2021/22 Plunket Shield: Luke Georgeson's Kinda Good
Aotearoa's Plunket Shield is underway with Wellington Firebirds grabbing a 5-wicket win over Otago Volts while Central Districts Stags and Canterbury played out a draw. CD were the only team to score 300+ runs in an innings and they did so twice against Canterbury, which points to a fun balance between bat and ball even though Aotearoa's a seamers paradise in late October.
Nathan Smith was the most impactful seamer, snaring 9w @ 2.61rpo for Wellington against his former team. In the Plunket Shield last season, Smith took 8w @ 35avg for Otago and he's already passed that mark in his first outing for Wellington. Smith's tally included a 6-wicket haul and other seamers to take 5-fors were Otago's Travis Muller and CD's Blair Tickner.
What I'm most interested in here is how seamers progress through what should be favourable conditions. I'm not putting too much weight into these first round performances and my seamer insights will be slowly brewed like your mate's bootleg kombucha. There is some early Blackcaps funk though with Matt Henry typically excellent for Canterbury (5w @ 2.83rpo) and Tickner is building some red-ball mana.
Tickner finished 4th in PS wickets last summer with 23w @ 25avg/3.24rpo and started this season with 5w @ 3.05rpo. Tickner averages 30+ in T20I, First-Class and List-A while averaging 21 in T20 cricket.
CD's spinner Jayden Lennox was the only spinner to take 3+ wickets, while 10 seamers took 3+ wickets. Lennox has only played three FC games and finished with 5w @ 2rpo against Canterbury, serving up a low key match up between Lennox and Canterbury's Theo van Woerkom as younger specialist spinners. Van Woerkom only snared 1w @ 4.72rpo, but I'm intrigued by who emerges from this first stanza as the best spinner and these two were joined by Otago's Michael Rippon as the frontliners; Cole McConchie (Canterbury), Brad Schmulian (CD) and Rachin Ravindra (Wellington) played secondary spin roles.
Lots of blokes scored runs too. Bayley Wiggins hit his century on the weekend for CD and he was joined by veteran opener Greg Hay who had scores of 0 and 101. Tom Latham got his summer started with knocks of 11 and 104 for Canterbury. I covered Wiggins and Wellington's Troy Johnson in this yarn, with Johnson joined in the half-century club by Tom Bruce (CD), Hamish Rutherford (Otago), Cameron Fletcher (Canterbury), Ben Wheeler (CD) and Luke Georgeson (Wellington).
Most intriguing here is Georgeson joining that young Wiggins/Johnson group. All three are under the age of 25 and all three started their season with 50+ scores. Georgeson spent the winter in Ireland where he finished 3rd for runs in Ireland's One-Day competition with 317 runs @ 63.40avg and that was capped off with a knock of 128 in his final outing for Northern Knights. Georgeson now has three 50+ scores in 9inns of FC cricket and these three youngsters all have slick records...
Luke Georgeson
FC: 9inns, 267 runs @ 29.66avg, 3 x 50.
LA: 6inns, 335 runs @ 55.83avg, 1 x 100, 2 x 50.
T20: 4inns, 93 runs @ 31avg/126sr, 1 x 50.
Bayley Wiggins
FC: 2inns, 142 runs @ 142avg, 1 x 100.
LA: 8inns, 383 runs @ 47.87avg, 1 x 100, 2 x 50.
T20: 5inns, 42 runs @ 10.50avg/123.52sr.
Troy Johnson
FC: 13inns, 468 runs @ 46.80avg, 1 x 100, 2 x 50.
LA: 10inns, 370 runs @ 41.11avg, 1 x 100, 3 x 50.
T20: 11inns, 141 runs @ 20.14avg/107sr, 1 x 50.
Henry Nicholls exposed!
Or maybe just a sign of Nicholls warming into his summer. Nicholls, Latham and Henry were literally fantastic when helping Canterbury dominate last summer and Nicholls was the only one not to fire vs CD. Nicholls was dismissed by Stags lefty Ray Toole twice with Toole nipping the ball back inside Nicholls' bat to hit the stumps, before Toole did the same to catch an inside edge...
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