A Statistical Tribute to Neil Wagner, The Blackcaps’ Lionhearted Wicket Claimer

Neil Wagner charged in the same way as he always did. Jimmy Anderson was on strike for England with two runs required for victory but only one wicket remaining. Wagner stomped into his delivery stride and dangled one slightly back of a good length on leg stump, angling downwards, which Anderson could not help but have a nibble at. The ball glanced off the face of his bat and Tom Blundell took a tidy catch as Craig McMillan began to howl in the commentary box: “Flicked down the leg side, FLICKED DOWN THE LE-OH HE’S GOT HIM! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, WAGNER!? WAGNER HAS DONE IT. NEW ZEALAND WIN BY ONE RUN!”

(Side-note... that might genuinely be the best bit of commentary that Macca has ever provided. Said what needed to be said whilst delivering on the emotion of the occasion. If it was Ian Smith then folks would be all over it. Even still, it’s found its way into TVNZ’s promos.)

That legendary Test match ended almost exactly a year to the day (missed it by one) from Neil Wagner’s retirement from international cricket. He’d only play two more Tests after that, taking just two more wickets. His retirement came ahead of the home series against Australia, following confirmation that he wasn’t going to be in the eleven for either match. Some fans have been a little put out by the lack of a farewell Test. You know what though? In many ways it’s fitting that his final match was against South Africa, specifically an understrength South African squad of domestic battlers. In another life that might have been the only Test he ever played, had he remained in South Africa to toil away for his birth nation. Instead it was his 64th and final appearance of a spectacular career for his adopted nation of Aotearoa, where he retires as a legend of the sport.

The Great Wagnut

260 wickets at an average of 27.57 across 64 Test matches. Good for fifth all-time for New Zealanders, trailing Richard Hadlee (431), Tim Southee (376 and counting), Daniel Vettori (361), and Trent Boult (317 and probably not still counting). Boult and Hadlee have better averages, though Wagner’s strike-rate (54.9) does pip Trent Boult’s (54.9). in fact, Hadlee is the only NZer with 100+ Test wickets at a better strike-rate than what Neil Wagner laid down across his 12-year international career.

There were nine instances of Wagner taking 5+ wickets in an innings, his including three of 6+ with his best being 7/39 against the West Indies in Wellington in 2017. The bro came on as the fourth bowler and just demolished the batting order as the Windies were bowled out for 134. That was Tom Blundell’s debut (he scored 107no) and the Blackcaps won by an innings and 67 runs, with Wagner also getting two wickets in the second innings for match figures of 9/141.

However, he can claim superior match figures to that because he took 9/73 against Bangladesh in 2019, also at the Basin Reserve (so many of his great moments seem to have happened there). That match also ended in an innings victory, with Ross Taylor scoring 200. Rain meant that the game snuck into a fifth day with Bangladesh holding seven wickets in hand as they tried hang on for an improbable draw. They got through the first 14 overs losing only one of them... then Wagner entered the attack and took 5/37 to wrap it all up before lunch.

He definitely had that tendency. If there’s a defining characteristic of Neil Wagner’s Test career, it’s his competitive spirit. This is a bloke who bowled through two broken toes (an injury that required a six-week recovery) in a match against Pakistan in 2020, suffering the damage from a Shaheen Shah Afridi yorker on day two yet battling on to bowl 49 overs in the match, taking four wickets including the essential scalp of Fawad Alam (who top scored with 102) in the final innings on day five. There were less than five overs remaining when the final wicket fell to confirm a Blackcaps victory by 101 runs. During the Test, he told reporters that: “Unless they carry me off on a stretcher, I'm going to try and do everything I can”.

Let us also not overlook the match against Sri Lanka in 2023, when Wagner suffered a torn hamstring and bulging disc in his back yet still came out to bat at number ten in the final over of the match to help Kane Williamson guide the Blackcaps through to a last-ball victory. On his birthday. He didn’t face a delivery, but he did dash through for a bye to seal the winning run. Wagner had no need to do that. Blair Tickner was sitting in the sheds with his pads on as the number eleven. But good luck keeping Neil Wagner away from a moment like that, you’d need a whole pharmacy of sedatives to contain him.

He’s the definitive version of the ‘lovely bloke off the field, absolute menace on it’ archetype. Never say die and all of those cliches. Full commitment to the very last ball, whether the game was in the balance or whether his team is 500 runs ahead or 500 runs behind. You’ll not be shocked to read that his best innings average comes in the fourth innings, where he took 33 wickets at 24.12. Fourth-most wickets in fourth innings by a New Zealander and he’s got a better average than Southee/Boult/Vettori who are the lads ahead of him (meanwhile Hadlee had 32 @ 15.62avg).

Needless to say, he was tremendous (and often crucial) in Test match victories. Of which he experienced many... winning 32 of his 64 matches (in which he took 143 wkts @ 22.46 avg). There are those who have won more games than that – Tim Southee and Ross Taylor lead the way for NZ with 44 each – but none quite so often. A 50% winning rate is something that previous generations could only dream of. The only players with better winning rates of all of the 56 New Zealanders to have played at least 30 Tests are a trio of lads who debuted after him: Tom Blundell, Henry Nicholls, and Tom Latham. We could also expand things out further to include Colin de Grandhomme who won a remarkable 18 of his 29 matches (62.1%).

Highest Winning Percentage for Blackcaps (Min. 30 Tests)

WinsTestsWin%
Tom Blundell173056.67%
Henry Nicholls305653.57%
Tom Latham407851.28%
Neil Wagner326450.00%
Trent Boult387848.72%
BJ Watling347545.33%
Tim Southee449844.90%
Kane Williamson439843.88%
Ross Taylor4411239.29%
Matthew Sinclair123336.36%
Nathan Astle278133.33%
Jeff Crowe133933.33%
Craig McMillan185532.73%
Jeremy Coney175232.69%
Mark Richardson123831.58%

Shout out to Jeff Crowe and Jeremy Coney there, the only two fellas on that list who didn’t play in the 21st century. There was that golden streak through the 1980s in there but otherwise it’s not been a glamorous history, to be honest. As we bask in this glory of this recent era, spare a thought for the brave soldiers who paved the way such as Ken Rutherford (8 wins from 56 matches @ 14.3%), Danny Morrison (5 wins from 48 matches @ 10.4%), John R Reid (3 wins from 58 matches @ 5.2%), and of course the trailblazer Bert Sutcliffe (0 wins from 42 matches).

Even Richard Hadlee (22 wins from 86 matches @ 25.6%) and Martin Crowe (16 wins from 77 matches @ 20.8%) aren’t so flash by this measurement. Those are the perils of being world class in a team that can’t match the magic. Those blokes overlapped in the golden 80s but Hadlee had the struggles of the 70s to cope with while Crowe played on into the 90s at the other end of that parabolic arc. Crowe was on the victorious side in only three of his last 30 Tests... bloody hell.

Back to Neil Wagner, and the other thing that shines through is how tremendously consistent he was. Obviously the numbers are skewed between wins (avg of 22.46), draws (avg of 35.40), and losses (avg of 32.67) because those numbers contribute directly to the result. As in, he didn’t take more wickets because they won, they won because he took more wickets. But in other scenarios you can see that trademarked Neil Wagner consistency on full display:

  • Like how he averaged 27.18 in New Zealand and 28.31 outside of NZ (note that two-thirds of his matches were at home: 41/62)

  • Or how he averaged 27.47 when his team won the toss and 27.64 when his team lost the toss

  • Or averaging 28.67 when his team batted first and 26.92 when his team batted second

  • Or 28.11 in the first bowling innings of games and 26.85 in the second bowling innings of games

  • Or 26.87 in the first game of a series and 27.26 in the second game of a series (dipping to 33.84 on the six times he played in the third game of a series, most of which were earlier in his career – though that third-game average was 26.54 until he had to play away to Australia in 2020 and England in 2022 in the most recent couple of instances)

  • Admittedly there is a little more of a gap between averaging 26.71 against right-handers and 30.83 against lefties... but hey close enough

Chin Music

There is one particular strategy that Neil Wagner has become renowned for and that’s The Short Ball. When he first burst onto the NZ domestic scene, there was this idea that he was a nasty fast bowler. The speed radars of international cricket eventually put that assumption to bed, though he remained a very tidy swing bowler.

Like, for example, the time he bowled an over for Otago in the Plunket Shield that went: W W W W 0 W. Yep, the mythical quintuple-wicket maiden. Never before witnessed in the wilderness of Aotearoa. If you’re wondering, the five men he dismissed in that over were: Stewart Rhodes, Justin Austin-Smellie, Jeetan Patel, Illi Tugaga, and Mark Gillespie.

But internationally he found a different niche. With Trent Boult and Tim Southee covering the new ball swingery, Wagner instead put that terminator mentality to work with a ceaseless barrage of short pitched carnage. The fact that he was bowling no quicker than 135 km/h didn’t matter when he was so ruthlessly accurate. Right on the chin, time after time. Even deep into long spells of tireless bouncers he kept rustling up batters until they cracked and top edged something. The chin music was far from his only trick, but it was the one thing he grew to do better than anyone else on the planet during the peak years of his career. Usually aided by some funky Kane Williamson field placements.

That prowess made him extremely valuable on flat decks and as a partnership breaker. 11 of his 260 wickets were him dismissing a centurion, plus he also nabbed eight fellas in that 80-100 range... including Tamim Iqbal (2013) and Joe Root (2023) each for 95. Joe Root was one of three batters that Wagner got out on six separate occasions, the other two being Stuart Broad and Mahmudullah. Funny thing there is that five of Broad’s six wickers were bowled or LBW. Very much not short stuff (the ol’ double bluff, aye?). Meanwhile he got Steve Smith out five times and all five were caught by fielders.

When Cricinfo (with their secret ball-by-ball data tracking) did a spotlight piece on this in February 2022, Wagner had taken 113 of his 244 wickets with deliveries that pitched short of a good length. They also credited him as having broken 100+ ball partnerships with 22.5% of his overall wickets, and extrapolating from those numbers we can say that 104 of his 260 total wickets were to dismiss “set batsmen”, aka those who’d faced at least 50 deliveries. That’s territory usually reserved for spinners.

Another way to look at this is to compare him to the other NZ bowlers of the current era and how they get their respective dismissals. Wagner takes fewer bowled and LBWs and a lot more via fielder catches... because you’ve got to bowl on a length that’ll hit the stumps in order to get the formers, right? These numbers do include catches in the slips, so the disparity with his peers would only grow greater if we could separate it into catches in the outfield.

The Trinity

The beauty of all that is how well those chaps would bowl in harmony. Particularly the three-headed dragon that was Southee/Boult/Wagner. You’ve got Southee with his away swing to right-handers, Boult pitching it up but swinging it in, really targetting those stumps, and if the oppo got through the new ball then on came Neil Wagner to offer a completely different challenge.

There were 40 Tests in which all three of the Trinity played. In those 40 matches, the Blackcaps took a combined total of 700 wickets (excluding run outs) and the Trinity was responsible for an incredible 534 of them. That’s 76.2%. What’s more is that they spread out the wealth so evenly between them...

  • Southee – 1602.5 overs | 182 wickets | 25.67 average | 52.8 strike-rate | 5 five-fors

  • Boult - 1550.2 overs | 182 wickets | 25.16 average | 51.1 strike-rate | 7 five-fors

  • Wagner – 1450.2 overs | 171 wickets | 25.91 average | 50.8 strike-rate | 6 five-fors

The next top wicket-taker in these Tests was Colin de Grandhomme with 36

The next most overs bowled in these Tests was Colin de Grandhomme with 331.5

These three thoroughly dominated their era, especially in home matches (Wagner often found himself as the odd man out when the line-up needed to adapt to overseas conditions). They were arguably the worst thing to happen to local spinners since the invention of the garden hose. But if this era led to a predilection for all-seamer bowling attacks, it was only because they were so damn effective. In these 40 matches, New Zealand won 24 with 8 draws and 8 defeats. Most of that success came at home where that record read: 20w-7d-2l. The only two home defeats being against Australia in 2016 and Bangladesh in 2022.

Playing with two magnificent swing bowlers meant that Neil Wagner rarely got to do anything with the new ball other than shine it. Bowling in 122 separate innings in his Test career, he only opened the bowling on six of those occasions across four matches. A couple of times it was because they were away in Pakistan or India and only picked two seamers. A couple of times it was because Boult or Southee were injured (and never did he bowl the first over of an innings). Wagner overwhelmingly operated as either first or second change bowler, although in the last innings of his last Test he experienced something new when he was the sixth bowler used. Only time that ever happened to him and he can’t have enjoyed it much because he retired a few weeks later.

Bowled/LBWCaughtCaught-WK
Neil Wagner17.31%57.31%25.00%
Tim Southee27.39%42.82%29.79%
Trent Boult38.49%37.22%23.97%
Kyle Jamieson26.25%43.75%30.00%
Matt Henry21.79%44.87%33.33%

Red Ball Specialist

Then again, we cannot rule out the possibility that, at almost 38 years old, Neil Wagner has simply retired from Tests in order to focus on his white-ball career. The wording of the NZ Cricket announcement (“Neil Wagner retires from international cricket”) suggests otherwise... but if a farewell performance is what the people want then perhaps instead of another Test match it could happen in the form of an ODI or T20I debut. Because the crazy aspect to Wagner’s career is that despite his immense success in the Test team he never got to play in either of the other formats.

There are reasons for that. His domestic numbers are really good, more than deserving of an opportunity (List A: 28.62avg/5.35rpo; T20: 26.13avg/8.62rpo), but there’s never been as obvious a spot for him in those national sides. The short stuff is going to get hit a lot more and fielding restrictions only make it harder for him. There’s always going to be at least one spinner in a Blackcaps ODI side and often at least two in the T20s. Plus there are guys like Matt Henry and Lockie Ferguson and Adam Milne who’ve been superb in those formats without being regular Test options (Henry only really becoming a first eleven threat after Trent Boult stepped back – Henry’s last ten Tests have seen him take 41 wickets at 25.82 after he took 31 at 51.54 in his first 13 matches). Plus Wagner himself seems to have been happy to nestle into Test Specialist status.

Still, to never play in either white-ball format is a wild outcome for a hombre who averages sub-30 in all three domestically. There have been other Test Specialists but they usually get a few tours in there somewhere for the other stuff. BJ Watling began his career as a stroke-playing opening bat. Chris Martin was capped in all three formats. Mate, even Mark Richardson played a handful of One Day Internationals. And because we play much more now than we used to, the fellas who played before the advent of limited overs international cricket also can’t match Neil Wagner.

Most Tests For NZ Without Ever Playing ODI or T20I

  1. Neil Wagner – 64

  2. John R Reid – 58

  3. Bert Sutcliffe – 42

  4. Graham Dowling – 39

  5. Dick Motz – 32

  6. Tony MacGibbon – 26

  7. Noel McGregor – 25

  8. Jeet Raval – 24

  9. Jack Alabaster – 21

  10. Bob Cunis – 20

  11. Ross Morgan – 20

If you’re wincing to recognise some of those names, that’s because other than Wagner and Raval they all played in the pre-ODI era. And there’s a 40-match difference between Wagner and Raval. Amongst worldwide players, the next most Tests without a white-ball cap appears to be Ollie Pope with 42 matches for England.

Nightwatchman

On top of all that, we cannot ignore the fact that Wagner was a more than handy batsman too. He scored 875 runs across his career, averaging 14.58, with a top score of 66-not-out against the West Indies in 2020. He scored those runs off just 42 deliveries (157 strike-rate), hitting 8 fours and 4 sixes. That was his only fifty, however he did score 49 against South Africa in 2022 and 47 against Bangladesh in 2019.

He slugs a ball a fair distance, but Wagner also has a profound defensive game which is what earned him nightwatchman duties for much of his career. On six occasions he got to bat inside the top six and that includes both of those 40-range scores, although the bulk of Test runs came at number ten. You could even make the case that his most notable contribution in that final appearance, against South Africa, was the very crucial 33 runs he added late in the first innings, taking a chunk out of the deficit to swing some momentum back in his team’s favour in a game they ended up winning by seven wickets.

And there you go, 3000 words of Neil Wagner statistics... but the thing about Wags is that, more than almost anyone, the stats cannot tell the full story. It wasn’t just the wickets, it’s how he went about getting those wickets. It’s the heart and the passion and the inexhaustible spirit. The feeling that here was a man who’d run through a brick wall in support of the cause. Nobody roared louder when a wicket fell. When adversity reared its head, it seemed to feed him rather than drain him... and in a sport as ruthless as Test cricket, which is so often decided by that attritional toll over the five days, that’s an immeasurable trait to possess within a team. That’s Neil Wagner for ya. A lion of a cricketer and a champion of bloke.

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Written by Nick Robinson On Tagged