Domestic Cricket Daily: The Northern Districts Blackcaps Bullies
Having run through the best of the batting from the opening round of Plunket Shield cricket, now it's time to take a geeze at the bowlers. I gotta admit that the work of the bowlers wasn't quite as funky as the batsmen, mainly because this round featured Blackcaps bowlers playing their typically dominant hand. Having said that, you know me and there were some low key performances that tickled my fancy.
Neil Wagner and Trent Boult trotted out for Northern Districts Knights together, for the first time ever and had trusty side-kick Colin de Grandhomme adding his medium pace into the mix. Of the 20 wickets taken by the Knights in their win over Otago, 11 came from Wagner and Boult. Chuck de Grandhomme in and the total jumps up 14 of 20 wickets, while the ever-reliable James Baker chimed in with 4w.
Mad respects to Baker and he'll soon be leading the Knights bowling attack, however this is simply about highlighting the dominance of the Blackcaps seamers. 14 of 20 wickets coming from Blackcaps seamers is nice and all, however we'll have to wait to see how the Blackcaps departures impact ND's seam attack and their ability to bowl teams out.
ND are in a similar spot to CD, although quite different. Right now CD are without their Aotearoa 'A' lads and are relying on their young crew to fill the void, while ND will soon have to bring in the likes of Brett Randell and Zak Gibson to assist Baker; Scott Kuggeleijn will also be back from the UAE at some stage (don't be surprised to see Anurag Verma lace up for his home province after a low key move back from Wellington).
Things get even funkier when we add Ish Sodhi's 2w into the Blackcaps tally for the Knights. 16 of 20 wickets all up, the remaining 4w went to Baker and the Knights are well positioned to deal with Sodhi's spinning departure as they tend to rely on Josef Walker. Perhaps Mitchell Santner may make a return soon as well, getting some game time in before the Blackcaps return to Aotearoa.
Sodhi only took 2w, yet they came off just 9 overs and Otago's skipper/spinner Mark Craig also enjoyed an efficient outing with 2w off 5.2ov. The difference being that Craig also took a bit of a smacking, conceding 7.87rpo via Boult's master-class in giving it a tonk. Sodhi on the other hand, conceded just 2.22rpo.
This gets me to pondering the domestic spinner landscape and we were graced with our first sighting of Will Somerville, Auckland's leading spinner. Somerville returns to Aotearoa and domestic cricket after a hefty cricketing excursion over in Sydney, adding some experience to Auckland's line up but most importantly a solid spinning option.
Auckland have previously relied on Tarun Nethula (don't be surprised to see Nethula play white ball cricket for ND) and well, no one. I shit you not; Glenn Phillips was the best spinner for Auckland last summer in Plunket Shield cricket with 7w @ 34.85avg. Other than Somerville, Auckland gave youngster Aniket Parikh a few reps last season but with the spin stocks apparently empty in Auckland (surely there are decent spinners in Auckland club cricket?), they made the move to bring in Somerville.
That's a wise move, if you aren't chuffed with your spin options. The flipside to that is wtf is Auckland up to in developing spinners. Depends on your perspective, although it's hard to argue that with a young group, Somerville is a fantastic option and he obliged with 3w @ 3.22rpo in 16.1ov for Auckland in their first innings. All those were lower order wickets though.
Somerville went on to take 1w @ 1.62rpo in 13 second innings overs and that's a solid effort to start with. No other spinner took 3+ wickets in round one and the only other notable effort from a spinner besides Somerville, Sodhi and Craig was Central District's Felix Murray who is playing in place of Ajaz Patel. Murray only bowled 12 overs, he managed to snare 2w @ 1.91rpo though and how Murray progresses in these next few rounds will be of huge interest given that Patel is not only on the A tour, he's also in the Blackcaps Test squad.
That means a bunch of opportunities for Murray to establish himself in domestic cricket and as long as Seth Rance is bowling, Murray should be coming into bowl with the Stags enjoying a splash of momentum. Rance slotted straight into gear, taking 5w @ 2.65rpo in 20 overs in CD's win over Canterbury and the new-ball combo of Rance and Doug Bracewell could be the best in the business right now. Bracewell was also super solid, taking 2w @ 1.86rpo in 23ov and if conditions are favourable, the Rance/Bracewell duo is going to be nibbling the ball everywhere.
In the same game, Matt Henry was the best of Canterbury's bowlers with 4w @ 3.90rpo in 29.3ov. Remember that Henry took 75w @ 15.48avg/3.03rpo for Kent in County Championship Division Two and now he's back in Aotearoa, looking to continue that sizzling Kiwi County Tour run. We won't see Henry for too long in Aotearoa and things will get much tougher for him in the UAE, for now though enjoy Henry's last 10 innings of longform cricket: 0w, 1w, 7w, 4w, 1w, 4w, 4w, 4w, 1w, 4w.
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Peace and love 27.