The naughty north of Aotearoa gets a cricket extravaganza this week as England prepare for the Test series vs Aotearoa with games against an Aotearoa 11 and Aotearoa 'A'. The game against Aotearoa 11 got underway yesterday and isn't all that interesting given that Aotearoa team is made up of fringe domestic players, guys who haven't featured at all or sporadically through the first three rounds of Plunket Shield cricket.

The 'A' game starts on Friday though and as such, we have an A squad to suss out. Tom Blundell skippers the team and Blundell's selection alongside Tim Seifert could be perceived as intriguing as they are both wicket-keeper/batsmen sniffing around different Blackcaps teams. Blundell is named as the wicket-keeper, meaning that Seifert will be chasing the ball around the field and this is another reminder the abundance of wicket-keeper/batsmen in Aotearoa exists because of how talented these blokes are as batsmen.

Ajaz Patel and Will Somerville are selected, possibly in a battle to secure Test selection this summer. The resurgence of Mitchell Santner spices things up a bit though and it feels like Santner may have played his way back into the Test squad, as the premier spinner to face England. Santner's steady spin, fits in nicely with the seam attack that the Blackcaps will roll out and as I'm leaning towards Santner slotting back into the Test team, Patel and Somerville are in the tier below.

Patel and Somerville are however, ahead of Todd Astle and Ish Sodhi at this stage based off of the teams selected. Astle was part of the tour to Sri Lanka, along with Patel, Somerville and Santner, but Astle didn't get a game; Patel and Somerville played both Tests, Santner played one. Patel finished as the leading wicket-taker of all bowlers in that series with 9w @ 26.88avg and Somerville wasn't too far behind with 7w @ 32.14avg, which would make it slightly weird if Santner leap-frogged them both from the Sri Lankan series to this England series.

Santner is a known quantity though and again, in Aotearoa with a reliance on seam bowling, I reckon Santner is the best complimentary spinner to the seam attack. Patel and Somerville will be eager to make their case for Test selection though and these two had fairly similar starts to the summer in Plunket Shield; Patel has 7w @ 25.85avg vs Somerville's 2w @ 29.50avg (Patel's bowled 77.1ov, Somerville bowled 23ov hence the disparity in wickets).

The selections of Kyle Jamieson, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips and Jimmy Neesham make sense from a Test development perspective. I wrote about Rachin Ravindra's selection and how Ravindra is enjoying a fast-track into fringe Blackcaps stuff yesterday and I get the same vibe about Jamieson as he's a seamer who has shown the skills and potential to eventually move into international cricket.

Opportunities like these are crucial to the development of guys like Jamieson and Ravindra, while it's a wee bit different for Mitchell, Phillips and Neesham. Those three are far more familiar to casual cricket fans, because they have been in and around A teams/Blackcaps teams for while and it should be viewed as a logical scenario of putting these blokes in the best position to move into Test cricket.

Hamish Rutherford is still lurking on the fringes, after getting a super weird call up for minimal T20I action in Sri Lanka. At this stage, I'm not sure what someone like Central Districts Stags' Greg Hay would have to do to get a look in as an opener in an A squad as there hasn't been a more dominant opening presence than Hay in the past three-four years. Alternatively, Ravindra could have been joined by Northern Districts Knights opener Henry Cooper who I compared to Ravindra in yesterday's Domestic Cricket Daily.

Rutherford's earned this selection by averaging 16.66 this season in Plunket Shield. Hay hasn't done much with with 18.33avg, leaving Cooper as the big donny with 55avg to start the season. For whatever reason, Rutherford's getting the opportunity and his presence as the next-up T20I batsman after that Sri Lanka excursion, while also apparently being in the mix here is weird.

That's where we get into the strange cross-over between T20I stuff and Test cricket. Rutherford's sniffing around both formats, while Scott Kuggeleijn and Blair Tickner appear to be in this A squad piggy-backing from their T20I series vs England. Kuggeleijn is rewarded for his T20I series vs England in which he didn't take a wicket and went for 13.75rpo, while Tickner took 2w @ 37.50avg/9.37.

Personally, I'd prefer to see the likes of Matt Henry and Lockie Ferguson playing for the A team and racking up overs vs England. The Blackcaps are obviously hiding their bowling attack from England, which feels a bit too cute and after playing some Plunket Shield cricket, the natural progression would have been the A game then Test stuff.

There is no shortage of seamers who could have been selected; Seth Rance, Jacob Duffy, Ben Sears, Logan van Beek. It's clear that Kuggeleijn and Tickner are held in high regard under Blackcaps coach Gary Stead and they get the opportunity here though. Of all the bowlers, Jamieson seems to have the most upside and there will be overs for Mitchell and Neesham to show their stuff as well.

If anything, this A squad highlights the depth of kiwi cricket in the quality of players who aren't in the Blackcaps Test squad and weren't named in this A squad. Guys like Tom Bruce, Will Young, Cole McConchie and those I've named above, operate at a similar level to those selected, but were either ignored or unavailable. I'll be keeping a close eye on what Mitchell, Seifert and Phillips do with the bat in this game, while with the ball it'll be about whether Kuggeleijn or Tickner can level-up after that T20I series.

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Peace and love 27.