Domestic Cricket Daily: Aotearoa 'A' Excursion To UAE (T20 Report)
While Plunket Shield cricket has me fizzing, there's this cheeky Aotearoa 'A' tour going on at the same time over in United Arab Emirates. The A lads are currently in the midst of a T20 series against Pakistan 'A' and are 1-1 heading into the final T20, which goes down tomorrow NZT. As youz would all expect, I'm here to roll through a few notes about those first two T20 games and will continue to follow the A team through the clutter of Plunket Shield and Blackcaps antics.
When pondering an A team series, results are cute and obviously matter to those involved. From my perspective, I'm more interested in which players are leading the way in terms of performances and any other minor details that I can find. The results thing has been reflected in the series thus far as Aotearoa got absolutely tonked in the first game; all out for 65 and then game over after 12.5 overs of bowling, then a solid win last night which went down to the last ball as Aotearoa chased down a target of 143.
A tours expose players to more challenging conditions, hence that first game was a bit of a nightmare. Such a hiding sums up the whole point of this tour and the ability to bounce back, assess conditions and perform at the required level. The difference was the performance with the bat as Aotearoa didn't give their bowlers anything to work with in game one, then Pakistan put up 142/7 in the second game which is a fairly standard T20 total and 50+ scores from openers Glenn Phillips and George Worker got the job done.
Via those two half-centuries, Phillips and Worker are the leading run-scorers for Aotearoa. They both failed in game one, scoring 4 and 1 respectively. Mark Chapman (11*) and Tom Bruce (15*) spent some much needed time at the crease and steered the kiwis to victory in game two, after they put up 3 and 1 respectively.
They only other batsman to bat in both games was Corey Anderson, who did the opposite. Anderson hit 16 in game one and then got a two-ball duck in game two, while Tim Seifert blazed 26 off 17 to top-score in game one; Seifert's innings came at a strike-rate of 152.94 and that's the best of the kiwis from both games.
Here are the line ups...
Phillips, Worker, Chapman, Anderson, Bruce, Seifert (wk), Jamieson, Astle, Kuggeleijn, Patel, Tickner.
Phillips, Worker, Chapman, Anderson, Bruce, Patel, Kuggeleijn, Jamieson, Astle, Seifert (wk), Tickner.
Same players, just some minor tweaks to the line up. That could be false though as the line up for game two featured players who didn't bat, so we'll never know the exact line up and I'm just running off the list from Cricinfo. Seifert got a nice bat in the first game, so promoting Scott Kuggeleijn and Ajaz Patel for a whack in game two makes sense.
Kuggeleijn, Blair Tickner, Kyle Jamieson, Todd Astle and Patel were used as bowlers in game one. Jamieson was the only bowler to take a wicket, conceding 5rpo and along with Tickner, they were the only bowlers to bowl all 4 overs - Tickner conceded 5rpo.
Anderson and Phillips were added to the bowling attack for game two. Anderson only bowled 2ov, despite conceding just 4rpo which was the best of the kiwi bowlers in this game and I reckon this part of the easing Anderson back into bowling plan; which we have seen before in Plunket Shield cricket. Phillips got smoked for 10 off his lone over.
Astle and Patel took the bulk of the wickets in game two. Astle took 2w @ 7.25rpo in 4ov and Patel took 3w @ 7.50rpo in 4ov, which immediately put Patel up top as the leading wicket-taker for Aotearoa. Astle joined Jamieson on 2w in the series after Jamieson picked up another wicket and Jamieson has been the low key bowler of note thus far; 2w in 7ov @ 4.85rpo.
Kuggeleijn and Tickner haven't quite adjusted to UAE conditions as well as Jamieson in the seam department. Kuggeleijn snared a wicket in game two, but has 7ov with 1w @ 7rpo after opening the bowling in both games, while Tickner is yet to take a wicket in 6ov @ 6rpo. This is to be expected as Tickner is the least experienced at this level, let alone in UAE conditions and with Tickner at one end of the spectrum, Anderson with his IPL and international experience is at the other end of the experience spectrum in such conditions.
In both games, Will Young has been 12th man. This is fair as there isn't much room in that batting line up for Young and he will feature in the First Class game, with Chapman and Phillips dropping out after the T20 series. Others who haven't played are Tom Blundell, Lockie Ferguson and Rachin Ravindra - Logan van Beek joins the crew after the T20 series.
The third and final T20 will be kinda funky because there will be a different level of pressure to the series-decider. This will mean that we can gauge the key performers in the context of what is a bit like a final and with two extremes so far, hopefully the third T20 will see an intense game from which the best kiwi players will emerge and perform.
Jamieson and Worker are the most interesting kiwis for me at this stage. Jamieson has shown many, many glimpses of his talent in Aotearoa but has been impacted by injury and he's again showcasing his class on this A tour. Worker is always in the Blackcaps mix and already has a dominant knock, further runs will spark up the annual Worker convo and I love me a bit of that.
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Peace and love 27.