When Lockie Ferguson's Fit and Healthy, He's Really Good
While Devon Conway was having a scrap with his bat at the T20 World Cup (which his bat won), Lockie Ferguson was already out of action via a calf injury and sussing his rehab. Sports is full of twists and turns that lead up to a result, which for Aotearoa's Blackcaps saw them battle through to a T20 World Cup final without a top-tier white ball bowler in Ferguson who was in sizzling form. Now Ferguson is back in Aotearoa and doing exactly what we would all hope one of the fastest bowlers on planet Earth would do in domestic cricket.
There was a slight gap in Ferguson's mahi this summer as he took 2 wickets in his first Super Smash outing and this was followed by two games without a wicket. That was parlayed into a five game stretch across Super Smash and Ford Trophy in which Ferguson has taken a wicket in each game, with 15 wickets all up in five games. Here's how Ferguson's domestic excursion looks...
Ford Trophy: 16ov, 7w @ 10.14avg/4.43rpo/13.7sr.
Super Smash: 21.5ov, 10w @ 15avg/6.87rpo/13.1sr.
The highlight from this stint is Ferguson's 6w @ 4.25pro in Auckland's Ford Trophy win over Northern Districts on Wednesday. Ferguson did not play the first of the two Auckland vs Northern Ford Trophy games and while Auckland's batting mahi was far better in the second outing, without Ferguson Auckland only took 2w as Northern cruised to victory.
There are two ideas to digest here. First is the joy of having Ferguson playing domestic cricket and while it's tricky to assume that international batters, gentle seamers or even spinners will dominate when dropping down to domestic cricket; super fast bowlers should be too good for domestic batters. This was most evident when Ferguson took 21w @ 23.38avg in the 2014/15 Plunket Shield and followed it up with three consecutive Plunket Shield seasons with 30+ wickets and averages below 23.
Ferguson is yet to play Plunket Shield, yet he has started this summer in dominant fashion and that's always a good sign for a bowler of his calibre. Flowing on from that idea we have Ferguson's standing as an Aotearoa seamer and how he fits into the Blackcaps mixer. No point buzzing about Ferguson's T20 World Cup absence and what could have been. Because we didn't see Ferguson on the World Cup stage though, all of his excellence leading into the World Cup fell off into the abyss.
2021 T20 Blast: 37ov, 14w @ 19.21avg/7.27rpo/15.8sr.
2021 IPL: 30ov, 13w @ 17.23avg/7.46rpo/13.8sr.
In all four white ball competitions listed here, Ferguson has a bowling strike below 16. In T20I cricket, Ferguson has a bonkers strike-rate of 12.9 after 15 games and through 92 T20 games this strike-rate settles at a healthy 18.1sr. Tim Southee has a T20I bowling strike-rate of 17.9, Trent Boult operates at 16sr and Ish Sodhi churns out leggies at 16.3sr. Ferguson's was on fire ahead of the T20 World Cup and has proven himself to be a world-class T20I bowler, until injury struck.
The best ability is availability. Two ideas again spring up here as Ferguson is genuinely fabulous when stacking up overs and he is also often injured; injured in Test debut, during ODI World Cup, partial stress fracture last summer etc. For a fast bowler like Ferguson, injuries are the mosquitos stuck in your room during summer and all we can do is hope for Ferguson to stay healthy.
Those three Plunket Shield seasons of 30+ wickets all came with Ferguson bowling over 900 deliveries. Ferguson's best years of ODI bowling have been 2018 (19w @ 20.63avg) and 2019 (35w @ 23.71avg) which are also Ferguson's busiest years of international cricket. This flowed into T20I cricket as 2019 was his busiest year of T20I cricket and he took 10w @ 16.10avg/13.8sr.
Throughout his career and in all three formats, there is a clear trend of Ferguson being at his best when he is churning out the overs. There is a compelling case for Ferguson to be deployed in Test cricket again and Ferguson has quickly established himself as Aotearoa's top-five white ball bowlers, all of which tantalizes when Ferguson suffers injuries at the niggliest times.
Ferguson's current diet of domestic cricket is nutritious and a steady flow of cricket - even if it's just 4 overs in Super Smash - provides solid foundations for the year ahead. The next step will likely be the ODI tour to Australia and at this point, we should all gather our mana and channel it towards Ferguson as he walks the tricky path of bowling really fast and fighting off those injury mozzies.
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Peace and love.