Domestic Cricket Daily: Ford Trophy Round Six Bowling Notes
Having recently scribbled about Otago Volts' young seam attack, Jacob Duffy took a 5-for and along with Nathan Smith and Matt Bacon they accounted for the 9 wickets taken by Otago bowlers in the win over Wellington Firebirds. That game also featured 5 wickets from Ollie Newton and then we saw Seth Rance and Ben Wheeler casually bolster the Central District Stags bowling unit, combining for 7w as they rolled Auckland Aces for 125.
The Volts' win against Wellington reflected the difference in contributions between the bat and ball that we've seen throughout the Ford Trophy, only that this time their young seamers came out to dominate. Otago have Hamish Rutherford 2nd in runs via two centuries and then we have to go down to 12th in Ford Trophy runs for the next best Volts batsman Neil Broom, as their main contributors with the run-scoring thing. These two have been assisted by some swashbucklin' hitting from Josh Finnie who has hit two 50+ scores with a strike-rate of 113.15 but hasn't been overly consistent.
After Duffy took 5w @ 3.80rpo, Bacon took 3w @ 5.33rpo and Smith took 1w @ 4.18rpo, Otago still have a strong presence at the top of the bowler rankings. Those impressive hauls against a strong Wellington batting line up now have Duffy and Bacon in the top-five, which can be narrowed down to a top-four seaming group which is split between Otago (Duffy/Bacon) and Wellington (Hamish Bennett/Newton).
Duffy's got an average of 17.46, while Bacon sits on 20.23. Smith is a bit further behind and although Smith doesn't have the big wicket hauls, he has taken 1+ wicket in every Ford Trophy game thus far and averages a healthy 26.88.
Against Wellington, Duffy ripped the Kiwi-African lid off the Firebirds batting line up, Duffy sent Andrew Fletcher, Malcolm Nofal and Devon Conway back to the sheds within 10 overs. If you're going to beat Wellington, you need to handle those three batsmen up top and put the younger lads who come in after Jimmy Neesham, under pressure which Duffy did in taking those 3w early.
Duffy had Fletcher dabbling away from his body:
Duffy then changed the angle for the lefty, which most right-armers with Duffy's swing don't do. Duffy had the swing into the lefty as well as the angle, then some late nibble away from Nofal to get another caught-behind:
Conway probably middled this straight to Christi Viljoen, however it's Duffy's angle and swing into Conway that put Conway in this position. Again, because of Duffy bowling from the side of the stumps that righties don't usually bowl from with the new ball:
A few rounds ago I posted an image of Neesham playing this exact shot for a boundary. This time Neesham tried to go inside-out against Bacon, with Wellingon only needing 9 more runs and spooned it to Rutherford:
This Otago trio now have 35 wickets between them and they have all bowled in every innings so far. Their batsmen couldn't handle the Wellington bowling unit led by Newton and this presented an opportunity for the young seamers to step up, which considering that Duffy was skipper again went bloody well.
Wellington did enjoy great service from Newton, who skittled the stumps of key batsmen Rutherford and Broom. Newton has snuck up to 4th in wickets @ 17.80avg/4.28rpo and has filled the boots of Logan van Beek admirably, essentially doing the same job as van Beek in supporting Bennett and considering how successful van Beek was last summer, Newton's trucking down the right path.
Newton doesn't appear to be overly quick, more of a glorious kiwi seamer and relies on his craft to trouble batsmen. Early on, he offered the same swing/seam movement as Duffy and later in the innings he had the ball spearing into the stumps against the tail-enders. Last season it was van Beek nibbling the ball around while Bennett served up his heavy-ball style that moves into righties, this season it's Newton who troubles batsmen with movement and compliments Bennett's threat.
Seth Rance slotted back into domestic cricket after stint in the United Arab Emirates, where he only played a T20 game vs UAE and a T20I vs Pakistan. Rance appears to be locked in as a T20 bowler, but on the domestic scene he is an all-round dynamo we only need to note that he took 10w in 3inns during the Plunket Shield prior to the UAE excursion, now he's returned with 3w in 8ov in the Ford Trophy.
All 3w were top-order batsmen as Rance accounted for three of Auckland's top-four and once that deed was done, in came Ben Wheeler who tore through Auckland's middle order with 4w in 7ov. Wheeler has only played two Ford Trophy games, but has 6w @ 13avg and took 3w in his lone Plunket Shield appearance; he's got 9w in 4inns.
Both Wheeler and Rance will be eager to make an impact in domestic cricket, further pushing their case for Blackcaps selection in the kiwi summer. Neither is on the cusp right now, regardless of your preference and they will need to roll out some dominant performances to demand a Blackcaps chance. Along with Doug Bracewell, the form an almighty seam bowling unit for the Stags and with Bracewell taking 9w @ 24.57avg, along with Rance and Wheeler making an impact in limited game time, watch out for the Stags.
Lastly, Auckland unleashed Michael Snedden, who took 3w @ 6.78rpo in 9ov on debut. Michael comes from the famous kiwi sporting Snedden whanau and played plenty of cricket for Otago A back in 2014, before sliding up to Auckland. Snedden appears to be a lively righty, with a natural, flowing action allowing for nice out-swing to right-handed batsmen and now presents an interesting battle for spots in the Auckland bowling line up, given that Danru Ferns was 12th man in the loss to the Stags.
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Peace and love 27.