Canterbury is first on the Plunket Shield ladder and second on the Ford Trophy ladder with Aotearoa's strongest concentration of young talent leading their mahi. The veterans and solid domestic troopers deserve plenty of credit as well though, creating an environment for the emerging lads to excel. This includes Chad Bowes whacking a double century in the Ford Trophy, Cole McConchie leading the team for the majority of these games, Michael Rippon offering classy all-round contributions and seamers Sean Davey, Michael Rae, Angus McKenzie and Fraser Sheat among Canterbury's best bowlers in both formats.

There are lots of high quality youngsters rising through the ranks in every domestic cricket team, which are consistently covered on this website and in our Monday/Friday newsletter. Canterbury has a quality/quantity combo that commands attention and this starts with two of the youngest Blackcaps to get the ODI/T20I development bump in 22-year-old Zak Foulkes and 24-year-old Mitch Hay.

Foulkes started the summer with 8w @ 13.8avg/3.9rpo in the Ford Trophy, along with 87 runs @ 43.5avg/71sr in his three innings. The Darfield junior then departed on the Blackcaps tour of Sri Lanka where he played two T20Is and while he played one ODI, he didn't get a chance to bat or bowl in the rained off fixture. Foulkes was the best seamer in the T20Is with 4w @ 10.7avg/6.1rpo and he again showed his potential with the bat, scoring a 27* @ 169sr in the first T20I.

This forms a 10 innings (at least) streak of wickets for Foulkes which stretches across all three formats and three countries. Foulkes has taken 2+ wickets in seven of these 10 innings and over the same 10 game period, Foulkes has five 20+ scores or not-out knocks in his eight innings.

Foulkes averages 15+ in the three domestic formats and T20Is with the bat, which at the very least shows that he can build towards genuine all-rounder status. This is amplified by a T20I strike-rate of 143 in T20Is and 132 in T20s, as well having a First-Class batting strike-rate that is aligned with the format (44sr). Foulkes is a wizard with the ball though and his stats compare well to Aotearoa's new freaky seamer and Canterbury development product Will O'Rourke...

(Foulkes | O'Rourke)

FC: 25.7avg/3.2rpo | 26.4avg/3.3rpo

LA: 20.2avg/4.5rpo | 20.6avg/4.7rpo

T20: 18.3avg/7.5rpo | 23.1avg/7.7rpo

One key element of Canterbury's pipeline is funky skill. O'Rourke bowls 145-ish-km/h and moves the ball into righties, with seam movement and smashing hands bounce. Foulkes is slower, operating around 130-135km/h but his action makes appears to hurry batters up and he has the same movement into righties, away from lefties.

Expect to see Foulkes add to his four T20Is this summer, along with wicket-keeper Hay who quietly stacked up three ODIs and two T20Is in Sri Lanka. Hay had three scores of 10 or below in Sri Lanka before hitting 49 in the second ODI and he returned to Aotearoa with scores of 24*, 81, 55 in the Plunket Shield.

Hay scored 22 runs @ 5avg/44sr in the first stanza of Ford Trophy and he has 160 runs @ 80avg/47sr after the first stanza of Plunket Shield. The double-whammy of 50+ scores in the latest round saw Hay hit five fours and two sixes in the first innings, then the funky combo of no fours and two sixes in the second innings. All of which gets a bit more impressive when his FC batting average of 48.4 and T20 strike-rate of 145 are added into the mix.

Aotearoa has an abundance of young wicket-keepers to keep track of with Otago's Max Chu, Northern Districts' Ben Pomare and Wellington's Callum McLachlan in the notable youngster bracket. Burnside junior Hay is next in line behind Tom Blundell though and this sets up an intriguing summer as Hay could be a consistent selection for the ODI/T20I Blackcaps, if they pivot from the mature lads such as Dane Cleaver.

Another notable wrinkle for Hay is how he averaged 51 in the first season following Cam Fletcher's return to Auckland, now he's averaging 48 this season. Fletcher had a few stints as a back up wicket-keeper with Blackcaps during his time at Canterbury and Hay has ensured that there was no lapse in Fletcher's departure. Speaking of wicket-keepers...

While Hay was away on Blackcaps duty, Canterbury had 23-year-old Darfield junior Jesse Frew make his Plunket Shield debut as wicket-keeper. Canterbury also had 20-year-old Burnside junior Scott Janett and 19-year-old all-rounder Cameron Paul (Darfield) debut in this game, while 22-year-old Rhys Mariu captained the team.

This game offered more insight into Canterbury's pipeline of local juniors as their best local products in Foulkes and Hay were with Blackcaps. Rangiora/Ohoka junior Mariu not only captained the Canterbury team where he was stepping in for 32-year-old Cole McConchie and going up against 33-year-old Tom Bruce, Canterbury won this game with notable contributions of some of their young brigade...

It started with Paul snaring 5w @ 2.4rpo, then Mariu scored 240 runs alongside 21-year-old Matthew Boyle's 116 (Old Boys Collegian). O'Rourke led the second innings bowling effort with 4w @ 2.1rpo to seal a Canterbury win by 10 wickets, in what was an away game in Nelson.

Eden Park's outer oval is delivering lots of runs and Canterbury conceded 567/9 declared against Auckland. After scores of 26 and 5* in his debut, Janett scored 93 runs in Auckland and Mariu continued his fabulous start to the Plunket Shield with another monster knock of 185 runs.

Mariu hit two more 50+ scores in the latest round, a win for Canterbury over Otago. This game also featured Foulkes snaring 5w @ 3.9rpo, Paul taking 3w @ 3.8rpo and back to back 50+ scores from Hay. Mariu now has scores of 240, 8*, 185, 87 and 70 for a FC record of 71.05avg/63.6sr which puts him at the top of the run-scoring charts.

The ease with which Mariu cruises through long innings demands attention, along with a strike-rate that suggests he isn't bogged down too often. Mariu has scored his 590 runs @ 76.12sr and no other batter in the top-five for Plunket Shield runs has strike-rate over 61. The only batters in a group of 17 who have scored 200+ runs and have strike-rates higher than Mariu are Mark Chapman (80.4sr) and Brett Hampton (85.2sr); Chapman has played two games at Eden Park and Hampton is one of Aotearoa's funkiest cricketers who has hit the most sixes in Plunket Shield this summer.

Canterbury had a winning start (3-1) in Ford Trophy without runs from Mariu and he is yet to register a 50+ score in one-dayers. Mariu averaged 13.7 in the first four games of Ford Trophy and has a List-A average of 14.5 after six games, while he is yet to play Super Smash. This makes it interesting to track Mariu's Super Smash involvement and whether he can flash his ability in white ball batting, to add to his dominant mahi in Plunket Shield.

Paul has had an impressive start to his career as well, averaging 20.2 in FC bowling and 12 in LA bowling. Paul has wickets in every domestic game he has played and like his Darfield homie Foulkes, Paul has shown glimpses of his batting ability which saw him bat sixth in his Plunket Shield debut.

Boyle can't be overlooked as an emerging batter either. With a FC average of 29.6 and LA average of 16.6, Boyle is yet to dominate in the same way that O'Rourke, Foulkes, Hay and Mariu have but he is second in Ford Trophy and Plunket Shield runs for Canterbury this season. Boyle has a Ford Trophy combo of 31.3avg/93sr and 35.5avg/68sr in Plunket Shield, with a century and 50+ score in the longest format this season.

Canterbury snapped up Matt Rowe for this season after he moved south from CD and he played one game of Ford Trophy (1w @ 4.3rpo). We haven't been graced with the presence of Kyle Jamieson or Henry Shipley so far this season due to injury which means no O'Rourke/Jamieson/Shipley seam attack, but does present opportunities to the likes of Paul and Rowe.

Paul is an athletic seamer who makes his style of bowling look effortless, while Rowe has a similar profile as the tall Canterbury seam trio. Along with Foulkes' talent that has seen him already debut with Blackcaps, sporadic appearances from O'Rourke, the reliable crew of Davey, Rae, McKenzie, Sheat and Rippon's lefty leggies, Canterbury is well equipped to roll out a dangerous bowling unit throughout the summer.

Hay and Mariu lead Canterbury's young batting wave. Hay will play for Blackcaps this summer, while the combination of Blackcaps slowly developing youngsters and Mariu yet to dominate white ball batting means that Mariu will probably stay in domestic cricket where he will try to stack up more runs. Mariu is primed to feature in an NZ-A cricket coming up this summer where his production will be closely monitored.

Boyle and Janett have shown their ability with the bat this season, while runs from Hay and Foulkes down the order have helped absorb the loss of Bevon Jacobs (who returned to Auckland). Frew is ready to fill the gap left by Hay if he does get a summer's worth of Blackcaps opportunities and by now, kiwi cricket fans should zone in on any new youngster who is called up to represent Canterbury.

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