2021/22 Men's Super Smash: Christmas Day Check In

Two Super Smash Men's games went down prior to Christmas day with Northern sealing the epic win over Canterbury and Auckland taking a win from their trip down to Wellington. Northern are now top of the table with Canterbury third, while Wellington and Auckland are level at the bottom of the ladder. Here are some quick Christmas Day notes to ponder from both games...

Trent Boult and Ish Sodhi are legit world-class T20 bowlers. Boult will dip out of the Super Smash ahead of the first Test vs Bangladesh and Sodhi will keep on trucking, right now though any chance to see these two in action should be devoured. They were Aoteroa's two leading bowlers at the T20 World Cup and as the next World Cup will be in Australia, both are likely to be key factors later next year.

Trent Boult

T20I Career: 62w @ 21.69avg/8.12rpo/16sr.

T20 Career: 172w @ 25.49avg/8.13rpo/18.8sr.

Ish Sodhi

T20I Career: 83w @ 21.97avg/8.05rpo/16.3sr.

T20 Career: 217w @ 24.45avg/7.81rpo/18.7sr.

Northern also have Anurag Verma in hot form - he's never out of hot T20 form. Verma has 8w @ 6.60rpo so far and a T20 career record of 56w @ 22.85avg/8.69rpo/15.7sr which is hovering around Boult's stats. Boult will leave Northern, even then there will be Sodhi and Verma who are excellent T20 bowlers. Chuck Matt Fisher in the mix and there is plenty of reason to track Northern's mahi.

More Blackcaps updates from Northern vs Canterbury...

Matt Henry: 8w @ 12.37avg/6.18rpo/12sr.

Todd Astle: 4w @ 10avg/3.33rpo/18sr.

Scott Kuggeleijn: 5w @ 20avg/11.53rpo/10.4sr.

Despite being smacked for a hectic over by Katene Clarke, Ed Nuttall leads all wicket-takers on Christmas Day. Nuttall has 10w @ 13.40avg/8.37rpo/9.6sr and Clarke has three 20+ scores in his 5inns to start the Super Smash.

George Worker vs Greg Hay

Worker hit 23 (92sr) vs Wellington yesterday and I'm tracking how he goes compared to veteran Central opener Greg Hay. Hay is second in runs with 145 runs @ 120sr and Worker has 64 runs @ 120sr. May the funky battle continue.

Lockie Ferguson has 2w @ 34avg/6.80rpo/30sr after three games.

Adithya Ashok joined Sodhi and Astle on 4w with 3w @ 2rpo vs Wellington. Ben Lister also took 3w for Auckland and Lister's natural movement is away from right-handers, which is a point of difference compared to Boult's natural lefty movement into righties. Lister needs a bit of nip off the pitch though to really cash in and this has me pondering Ashok as Auckland's most dangerous bowler.

As long as teams are sitting on Ferguson and not letting him stack up wickets, Ashok's craft makes him a threat. The Basin Reserve pitch offered plenty of juice, as did Bay Oval a day earlier and on such pitches, turning the ball both ways is niggly to deal with. Ashok has the same flight (with dip and curve) as Sodhi and for a youngster like Ashok this is a key sign of him ripping deliveries out of his fingers. Sodhi and Astle have unleashed their sliders, among the two standard leggy deliveries and that's the experience at work.

Simply put: Ashok looks really good.

Three games down and Mark Chapman leads Auckland's batters with 81 runs (13th). Auckland does not have any batsmen in the top-10 for runs and Chapman has the highest Auckland strike-rate of 121.42sr. 27 batsmen have higher strike-rates which translates to Auckland not scoring many runs and battling to jack up big runs.

Whether that changes or stays in a similar spot will be interesting given Martin Guptill will keep playing and Glenn Phillips is likely to return.

Finn Allen has the same strike-rate from his monster Super Smash last season (183sr) but doesn't have the same runs. Allen has 77 runs @ 19.25avg and that's alright with 183sr, however Allen's weight of runs while whacking boundaries was his point of difference.

Tim Robinson looks exactly like the rest of Wellington's young brigade with ample skill. 19-year-old Robinson carved Ferguson through the off-side before falling victim to Lister's tricky style and that was only his fourth domestic game (all T20) so I'm curious to see how he develops. Allen's 22-years-old, Troy Johnson is 24yrs, Luke Georgeson is 22yrs and of course Rachin Ravindra is 22yrs but won't feature too much here.

Robinson is the latest Wellington youngster who looks slick.

Ben Sears is a slick youngster himself (23yrs) and he has 6w @ 18.33avg/8.80rpo/12.5sr. Combine that with 18.27avg/7.51rpo/14.5sr after 18 T20 games and Sears is brewing as a low key monster.

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Peace and love.