Scattered among plenty of standard domestic cricket delight, were a bunch of slick performances from the Blackcaps battlers in round two of the Plunket Shield. Although Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor, BJ Watling and Trent Boult didn't play in round two, many Blackcaps did lace up for another taste of domestic cricket before they gap it to United Arab Emirates and with solid contributions to their names, they carry a splash of form with them to UAE.

The bulk of the Blackcaps battlers were in Northern Districts Knights vs Canterbury Kings; Colin de Grandhomme, Ish Sodhi, Neil Wagner vs Tom Latham, Henry Nicholls, Matt Henry. This game was drawn, although the Blackcaps did everything in their power to force a result, especially in the Knights group with Wagner, Sodhi and de Grandhomme falling just short of the winning wicket as Canterbury's bowlers held on with the willow.

De Grandhomme and Sodhi were the major winners here, starting with ND's first batting innings where de Grandhomme smacked 115 off 135 and Sodhi chimed in with 50 further down the order. They then took 5 wickets between them as de Grandhomme bagged the key wickets of Nicholls (41) and Keny McClure (0), before Sodhi took 3w in tearing through the lower order.

They were both not out in ND's second effort with the bat, with de Grandhomme again in a typical CDG groove, hitting 35 off 26 via a trio of sixes and Sodhi also got in on the six-hitting action, belting a maximum in his 10 off 5. That set up a chase of 385 for Canterbury and while de Grandhomme took 1w, he did so at just 1.77rpo and was only given 13 overs of work as Sodhi got through a marathon shift; 38 overs, 4w @ 2.16rpo.

Sodhi took the key wicket of century-maker Jack Boyle at the top of the order, before moving into dismantling Canterbury's middle/lower order again. Sodhi sent Cole McConchie, Matt Henry and Will Williams back to the shed, for a combined total of 7 runs which very nearly handed ND the win.

Sodhi finished with 7w in this game and now sits third in total wickets. Auckland's Will Somerville is the next best spinner on 7w and Sodhi has the best economy rate of any of the 10 bowlers who have taken over 5 wickets; 2.14rpo. De Grandhomme is currently a top-10 bowler and batsman, taking 6w @ 18.33avg and scoring 150 runs @ 75avg/85.71sr.

De Grandhomme: 115 runs, 2w, 35* runs, 1w.

Sodhi: 50 runs, 3w, 10* runs, 4w.

Neil Wagner is the leading wicket-taker after two rounds of Plunket Shield cricket after he bagged 2w and 3w, leading the Knights bowling attack. This is exactly what you'd expect from someone who bullies international batsmen and Wagner's trio of wickets in the second innings, were delightful. Delightful in the sense that you can see what makes Wagner such a nightmare to face at this level as Cameron Fletcher and Andrew Hazeldine are in no position to play the shots they do, via Wagner's threat with the short ball.

I doubt Tom Latham was too fussed, yet he still caught a weird edge in this dismissal in which Wagner appeared to nip the ball back into Latham:

Then we have Fletcher and Hazeldine, who probably had no intentions to score runs given the game scenario, but flashed at full-ish deliveries that they should have left alone:

But again, that's what Wagner does. He's got you trippin' about the short ball, especially after everyone had just seen McClure cop a Wagner bouncer flush on the helmet. Then Wagner offers a juicy full ball that moves a bit and batsmen feel the release of pressure, only to catch an edge.

Matt Henry took 2w in either innings, taking his tally to 8w @ 32.12avg/3.53rpo. Only one seamer has bowled more overs than Henry's 72.4 and taken 5+ wickets, that's Wagner with a whopping 78.1 overs in two games. This is why Henry's average is a bit inflated as he's leading an inexperienced Canterbury bowling group and the best way to paint a picture about this Canterbury bowling unit is; Henry has 8w and the next best Canterbury bowler is offie Cole McConchie on 4w.

The focus is on Henry here, but to further reinforce this idea that Henry's out here as Canterbury's main/only weapon we can take a quick geeze at how the other three seamers are all averaging over 35 with the ball. Williams averages 35.50, Hazeldine averages 66.25 and Fraser Sheat averages 40.66. Henry's not amazing at 32.12avg, this is because of his workload though.

Latham put up scores of 18 and 2, while Nicholls had a solid outing with 41 and 54. This is fairly standard from Nicholls, however there may be a bit of concern about Latham's trio of Plunket Shield innings thus far in which he has scored a total of 26 runs. Latham put up a 6 last round and then 18 and 2 here, which isn't ideal.

We only need to look at our last Blackcaps battler Jeet Raval though, for reason to chill on Latham. Last round I wrote the same thing about how I had highlighted Raval' slump that went through different longform arenas and now Raval has a century and a 57 in his Plunket Shield excursion. Raval hit 102 last week and then endured a first innings failure in Auckland's loss to Central Districts, caught behind for 8.

Raval suffered the exact same dismissal in the second inning at the hands of Seth Rance, however this time he had 58 runs on the board. This puts Raval 5th in runs with 167 @ 55.66avg and he is the only opening batsman who has scored over 150 runs. Form comes and goes without much rhyme or reason, as we've seen for Raval and this is only reinforced when we consider that Raval's lack of runs went all the way back to last season' Plunket Shield and Blackcaps Test cricket.

Those are the same conditions, same calibre of bowlers and Raval's now found the runs. Latham has a reputation as a batsman who can handle spin bowling nicely, which will be handy in the UAE but the Blackcaps openers will be up to their necks in a battle against Pakistan's seamers who are impressing against Australia. Especially this Mohammad Abbas dude, you don't want to come into a series against Abbas suffering from a lean patch.

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