Five Funky Movers In The 2024/25 Domestic Cricket Contracts
Five funky moves were made in the first round of Aotearoa's domestic cricket contracts, led by two veterans in Rob O'Donnell and Leo Carter each making a move south. O'Donnell moves from Auckland to Northern Districts and Carter moves from Canterbury to Otago, with both experienced troopers finding fresh opportunities after roughly a decade of service to their home regions.
O'Donnell offered immense leadership to Auckland through his captaincy and piles of runs across all formats, finishing last season as Auckland's leading run-scorer in Ford Trophy and Super Smash. This will leave a hole in Auckland's batting line up and Northern will gain a solid professional who has ambitions of higher honours.
O'Donnell joins a Northern batting core of Jeet Raval, Joe Carter, Bharat Popli and Henry Cooper who can play across all formats. Raval and Carter have covered ND captaincy in recent years so it will be interesting to see if O'Donnell takes over those duties, or if O'Donnell wants to slot into the team and play his role. A funky wrinkle in this pocket is how O'Donnell is one of the best T20 batters in Aotearoa and he joins an ND crew who have fabulous Super Smash pedigree.
The only active kiwi cricketers with a higher T20 batting average than O'Donnell's 36.04avg are Devon Conway (41.83avg) and Dean Foxcroft (40.06avg). Northern also have the undercover brutality of Brett Hampton who has established himself as a 1st 11 all-rounder in all formats and they have built an experienced core of batters with impressive balance of power and craft.
A few weeks prior to these contract announcements, Foxcroft stepped aside as captain of Otago. O'Donnell's move south seems more like a 'change of scenery' excursion to find growth and Carter's move to Otago is aligned with that, although the chance to captain Otago may have been a hefty factor in this decision for Carter.
Otago have a new coach this season and unlike White Ferns coach Ben Sawyer, Aussie Ashley Noffke has an undeniable coaching record. Regardless of the captaincy stuff, Carter provides value as an experienced all-format batter in Otago's young squad which has Foxcroft, Dale Phillips, Luke Georgeson, Thorn Parkes, Jacob Cumming and Jamal Todd as their batting unit.
Canterbury lost two batters from their squad with Bevon Jacobs returning to his home region Auckland. Jacobs will added oomph to Auckland's batting unit and he emerged as Aotearoa's best young hitter in his first Super Smash campaign, finishing with a strike-rate of 189 after six innings. There will probably be more opportunities for Jacobs to play across all three formats with Auckland and while has flashed his T20 hitting last summer, Jacobs now has to flash his development to earn his Plunket Shield debut.
Despite losing two batters from their squad, Canterbury still have an impressive batting unit featuring two of the best young batting talents in Mitch Hay and Rhys Mariu. Canterbury don't need extra seamers as they have the likes of Zak Foulkes, Henry Shipley, Sean Davey, Michael Rae, Ed Nuttall, Fraser Sheat and Angus McKenzie. But in true Canterbury styles they added Matt Rowe to their sqaud.
Rowe is a sneaky mover as he departs the Central Districts squad where he didn't play a top-tier game, but commanded New Zealand Under 19 selection for their World Cup earlier this year. Rowe is from Palmerston North and Canterbury once again swung their University scholarships around to lure one of Aotearoa's best seam bowling prospects to the South Island.
Kyle Jamieson and Will O'Rourke both left Auckland to develop with Canterbury, which forecasts Rowe's potential. Rowe probably won’t be a 1st 11 seamer for Canterbury this summer but a the all-round ability of Foulkes, Shipley and McKenzie could open up seam slots across the summer.
Any young seamer who moves to Canterbury deserves to be put in the spotlight given the proven track record of Canterbury's player development and their is a similar vibe for sneaky lads moving to Wellington. Liam Dudding is a similar age to O'Donnell and Carter but he has only played 18 games of domestic cricket with Central. 11 of those games are in First-Class cricket where Dudding has quietly built an impressive bowling record of 45 wickets @ 24.1avg/3.5rpo and with Central rolling out the same crew of high quality cricketers, Dudding joins Wellington where more game time and development will be on offer.
Nathan Smith is the leading figure in Wellington's seam bowling department along with Dutch international Logan van Beek. Wellington have solid domestic seamers in Iain McPeake, Michael Snedden and James Hartshorn who will be competing for opportunities with Dudding. Dudding has the best FC bowling average of those solid seamers and there will be opportunities for Dudding to gain more white-ball experience with Wellington.
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