Derek de Boorder with the lappy. Shout out to him and Hamish Rutherford for their hundies as well. Didn't go into depth about them but they did the thing.

Having started the Plunket Shield round four bowlers wrap with some Wellington Firebirds stuff, it's only right I do the same with the batting. Or more specifically, regurgitate how heavy Wellington's reliance on their bowlers is right now and if Hamish Bennett wasn't bowling deliveries with cobwebs, assisted by Logan van Beek's emergence from the cricketing shadows in Canterbury, Wellington probably wouldn't have stacked up four wins from four games.

Wellington's batsmen are definitely doing enough and when you've got bowling attacking that is sizzling like choritzos on a barbecue, enough is all you need. I was just a wee bit surprised when I dug deeper into their batsmen's performances to see that they haven't been overly dominant. Viewing the run-scoring rankings or averages will lead you to believe that Wellington have had equal juice from their batsmen and bowlers, that's a surface look though; Michael Papps has 446 runs this season and 316*of them came in one innings.

Papps was an example of Wellington's batsmen doing enough in their win against Canterbury as he went back to back with 40s. Papps top-scored in either innings and since that triple hundy he has put up scores of 11, 24, 3, 44 and 48 - a far cry from last season when Papps hit three hundreds in three games, spreading out his triple hundy across instead of smashing it out in one game.

Averages are cool, in a small sample size they can get a bit weird though and Papps is averaging 89.20, despite not scoring over 48 since the triple hundy. Luke Woodcock also benefits from that demolition of Auckland in round one as half of his 299 runs came in that one innings and since then he's racked up scores of 10, 61, 30, 31 and 16. That's steady and between Papps and Woodcock, they only have one single-digit score in 12 innings, meaning that they are seeing off the funk of the new-ball and overall they are doing enough with their run-scoring to help their bowlers out; they aren't out of form and things could be a lot worse, they're just doing enough.

Papps is 2nd in runs and Woodcock is 6th, with majority of their runs coming in that opening game. The next best Wellington batsman is Stephen Murdoch, who is 13th with 222 runs and it's the same story with Murdoch as half of his runs came in his 114 vs Wellington. Murdoch's also hit a 97 vs Northern Districts and the difference with Murdoch and the openers (Papps/Woodcock) is that Murdoch has scored 11 runs in his four other innings; 0, 114, 97, 6, 2, 3.

That's enough, just a different style of enough. In the two games that featured Murdoch going big, Papps and Woodcock combined for a single 30+ score (Woodcock's 61) in six innings. Being able to squeeze out just enough runs is one style of enough and the other is scoring runs when the big-dawgs aren't scoring, or having different batsmen chip in (see Central Districts below). Either way, Wellington have been able to score enough runs for their bowlers to get busy.

Wellington's big-three haven't had a whole lot of help elsewhere, other than Tom Blundell's consistently solid contributions which again sit in the enough bucket. Blundell's had three not-outs that boost his average and two of them for 40s, the other was a 14* in the win over Canterbury. That 14* is the only score below 20 for Blundell this season and while he hasn't gone big with a notable contribution, he's done enough and is currently a bank-able 20-30 runs that is more than useful.

The two other notable batsmen for Wellington are Michael Bracewell and Fraser Colson. Bracewell's scored 135 runs in six innings and Colson 109 in five innings, they each have two 40+ scores this season and because only one of these was converted into a half-century, you could be deceived into thinking they haven't been helping. Once again, they've done enough and aren't scoring a heap of runs but a 40-odd at the right time is quality with Bennett and van Beek on fire.

And for the finest definition of enough, I look to Lord Jeetz, the greatest run-scorer in Kiwi County Tour history. Lord Jeetz doesn't even feature in the top-50 run-scorers, meaning that he's scored less than 74 runs this season but he does have a 64 to his name (9 runs in three other innings) and this score came in Wellington's only batting innings vs Otago, in which Murdoch hit his century and Bracewell hit a 43.

Patel smacked 64 off 57 balls at No.9 and sprinkled his magic on top of Murdoch's hundy, to ensure that Wellington only had to bat once. Wellington have done what they've done (winning four from four) without really firing on all cylinders and you could be tricked into thinking that Papps and Woodcock for example, have been rampant run-scorers throughout the first four rounds, instead Wellington's batsmen have simply done enough to set things up for their bowlers.

Super quick word on Central District's batting performance vs Otago, which caught my eye because of how the different scores in either innings overlapped the lack of runs in either innings. Here's the first innings scores of their batsmen:

Worker - 52.
Hay - 57.
Young - 37.
Taylor - 34.
Ryder - 56.
Bruce - 57.
Cleaver - 10.

Young, Taylor and Cleaver were the only batsmen to score less than 50 and guess what happened in the second innings; they were the only batsmen to score 50+. You could even stretch (/manipulate) that out to Young, Taylor and Cleaver being the only CD batsmen to score less than 40 in the first dig, and over 40 in the second. Although I wouldn't get too dramatic on that as Ryder was left not-out on 31 and would have obviously scored a billion runs if he had the time.

Point being; CD kinda played the perfect batting game. This also shows how stacked CD's batting line up is and I've followed the ins/outs of their batting line up this season, pondering how different pieces to the puzzle will fit. Ross Taylor and Tom Bruce came back, with Brad Schmulian dropping out and Will Young moving up to #3 to accommodate Taylor at #4.

Only one batsman was left out (Schmulian) and CD made space for the other batsman through the absence of a bowler (injury/left out I'm not sure). Doug Bracewell, Seth Rance and Bevan Small weren't playing and Adam Milne and Navin Patel were the only bowling inclusions, effectively resulting in a Bruce for Small swap.

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Peace and love 27.