Domestic Cricket Daily: Knights vs Aces and Their 'A' Lads
With those Blackcaps not involved in the Sri Lanka Test series and Aotearoa 'A' cricketers flooding back into Plunket Shield, a funky window was open for a hot minute. While it's always nice to have the best cricketers playing Plunket Shield, this funky window is more about being able to get back to gauging various cricketers among their peers.
As most of these lads are come from the A group, they are bringing their cricketing growth back into the testing ground. In theory, they should be better than they were before or be showing signs of their development from time spent in the A group and this is generally what we have seen across Plunket Shield round four.
In Auckland, Auckland Aces defeated Northern Districts Knights and both teams had a fair number of Blackcaps/A cricketers. In the Knights team were Tim Seifert, Daryl Mitchell, Scott Kuggeleijn and Ish Sodhi, while the Aces had Glenn Phillips, Mark Chapman and Will Somerville.
The battle between Sodhi and Somverville catches the eye, with Somerville taking a minor win as the seamers from both teams dominated. Despite bowling the most overs for ND in their first innings (23), Sodhi took just 1 wicket @ 4rpo and with the Aces chasing 125 for victory, Sodhi went wicket-less in conceding 4.60rpo. Somerville didn't need to do too much other than dismiss two tail-enders in the first innings - only bowling 8.3ov - but then played a key role in the second innings as he picked up 3w @ 3rpo.
All 3w were middle order batsmen and batsmen who could have changed the flow of the game as ND tried to set a competitive target. Instead, Somerville sent Daryl Mitchell, Nick Kelly and Anton Devcich back to the sheds. Mitchell and Devcich were caught via some nifty work from Finn Allen:
The Knights enjoyed delightful service from some of their big dawgs though, with Tim Seifert hitting 51 in the second innings and Scott Kuggeleijn taking 5w @ 3.32rpo in the first dig and then sneaking the wicket of Sean Solia as Auckland strolled to victory. Seifert's 51 wasn't the best knock of this game and he got a 2-ball duck in the first innings; this isn't neccessarily about viewing Seifert in the vaccum of this one game.
With a splash of context from the A series, we can see that Seifert's hit a nice spot this summer after an almighty season last summer. Not doing much on Blackcaps white ball duty in United Arab Emirate and then for Aotearoa A against both Pakistan A and India A, Seifert hit two 50+ scores in three one-dayers vs India A. That means that in his last 5inns, Seifert has a trio of 50+ scores and I'm eager to keep a close eye on Seifert as he's now settling back into his low key best format (37.81 First Class average) and there is plenty of Blackcaps white ball cricket coming up.
Yes, it's bloody weird that Seifert who averages 37.81 in FC, 24.39 in List A and 20.94 in T20 is only really viewed as a white-baller in Blackcaps land. The guy is a Plunket Shield beast and he'll get another crack when round five starts on Friday.
Another Plunket Shield beast is Kuggeleijn and after an alright tour of UAE, Kuggeleijn wasn't required for the India A series'. In that time, Kuggeleijn played two Ford Trophy games and round four was his second Plunket Shield appearance; 6inns and 2+ wickets in 5 of those innings. The only innings in which Kuggeleijn hasn't taken 2+ wickets back on kiwi soil was the second innings vs Auckland and he still managed to squeeze a wicket out.
This has seen Kuggeleijn become a major factor in Plunket Shield wickets as he has already got 10w in just two games. Bowlers who have 10+ wickets in two games are Kuggeleijn, Kyle Jamieson, Seth Rance, Neil Wagner, Dean Foxcroft. Exlcuding Foxcroft who is a spinner, that's the cream of the seam bowling crop right there and Kuggeleijn will be keen to maintain this, possibly bumping him into a Blackcaps Battlers conversation.
Finally, I'm going to come back around to Auckland, where Glenn Phillips is doing some nice things in smacking the red ball around. The interesting thing here is what Phillips did prior to coming into Plunket Shield cricket as he played four longform game (one vs Pakistan A, three vs India A) and didn't play any white ball cricket for Aotearoa A vs India A. Phillips' scores in those four-dayers; 21, 3, 16, 7, 27.
Not the best return for Phillips, however he's made a sizzling start to the Plunket Shield with 4inns of 20+. Obviously 20+ runs is a fairly low bar and Phillips has a 60 and 57* in there, but the 20+ mark suggests that Phillips has fought through the toughest patch and faced at least 30 deliveries. For most, getting out after getting a start is the worst. For Phillips though, his style lends itself to always creating chances as he's naturally an attacking batsman and let's not forget that he's cashed in on half those starts to pass 50.
Phillips has overtaken Sean Solia in runs for Auckland, averaging 59.66 and of all the 15 batsmen with more runs than Phillips, only one has a higher strike-rate than Phillips' 62.15sr. Like Seifert, Phillips' best career average is in FC cricket (32.84avg). Unlike Seifert, Phillips averages over 30 in all three domestic formats; Seifert's in the early 20's for List-A and T20.
Tomorrow I'll wiggle my way through the Central Districts Stags vs Wellington game, so keep an eye out for that. Until then, hit an ad to support the Domestic Cricket Daily.
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Peace and love 27.