Wellington Firebirds stormed their way to a win over Cantebury, despite only scoring 275 runs in total. No Wellington batsmen scored more than Michael Papps' second innings 48 and Papps went back to back with 40+ scores, while the only other 40+ score for Wellington was Tom Blundell's 43*; there's only so much batting that needs to be done when you've got the two best bowlers in the Plunket Shield.

Hamish Bennett understandably gets most of the attention and he snapped up 5 wickets in either innings, taking his overall tally to 27 @ 9.40avg/2.45rpo. This is easily Bennett's best First-Class season, although he's steadily been among Aotearoa's best seamers and last season's 25w @ 32.40avg was his first season since 2007/8 in which he had an average over 30. Bennett's in a fine patch of form and pre-Christmas form always needs to be taken with a splash of context for seamers as moist conditions are perfect for seamers. Given that 8 of the top-10 wicket-takers are seamers (the top-three wicket-takers last season were all spinners) and that Jacob Duffy, Matt McEwan, Adam Milne, Henry Shipley and Scott Kuggeleijn also took a 5-for this round; life's lovely for seamers.

How about the fact that Jeetan Patel and Todd Astle combined to bowl 5.1 overs in this game. Auckland didn't even play with a specialist spinner and Northern Districts were boosted by the returns of Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi, who bowled 16 overs in their loss to Auckland. That's the same number of overs as ND seam Joel Baker and Kuggeleijn took his 5-for in 15.2 overs. 
Imagine being Ben Lister (Auckland) or Warren Barnes (Otago) who have recently made their FC debuts and immediately found wickets. Milne strolled back into domestic cricket and took 8 in a match, Colin de Grandhomme popped back to his standard routine of kiwi-military-medium domination (4w @ 1875avg/2.14).

If your a seamer who is battling, knee deep in a wicket slump, like, what's doing? Seamers who aren't taking wickets right now must be second guessing themselves all over the show because moisture is in the air, Aotearoa's got their typical seamer decks brewed perfectly. Whether you're fast, military-medium, lefty, whippy or bouncy; hit the deck and you'll go alright.

This isn't to diminish Bennett's fabulous work, just context and Bennett was already snatching batsmen's souls before this round so you'd expect the best seamer to dominate in a Plunket Shield round that saw all sorts of seamers enjoy success. The same obviously applies to Logan van Beek, who is 2nd in wickets with 24w @ 13.62/2.91rpo and I wouldn't say that I'm cautious about celebrating seamers to any great extent until we get a bigger sample size in less favourable conditions, context is always important. Van Beek's narrative is a lot more interesting though, so I'm more intrigued by his rise to this point than I am in pondering Bennett.

Van Beek was barely a factor for Canterbury last season and while Kyle Jamieson burst on to the domestic scene with 24w @ 18avg, Ed Nuttall stacked up another decent Plunket Shield season (19w @ 35.68avg) and veteran Andrew Ellis led the pack with 27w @ 24.59avg, van Beek was an extra in the movie. With 12w @ 41.66avg, van Beek was even put in the shade by youngins' Henry Shipley (10w @ 34.50avg) and Will Williams (6w @16.33) in terms of Canterbury seamers that we should be paying attention to. 

In eight FC seasons, van Beek has averaged over 40 in four of them and under 25 twice (including this season). The change in scenery has worked wonders for van Beek and now he finds himself as a crucial cog in Wellington's seam attack, especially considering that Ollie Newton has plateued since his 4w in the first innings of his debut (5w in 7 innings) and Newton went wicket-less in this win over Canterbury. Newton still gets the new-ball, but van Beek's work as the third-seamer has allowed Wellington to maintain a threat after the new-ball and van Beek's arc this season is the opposite of Newton's as van Beek has taken 24w in the last 6 innings.

It was van Beek who got the wickets of Tom Latham and Henry Nicholls in the first innings, forcing both to play away from their bodies:

And van Beek then had Nicholls elevating like he'd just hit the blunt;

Van Beek had Nicholls caught by Blundell twice and even though there didn't appear to be much room in blossoming bowling group for van Beek, he reminded his Cantab homies of what he can do. Or perhaps he showed them some new tricks, new tricks learned from the big bro Bennett who is always there to grab a jersey and cap off the umpire:

Auckland have unearthed an interesting prospect in Ben Lister and the lefty backed up his debut with an impressive performance against a stacked ND side; 5w @ 1.93rpo in 15 overs and 1w @ 2.57rpo in 21 overs. Again, life's pretty easy for seamers so no need to get dramatic about Lister but he has shown a rather unique ability to move the ball into lefties and away from righties. This is in direct contrast to Trent Boult for example, who gets the regular movement into righties and away from lefties.

In Lister's 5-for, he swung the ball between Daniel Flynn's bat and pad to skittle the stumps. Then he moved the ball away from BJ Watling and Kane Williamson, catching their outside edges with deliveries that they probably would have wanted to leave but Lister enticed them into fiddling with that movement away. If Watling and Williamson got caught fiddling, then Tim Seifert had no chance;

The Kuggeleijn (far right) dismissal is interesting because it's similar to Flynn's yet Kuggeleijn is a right-hander. I'd suggest that Kuggeleijn had seen and heard about Lister's stuff (out-swing to righty) and had that in mind, so he played for the swing and instead got a ball that didn't move away, thus sneaking through his bat and pad.

Matt McEwan was the chief-destroyer in the second dig for Auckland (after hitting 55 vs ND's nek-level bowling attack) with 6w @ 2.38rpo in 20.1 overs. McEwan dismissed Southee, Sodhi and Boult, so his tally was bolstered by some lower-order wickets but he also had Watling and Williamson caught with short-ish balls that surprised them;

Who's this grump?

Just a note on Milne and Ajaz Patel who both snatched 5-fors in Otago's second innings as I reckon Otago were having a whack to make set Central Districts a competitive target. All of CD's bowlers conceded over 4.50rpo, except for George Worker (4rpo in 2 overs) and most of Otago's batsmen were dismissed trying to give it a tonk. Just some context and it definitely ain't easy smacking Milne around when he's sparing the ball into righties at speed, while it's proven to be nearly impossible to smoke boundaries off of Patel without conceding wickets. 

Finally, I'm bloody interested in what happens with Otago's seam attack for this last round of Plunket Shield's first stanza. Last round Warren Barnes took 6w @ 2.06rpo on debut and he was then replaced by the returning Jacob Duffy, with Duffy taking 3w @ 3.36rpo in 25 overs and 5w @ 2.95rpo in 20 overs. Duffy almost gave Otago a win over CD, taking the key wickets of Ross Taylor and Tom Bruce, both bowled and Duffy was the only Otago bowler to concede less than 3.5rpo. 

Michael Rae has played all four games thus far (12w @ 30avg/4.19rpo) and depending on Neil Wagner's availability, we could see Barnes come back in for Rae or Wagner. Prior to this game Duffy only had 3w in two games and in his absence, Barnes impressed, so Duffy's haul in round four has spiced things up in terms of how Otago build their seam attack for round five.

Peace and love 27.