make a debut test century against England in Dunedin seven years ago, but he has become stuck in the cricket netherland populated by batsmen who look better than almost anybody in the domestic game, but who are not able to turn that into consistent runs at the higher level (for an English equivalent see Vince J).

Phillips slowed after passing fifty and was dismissed by the ball of the day from Ollie Newton, one that veered in from well outside off to knock out the off stump. A lunch score of 118 for three was indicative of an enterprising and entertaining morning.

The pace slowed in the afternoon as Wellington’s bowlers became more thoughtful and accurate. Rutherford and Kelly put on 56 for the fourth wicket after which the Otago innings subsided. They were all out for 265 in the 81^st over. Sears and Newton both took four wickets.

With 13 overs to face at the day’s end, the priority for Blundell and Ravindra was survival, something they looked like achieving comfortably until the penultimate scheduled delivery, bowled by left-arm wrist spinner Rippon. It was as bad a ball as had been seen all day, a long hop well wide of leg stump. Ravindra could not resist, and set about despatching it down the Mt Victoria Tunnel. Travis Muller, at deep square leg, had assumed that his participation would not be further required and was slow to react to the unexpected approach of the ball at this late stage, but remained sufficiently composed to take the catch. Ravindra’s return to the rooms was funereal; he may have hoped that it would be empty and locked by the time he got there.

The weather on the second day came at us straight from Antarctica vis the southerly, so this account of it is as seen from the Long Room. Conway was not exposed to the cold for long: he played on to a short ball from Jacob Duffy, the pace of which was more than the batsman expected. Like Bennett, Duffy would have got international recognition in any other time.

These days, the dismissal of Conway has the effect on the Wellington batting similar to that of kicking away an old man’s stick. Collapse follows inevitably. Duffy had Blundell caught at second slip a run later, and Bracewell’s 37 was the only significant resistance; soon enough, Wellington were 144 for nine.

Sears and Bennett put on 61 for the tenth wicket, the biggest partnership of the innings. In the circumstances it would be intemperate to express disappointment with this admirable effort, but for me last-wicket stands should be the occasion of yahoo and mayhem, of clown shoes and custard pies. This was nothing but dogged common sense: Sears 41 from 154 balls, Bennett 20 from 106. No slapstick there.

The same could not be said of Otago keeper Mitch Renwick, who contributed 23 byes to Wellington’s 204. Though they weren’t all down to him, Renwick’s performance with the gloves was as lamentable as I have seen for a long time.

Otago lost Kitchen, who was bowled by Newton off the inside edge, and finished the day 91 ahead with nine wickets standing.

The wind had returned to the north-west for day three, a direction from which the RA Vance Stand affords ample protection, but it was the day four weather that was causing more concern: the forecast was apocalyptic and suggested that cricket would take second place to civil defence.

The morning confirmed that Dale Phillips is a batsman with prospects. He made a second fifty, but off 124 balls this time, so he has patience as well as shots. Rutherford also made a second, assured half century.

It became clear immediately after the luncheon interval that there had been meteorologically inspired negotiations over the ham salad. First Ravindra and Bracewell, then the rarely seen spin of Tom Blundell, tossed up some hittable stuff with the field up. Batsman Finn Allan joined in to claim Rutherford as a maiden first-class wicket, all the more notable for being the only lbw given in the whole game.

The agreed target turned out to be 279, eminently reachable in a day and a half, not so much if there was no play on the fourth day. If made, it would be the highest score in any of the eight innings played at the Basin so far this season.

At first, it seemed that Rutherford had been generous. Blundell looked terrific, driving and pulling fours with equal alacrity. He was a last-man-standing pick as test opener at Melbourne at the end of last year, but made a century in the second innings. Here, he looked every bit a test opener.

Ravindra also looked at ease, in a more defensive manner until he was bowled by a very good ball from Muller from round the wicket that left him just enough to hit off stump.

Conway batted as if the target was a pittance. His first four scoring shots were all fours, three driven and one off the edge. Such is Conway’s talent that he has the game for all circumstances. Here, it was front foot and drives. The following week, back foot, cuts and pulls. But those four shots were all there was; Duffy threw himself to his right following through to take a spectacular caught-and-bowled to dismiss him.

That was pretty much it for Wellington’s winning aspirations. Bracewell went two runs later, and though Blundell and Allen put on 58, the pace slowed and it was clear that Wellington would not beat the weather. Four wickets fell for 15 and Wellington finished the day on 185 for seven, though there was just time for Blundell to reach his hundred.

The fourth morning dawned as predicted, lacking only King Lear to egg it on. For most of my cricket watching years, that would have been it, play called off first thing, all done. But cricket grounds now dry out like a polyester shirt, and with Otago potentially needing only a few overs to win the game a start later was not out of the question. Scorecards Towers is about 20 minutes from the Basin on a Sunday, so I had decided to get there if it did start. For one thing, it is some time since I have seen the whole of a domestic first-class game, for another you never know what you might miss if you don’t go. A hattrick maybe, or a surprising finish. I kept checking Twitter for an update from Wellington Cricket. None came. Instead the live scoring suddenly fired back into life with the news that play had restarted and that Blundell was out. How was he out?

Obstructing the field.

Just the 32nd instance of this dismissal in the history of first-class cricket (using the figures in Wisden; CricInfo says 26th but misses several recent instances that Wisden lists), and only the second in New Zealand (the first being JA Hayes of Canterbury against Central Districts in 1954-5). There is a coda to this. At any time in the game’s history before 2017, it would have been handled the ball, but, for reasons that are unclear, this form of dismissal was then subsumed into obstructing the field, a description that suggests a physical altercation, rather than the batsman merely tapping the ball away from the stumps with the glove, as happened in this case. There were 63 incidences of handled the ball, rare enough to satisfy my curiosity for the extraordinary. According to reports, Blundell was the first to be recorded as out obstructing the field rather than handled the ball.

Anyway, (and this is the salient point) I was not there and will have added to my headstone, after “He never saw an opener carry their bat”, “or any of the game’s more esoteric dismissals, come to that”. Of course, I need to get a grip and realise that cricket watchers the world over will envy anybody who sees the most mundane lbw or caught-and-bowled in 2020.

Two more wickets quickly followed Blundell’s to complete an 84-run win for Otago, Wellington’s third defeat in a row.

Changes were therefore inevitable for the following weekend when Auckland were the visitors. Fraser Colson came in for  Finn Allen in the middle order, a seaming all-rounder (Sears) was replaced by a spinning all-rounder (Younghusband) and Michael Snedden (son of Martin) replaced Hamish Bennett, about whom there was talk of “workload issues”, which may have been a way of avoiding the d-word. Snedden provided continuity in the habit of falling over in the delivery stride, just as Bennett does.

The pitch was a lighter, more benevolent, Varadkar green than the militant De Valera shade of the earlier games, but with Kyle Jamieson in the opposition, Michael Bracewell did not hesitate to put Auckland in on winning the toss. Both openers went in the first three overs, Beghin lbw to McPeake playing across the line, and Solia edging a full delivery to the keeper.

Phillips then made a half century, the third time that has been so at the Basin this season. However, this was not Dale, who had so impressed for Otago, but his older brother Glenn, who we came across when he was rushed to Sydney for the test match in January. This innings was in the manner of Dale’s aggressive first-innings knock rather than the more circumspect second. It included five sixes, four pulled and one edged.

The first two wickets fell to accurate, good or full-length deliveries, an approach that Wellington would have done well to continue, rather than feeding Phillips short stuff. McPeake’s self-image was bowling 15 kph faster than he was. It was to a good length ball on off stump that Phillips fell, caught behind off Snedden.

At the other end, the bowling to left-hander Mark Chapman was fuller, but no straighter. He reached fifty from 72 balls, with 80% of his runs coming from boundaries, mostly through the offside. With a first-class average above 40 and a list A average above 50, Chapman should add to his shorter-form caps soon, though he will have to deal with bowling less imbued with the early generosity of Christmas if he does.

Martin Guptill replaced Phillips. The prospect of watching Guptill bat is always a treat, though like Mark Ramprakash there is a massive discordance between how good he looks and his test stats. Soon there was a straight-driven four that made a sound off the bat as sweet as a hummingbird uncorking champagne. But Newton, showing the value of line and length, got him with a fine ball that bounced a fraction more than expected. O’Donnell chased a wider ball from Snedden to leave Auckland at 134 for five.

Wicketkeeper Ben Horne was next in. He has the most distinctive ritual while waiting for the bowler to bowl that I have seen for some time. He begins by banging the bat really hard on the ground. I thought that a 21-gun salute was under way at the National War Memorial just down the road. Once the bowler approaches, the bat is raised to shoulder height and waved manically, as if conducting an invisible orchestra in the covers. It worked well enough here; Horne made 57, the recovery built around him.

On 90, Chapman hit the shot of the day, a square cut that left McPeake on the boundary with no chance despite having only five metres to cover. Chapman was out in the following over, five short of a deserved century when he was caught at slip off Gibson while deciding whether to play or leave. Gibson did a decent job into the brisk north-westerly, which he needs to be careful about; you don’t want to get a reputation as an into-the-wind bowler at the Basin if you have aspirations towards old age.

Kyle Jamieson has a wonderfully straightforward approach to batting: play well back to anything short of a length, well forward to the rest, and be aggressive except when you really can’t be. He beat Horne to fifty despite coming in 13 overs later. They put on 85 for the seventh wicket. McPeake took three quick wickets to finish the innings at 279.

Wellington had seven overs to bat at the end of the day, always a nervous time, especially for Rachin Ravindra, who had given it away so memorably in these circumstances the week before. Today it was Blundell who did not make it to the close. He misjudged a short one from Jamieson and shovelled a catch to mid on.

The second day began in perfect conditions, with a clear blue sky. A photo of the ground at the start of play was liked and retweeted more than anything else that I have posted. It was one of those timeless days where you could close your eyes to the sound of bat on ball and be at Folkestone in the 70s, Mote Park in the 80s, Bath Rec in the 90s or your favourite ground whenever.

Only one wicket fell all day, that of Ravindra, driving a little loosely at Jamieson to be caught in the gully for 23. Ravindra has to avoid the reputation as a maker of elegant trifles (see Vince J).

For the rest of the day, Conway and Bracewell worked their way towards a third-wicket partnership of 287. Conway is patient, waiting for the ball does not have to be bad, just not quite angelic. Here, scoring square of both sides of the wicket dominated, though there were shots down the ground too, notably the six over long on with which Conway reached his century.

Worst moment of Auckland’s day was just before lunch when Conway fell for the trap that had been set all morning and hit a catch off Jamieson to deep square leg where a routine catch was put down.

Bracewell, who is quite capable of playing aggressively, sensibly played the supporting role here. His century was his first for Wellington in first-class cricket (he made seven for Otago), and helped suppress a growing reputation as a non-converter of fifties.

That Wellington did not run away with the day as it went on was thanks to a sluggish pitch and disciplined bowling. We have not seen one of these, hard-to-get-out-but-hard-to-score-on pitches at the Basin for a while, and let’s hope that we have a long wait for the next one.

Off spinner Will Somerville came on for the 26th over and bowled through until the new ball was taken. He gave Auckland control without looking like taking a wicket (he took two the following day). His admirable performance made me miss Jeetan Patel, who did the same job for the home team for the best part of two decades. Did anybody else feel the same? Probably not. Patel never got the recognition in his home town that that he has in Birmingham, where they hold him in reverence. Wellington have not replaced him. Here, Bracewell—12 wickets in a decade—was Wellington’s lead spinner (though for several overs the scoreboard told us he was Blundell). Younghusband bowled just one over.

The day was enlivened at lunchtime by an outbreak of the Scarborough Festival. A brass band appeared and treated us to a lunchtime concert, though, like the Wellington attack, it knew only one tune (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You). It was to do with the filming of a segment of the New Zealand version of Taskmaster.

Towards the end of the day there was use of experimental law 2.8.4, which states:

If the umpires cannot find any reason to suspend play under this law, they may still do so from time-to-time purely for their own gratification.

The players left the field for 20 minutes because of a problem with the run-up area just behind the crease at the northern end. Compacted sand was said to be the issue. As is usual, the first attempted remedy was that everybody with an official title of some kind went out to the middle and stared very hard at the offending area. When that didn’t work, the groundsman banged a heavy tool on the turf, which might have been thought likely to intensify any compaction problem. But it did the trick and the game continued. At the close, Conway was 149 and Bracewell 123.

I wasn’t there for the final two days. Auckland were set 167 to avoid an innings defeat, which they managed comfortably, Wellington having taken too much time in building the lead, but a side that has lost three in a row may be forgiven for consolidating.

The Plunket Shield disappears for three months now, like the British Raj heading for the hills to avoid the heat of summer. Test cricket returns to the Basin next week, however, and I give thanks that I will be there.