Nothing makes me happier than seeing Lockie Ferguson destroy a stump or two and we're in rare air when a bowler can swing a game in favour of his team, as Ferguson did against Otago. I'm going to save the Ferguson chat for tomorrow's Blackcaps Mixer because that's the vibe around Ferguson and - Niche Cache homies announcement - the same goes for George Worker (and Seth Rance). I will however drop two Ferguson crumbs to keep youz munching until that Blackcaps Mixer comes out...

THIS IS NOTHING NEW FOR FERGY-FERG; the dude has consistently been among the leading wicket-takers in Plunket Shield cricket and regardless of what Lesson think, Ferguson's First-Class stuff (24.04avg/3.32rpo) is far superior than his List-A stuff (29.13avg/5.97rpo) which earned him ODI selection ... and his T20 stuff (40.53avg/8.10rpo) that earned him an IPL contract.

Pace is one thing, but Ferguson moves the ball bruh; as Derek de Boorder found out.

More on that in the Blackcaps Mixer and I know all of youz are frothing from the gums about George Worker's century, so get hyped for the Blackcaps Mixer.

Auckland won that game because of Ferguson's antics and a few contributions from other lads as well. Although no one was truly able to dominate Otago's batting, Michael Barry, Ben Horne and Matt McEwan (the all-rounder!) hit 40+ scores in the first innings, followed by Rob O'Donnell's 84 and Sean Solia's 56 in the second innings. Auckland scored less than 300 in both innings, but did enough to put 200+ on the board and give Ferguson something to bowl at.

What's more intriguing is the tweaks Auckland made to their team. When changes are made and that team wins their next game, coincidentally or because of those changes, you've got to roll with the blokes who got the win. Tarun Nethula's 1 wicket in 57.2 overs saw him make way and Raja Sandhu was also cut from the bowling group, with seamers Danru Ferns and Ben Lister coming in. Craig Cachopa was also dropped to 12th-man and there was no Donovon Grobbelaar either, making this young Auckland team even younger; no one would have though prior to the season that we'd see an Auckland team without Nethula, Cachopa and Grobbelaar beat Otago.

Nethula and Grobbelaar have been consistent selections in grizzly Auckland teams of recent years, while Cachopa is low key experienced as well. Now they'll struggle to get back in.
Lister played a sound supporting role for Ferguson in the second dig with 3w @ 2.93rpo in his debut. The lefty took key wickets in that innings, trapping Neil Broom lbw and then grabbing Jimmy Neesham caught in the slips from a back-of-length ball that nipped away slightly.

Another wrinkle to this game was the Suburbs New Lynn funk and Auckland Grammar funk, both of which centres around Neesham. Neesham and Ferguson both went to Grammar and Ferguson had Neesham caught in the first innings, while Neesham snared the wicket of SNL homie Sean Solia in the first innings and then Jeet Raval in the second. SNL had Neesham, Solia, Barry and Raval playing in one game so shout out to them.

And yet another funky wrinkle here was the debut of Warren Barnes for Otago. Barnes moved down to Otago from Auckland a few seasons ago and has featured in a one-day and T20 games for the Volts (21.59 T20 avg in 16 games); he took 4w @ 2.25rpo (16 overs) and 2w @ 1.88rpo (16ov). That's a handy FC debut if you ask me, especially when you send Auckland's top-three batsmen back to the sheds with your first three FC wickets.

Barnes is tall and has always had some noise around him that he can bowl fairly quickly, which when combined with Neil Wagner in Otago's kiwi-African new-ball pair is kinda scary. I tend not to care about pace when people say 'oh he can bowl 150km/h blah blah' and I prefer to view it as a package - Ferguson bowls fast, bowls a lot of overs and has a freakish angle back into right-handers for example. I don't know if Barnes bowls fast, but I know he definitely doesn't bowl slow and his height, along with his err ... aligned bowling action is perfectly suited to swinging the ball as well.

That height leads to bounce and Barnes' bouncer had Raval jumping (and edging one), he also caught the outside edge of Michael Guptill-Bunce by angling the ball into his body only for a bit of out-swing to straighten things up:

Otago didn't play Jacob Duffy in this game and he was 12th-man, so how they juggle their bowling stocks moving forward will be interesting. Barnes effectively replaced Duffy and Michael Rae wasn't overly effective, so Otago could roll out a seam attack of Wagner, Duffy and Barnes with Neesham chiming in and Mark Craig doing the spin thing.

There's some nifty depth in that Otago bowling group and there's equal amounts of depth in their batting unit, only their batsmen aren't quite getting the job done. Otago only had one 40+ score in this game (Anaru Kitchen 44) and although Ferguson was on fire, this is also a case of following the Otago batting trend of the season thus far. Otago don't have a batsman in the top-10 run-scorers and Hamish Rutherford (18th) has the most runs for Otago this season (164 @ 27.33avg).

Brad Wilson (19th) is next with 153runs/25.50avg and then we have Neil Wagner! Wagner has 129 runs @ 43avg, making him arguably Otago's best batsman right now, making him Aotearoa's best all-rounder right now as he averages 43 with the bat and 22 with the ball. As much as I love Wagner, it shouldn't be that way and this batting performance against Ferguson/Auckland isn't an out-lier, not when you consider the averages of Otago's batsmen this season;

Rutherford - 27.33.
Wilson - 25.50.
Nicol - 16.80.
Broom - 24.
Neesham - 24.60.
De Boorder - 15.20.
Kitchen - 21.25.

That's fairly mediocre and stands out because it's astronomically different to the norm, what we have come to expect from these batsmen. These lads are all experienced cricketers and have scored all sorts of runs, which makes this lean patch crazy, but also has me predicting that it simply won't last. There's too much talent there for no one to average over 30 and they have all been in this position before (at some stage in their careers), so they will know that it's a lean patch and how to get out of it.

Definitely haven't ignored the other games and along with the Blackcaps Mixer, I'll take a geeze at Central Districts batting line up which is doing the opposite of Otago's (4 batsmen in top-10 and Dougie 11th). Logan van Beek's been tearing it up for Wellington as well, so I'll suss that out and anything else that tickles my Plunket Shield toes. You know the drill by now, if you enjoy reading our domestic cricket content, all you need to do is hit one of the ads you see on this page. That's like a donation, but you don't need to pay or do anything and you'll be showing your support to the Niche Cache.

There's also Patreon where you can donate directly to the Niche Cache and get some bonus stuff in return. I churn out a Domestic Cricket Daily radio after each round of Plunket Shield exclusively for our Patrons and we'll send you out some goodies sporadically as well.

Peace and love 27.