We've had a hearty buffet of fun Blackcaps T20I shenanigans in these two wins from Devon Conway's effortless wizardry to Martin Guptill back in his groove and the spin duo sharing 4 wicket-hauls.
We’ve been through the intricate negotiations, we’ve been through the injury delay, we’ve been through the promotional yarns, we’ve been through the niggly back and forth between camps (mostly), and on Saturday night the hype becomes reality as the most consequential local heavyweight clash in history takes place.
The second stanza of Aotearoa's Ford Trophy has swung back around and as the Blackcaps will barely dip their toes in the ODI lake with three ODIs vs Bangladesh this summer, mapping out Aotearoa 50-over business is a bit tricky.
Aotearoa's Blackcaps are in the midst of a delightful era and while that's helped them wiggle into back to back World Cup finals, the cricketing equivalents of Papatuanuku and Ranginui ensured that victories in those finals weren't meant to be.
In hosting England late in 2019 and then India early in 2020, the Blackcaps T20I unit played 10 games with two wins, three Super Over losses and five straight up losses.
Having seen far more of Aotearoa's White Ferns playing cricket outside of the White Ferns set up in the past few months, the upcoming series vs England sparks up an almighty Women's World Cup preparation phase.
Since 2014/15 Wellington Firebirds have won four Aotearoa Super Smash titles, with their win over Canterbury Kings in this summer's Super Smash final giving Wellington back to back championships.
Last summer, Canterbury Magicians finished last in Aotearoa's Super Smash with the worst net run-rate and tied for the worst record as they went 2-8 in their 10 games. Now Canterbury are Super Smash champions.
In two weeks’ time there’s a rather significant boxing match gonna take place. Joseph Parker versus Junior Fa, you may have heard about it?
Aotearoa Test cricket funk is percolating away in the background and we are also up to our neck in T20 cricket.
This Super Smash All Stars team strongly resembles a White Ferns T20I 1st 11 and that's due to how these women have performed in the Super Smash, along with me designing a team that can go head to head with the best T20I teams in the world.
To take stock of what's gone down in the Super Smash for the blokes, there is no better task than assembling the Niche Cache All Stars to do battle with anyone who wants the T20 niggle.
We fans are only human, there’s only so much adoration we can spread around. Which explains why not enough people seem to be giving Tom Latham his due credit as one of the very best openers in Test cricket.
Aotearoa's Super Smash is close to winding up, with a trio of games to be played later this week before we move into finals cricket.
While there is funk in how the Super Smash competitive winds up, the big business here is Blackcaps T20I selection for the series against Australia and sorting out the best T20I squad for upcoming T20 World Cups.
As the final wicket fell at Hagley Oval, Trent Boult getting Zafar Gohar caught off a big slog that went straight up in the air, the Blackcaps completed their Test summer with four wins from four.
There is one more cluster of Super Smash games to come though, along with Blackcaps and White Ferns T20I cricket to suss out and that serves up a nice platform to explore other pockets of Super Smash funk.
Culture, specifically team culture is an elusive yet crucial element of sporting success and here in Aotearoa we tend to do team culture fairly well.
Having seen Sophie Devine step back into Aotearoa's Super Smash and tonk 10 sixes in 64 balls for Wellington Blaze as well as Ross Taylor playing a standard Roscco T20 innings of 48* @ 177.78sr to steer Central Districts Stags to a win over Otago Volts, there' some funky White Ferns and Blackcaps context to what is happening in both Super Smash competitions.
The upcoming cluster of Aotearoa Women's Super Smash games will see a double dose of Wellington Blaze, Northern Spirit and Canterbury Magicians which is rather convenient as these three teams are all well poised to challenge Auckland Hearts in the top spot.