Ford Trophy mayhem has eased up and we were a single run away from having a century in all three games yesterday, with Wellington Firebirds youngster Jakob Bhula letting the gang down. Bhula was dismissed on 99 in a Duckworth-Lewis loss to Central Districts, while in the other games there was a big ol' hundy for Colin Munro in his Ford Trophy return nudging Auckland Aces to another DWL win over Northern Districts Knights and then in Otago Volts' win over Canterbury Chad Bowes and Brad Wilson both hit hundies opening the innings.

All four of those innings, came from opening batsmen and that's going to be the bulk of my focus for today' Domestic Daily. I'll pop in tomorrow to suss out other yarns like Jacob Duffy's 6w vs Canterbury and the impact of Lockie Ferguson and Scott Kuggeleijn swinging back into domestic cricket, for now though let's admire those pesky openers.

If we're talking openers, there is only one bloke to start with though and that is Wellington' Andrew Fletcher who went 50+ yet again. Fletcher hit 59 off 75 balls, alongside Bhula and the funky note here is that Fletcher has seen a rotating cast of opening partners recently; Michael Pollard came in to bump Malcolm Nofal down the order and now Bhula replaced Pollard.

Fletcher has three centuries and three half-centuries in 9inns, plus this was his third 50+ score in his last 3inns. The dude is an absolute phenom at this stage of the campaign and he has fought off streaky performances from other batsmen, to stay the course. That started with Sean Solia getting off to a flyer, then his Firebirds comrade Jimmy Neesham found the runs and we've had a few others string together multiple 50+ scores before hitting a plateau.

I'll blend in Greg Hay's 83 off 104 for the Stags here, as it came in the same Stags vs Firebirds game and we know Hay is also an opener. We've seen Munro come in for a whack, hitting his 143 with a strike-rate of 153.76, but guys like Hay and Fletcher are going about their business in tidy fashion as Fletcher's got 77.02 and Hay 70.20. Hay's not quite on the Fletcher level as he's can match Fletcher's three half-centuries and not much else, I blend in Hay because I'm now super low key eager to see if Fletcher can slide this run-scoring into Plunket Shield cricket.

Hay is the Plunket Shield opening legend and we're seeing Hay enjoy a nice one-day season. Fletcher's going about his run-scoring in a similar fashion to Hay, just far more dominant and the leading run-scorer (by almost 200 runs) is showing that as long as you have power in your batting line up, a one-day anchor role can be fruitful.

Peep how Otago's Brad Wilson also chimed in on this 'Plunket Shield opener doing the one-day thing' yarn, hitting 126 off 140. Like a few of these openers, Wilson has only been injected into the Volts playing 11 recently and has 3inns thus far as teams are shaking up their opening combos to suss out any lack of runs. Wilson went at a nice clip, 90sr and this should allow him to settle into this job consistently.

Bhula started in the middle order, before being promoted up to open and he's oddly similar to Nofal, who opened and bowls spin. These two have now effectively swapped batting spots and Bhula didn't bowl vs Stags, leaving the Firebirds with 20 overs of spin via Nofal and leggy Peter Younghusband. Prior to moving up the order, Bhula had scores of 5, 0, 15, 11 and 5.

Given that Bhula is slowly settling into domestic cricket and his former Under 19 homie Rachin Ravindra is impressing at Aotearoa A level, the Bhula x Ravindra combo will be something to keep an eye on moving forward. That's if Ravindra ever plays domestic cricket.

Munro went bang, which is cool. Nothing new there. The only thing I'll say about this typically brutal Munro knock is that while I doubt any domestic bowler scares Munro, or makes him merely think twice, the Knights bowling attack ain't got none of that. Kuggeleijn was back in action and he was the most economical bowler for the Knights (only one under 5rpo), other than that though it was the young seam/spin of ND that got pumped.

Canterbury are getting immense service from their top-three batsmen in Chad Bowes, Jack Boyle and Stephen Murdoch. Bowes was the latest to go 100+ and his 104 off 117 took him up to 2nd in runs behind Fletcher, his first hundy and third 50+ score in 9inns. Boyle and Murdoch didn't do much in this game, however prior to this game Murdoch was on a 3inns streak of 50+ scores ft. a hundy and Boyle was on the same streak only a few games before that.

All up, that gives Canterbury three batsmen who have passed 50 three times in nine rounds. Boyle's only played five games, so he's got the nek level average of 55.40 and the others are a bit more settled. Murdoch's a veteran, stepping into the Peter Fulton void as an OG batsman in a young group and this young opening duo of Boyle and Bowes, double B's, have crept through the underground to put up career List-A averages of 41.41 (Boyle) and 42.05 (Bowes).

For you geeks; Kuggeleijn scored 75 off 51 and almost hit more sixes than Munro. Kuggeleijn hit 6 sixes, Munro hit 7 sixes.

Tom Bruce has also returned to domestic cricket in dominant fashion, taking over from Dean Foxcroft who has had 3inns without a notable score. In those 3inns that Foxcroft has hit the plateau, Bruce has put up scores of 13, 50 and 87.

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Peace and love 27.