It's Kane, again
A truncated Notes from the Park and Week That Was
South Africa 242 & 235; NZ 211 & 268 for 3
NZ win by 7 wickets
At the start of the third day’s play in Hamilton yesterday, the chief executive of The Bounce texted a good mate:
“It’s like watching an action replay of this test.
“Same pitch character (although this one turns a little more). That fourth innings KW century is one of the most low-key genius innings I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching.”
At the risk of plagiarising myself, that fourth innings century Williamson just scored was, again, low-key genius. Once Latham chipped meekly to short cover, the entire fate of the test and the series rested upon Williamson and his battered Gray-Nicolls. It never once looked like a burden, despite the surface continuing to turn for the spinners and provide the odd bit of springboard bounce for the seamers.
When captain Tim Southee said “I’m running out of words to describe it,” of Williamson’s enduring excellence, he could of been speaking for me too.
“We touched on it last week, but he’s a special talent,” Southee continued. “Not an easy wicket but he finds a way. We knew if someone could stick with him, he’d show his brilliance throughout the day.
“After the 12 months he’s had with injuries, with setbacks and rehabs, its just phenomenal. [Kane] gets in his batting bubble. It’s his happy place. We joke about it that he doesn’t like spending time with us so he’d rather spend it out in the middle.”
Three centuries in two-match series is bananas; a New Zealander scoring 32 test centuries (he got there in fewer innings than anybody else in history) is bananas. He will likely finish his career with twice as many test centuries as the late, great Martin Crowe - that’s crazy talk.
In this series alone he went from the 30th-most prolific run scorer in test history to 25th, passing the likes of Viv Richards and Virender Sehwag on the way. We could sit here and talk numbers all night but it seems a bit pointless because a couple of weeks go by and we have to recalibrate them again.
There’s also the understanding that they just don’t mean that much to him. As Grant Elliott mentioned on the commentary, if you walk into the New Zealand hotel right now and bump into him in the bar, if you didn’t already know you would have no clue as to whether he had just scored a series-sealing century or had bagged a pair. He would feel more comfortable talking to you about Will O’Rourke’s compelling debut, or Will Young’s innings of maturity than his place in test cricket’s pecking order.
He’s a walking, quiet-talking paradox: a beautifully normal complete freak.
***
The eldest child left the nest this week, decamping to a university that’s as far as he can get from his parents while still remaining within New Zealand’s borders. That meant, for the first time in as long as I can remember, a cricket test involving the Black Caps hasn’t been all-consuming.
Days two and three in particular required a lot of fast-forwarding between balls in order to catch up. When watching like that, many of cricket’s nuances and intricacies are lost - as at times, I admit, were whole overs. It would be cheating to sound authoritative, but it felt like a test where New Zealand were stung by preconceived notions about what the wicket would do and needed a lot of gumption to fight their way out of trouble.
At a guess, instead of poring over analytics of what has happened at Seddon Park in the past 15 tests, South Africa’s captain and coach Neil Brand and Shukri Conrad walked out to the middle, had a look and made their decisions based on what they saw.
Despite the result, we shouldn’t forget how radical they seemed at the time. Two specialist spinners in Hamilton… What?! Bat first… madness! In hindsight, they could have used a third seamer and utilised Brand as the second spinner alongside Dane Piedt, but it’s hard to be too critical. Upending the playbook was how an odd collection of first-class grinders playing under the auspices of the Proteas managed to rattle the hosts for 2.66 days.
This test was won and lost in the evening session yesterday. South Africa went to the break at 186 for 4 and somehow New Zealand was 40 for 1 at stumps.
David Bedingham (110) and Keegan Petersen (43) put South Africa into a position where they really had to be 70/30 favourites to win. South Africa were leading by 233 with six wickets in hand when Glenn Phillips reeled in a one-handed stunner at gully - his second such catch of the match - to dismiss Petersen and in an instant the test turned.
“You look at moments in game, and that was certainly one of them,” Southee said.
Phillips is a different type of cricketer. He finds ways to keep himself and his team in the game. It’d be foolish to compare him to Glenn Maxwell but they’re similar in that mere presence makes the games they’re in more interesting.
Some points of interest:
That was an important innings for Will Young (60 not out), especially after he had done the hard work in the first innings before clothing a ball straight down the throat of long on. The match was still in the balance when he joined the fray. I’m not sure you can feed off the calmness of someone, but if you can, that’s what he did while batting with the imperturbable Williamson.
O’Rourke’s red-hot start raises some interesting selection posers for the first test against Australia starting at the Basin Reserve on leap day. There’s a bit of the classic Australian seamer about him as he bowls with real energy and hits hard lengths at a decent clip. If Kyle Jamieson is ruled out with more back problems, he is due to face the media tomorrow for a health update alongside coach Gary Stead, you suspect O’Rourke will get a start in Wellington. If Jamieson is fit, it’s surely not beyond the realms of possibility that we see an all right-arm four-pronged seam attack.
It’s not a blip, Devon Conway is in awful form. It’s hard to watch. The fact he got a couple of nice drives out of the screws is not a sign a corner has been turned. Those shots never go, they’re pure muscle memory after the hundreds of thousands of half-volleyed throwdowns you enjoy over the course of a career. It’s the stuff in between the long half volleys that is the issue. His mode of dismissal to what should have been the penultimate ball of day three was baffling. Dane Piedt rolled out a nice, yet bog-standard orthodox right-arm delivery. It gently drifted onto a middle stump line and straightened. There was no ragging turn; there was no inconsistent bounce. There was a case to be made that you might catch a thick inside edge because it hasn’t done as much as you expected, but Conway was well beaten on the outside edge. For somebody as gifted as him, it was inexplicable and points to where he is right now both technically and mentally.
Having said that, his partner in opening batting crimes, Latham, had even more reason to avoid the replay screen after his mistake to the same bowler, chipping a half volley to short cover. Rachin Ravindra enjoyed it so much he put in a carbon copy. Yuck. Latham has a reputation for being a fine player of spin but I’m not sure it’s warranted. He’s an excellent sweeper and paddler of the ball, particularly in white-ball cricket, but his record in the fourth innings of tests - 23.96 against a career mark of 40.10 - when you’d expect to face trial by spin, is poor. In the context of the match, 40 and 30 was a decent double, but it is approaching a year since he has played a test innings of real substance.
The Neil Wagner situation in the field on day three was a gripping human study that had soap-operatic elements. Wagner’s heart beats strong but sometimes that rich, red blood gets pumped to the wrong parts of the brain. He is a magnificently wholehearted cricketer, but he is not without diva qualities. He was clearly agitated by something within his own camp, raising first the middle finger and then doing the shushing motion to his own dugout.
There there, Wags. Getty Images The accepted theory is that Wagner’s mood was triggered by holding him out of the attack until the 37th over, but this is not unusual. He is a renowned old-ball operator. Hopelessly speculative, but I do wonder if he suspects he won’t be selected for the squad to play Australia, which would effectively draw a line under his international career, and he is raging against the dying of that light. To leave the last word on this to his skipper, wo appeared to be directly in Wagner’s firing line: “He’s a passionate guy and we love him to bits for what he brings to the side. He was frustrated it took so long to get him to the bowling crease, but it was about trying to channel his energy in the right place.”
THE WEEK THAT WAS
Per the NZ Herald:
While Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh maintains the Rebels will see out this season, there are no guarantees beyond that. Reports from Australia suggest the Rebels owe over A$20 million ($21.28m) - and have a mere A$17,300 in the bank. Unless the Victoria state government or an unlikely white knight emerges with an 11th-hour bailout package, the Rebels stand on the verge of ceasing to exist.
It will understandably bruise the egos of administrators who were desperate for rugby to gain a foothold alongside league in the AFL-obsessed city, but some things are best left alone and Victoria might be one of them.
Australia desperately needs competitive Super Rugby sides. Concentrating the talent in fewer teams will help that cause.
Interesting development in the Netball New Zealand world, with the national body electing to operate a contestable process for the Silver Ferns coaching job.
Most I talk to believe Dame Noeline Taurua, the incumbent, is head, shoulders and torso above any other New Zealand-based candidates. Taurua has confirmed she will reapply.
Per Stuff:
“I think it’s a great story for our sport and not a lot of other sports do it. It is ground-breaking,” Taurua said. “For us in netball it’s how can we keep above or ahead of a lot of other sports and ensure the purity around our brand is upheld. I think it’s a fantastic process knowing that all parties are happy.”
You cannot help but wonder if there is an ulterior motive at play.
If the pool of domestic coaches is weak, is it an overseas fishing expedition? If so, who are those fish?
Is it to light a fire under Taurua and convince her to sign a long-term contract instead of the shorter ones she prefers?
Is it to appease those, like myself, who do not think the Silver Ferns recent performances warrant an automatic rubber-stamping process?
Either way, now she has said she wants to continue, Taurua must outline and articulate a strategy that will guide the side back to the levels they were at early in her tenure. That can’t be a bad thing.
Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl, beating San Francisco in overtime. They had a parade. Lisa Lopez-Galvan was killed, eight others were critically wounded and seven more suffered serious injuries. In all 23 were shot. Nine were kids. Three were arrested - two were juveniles.
Viewed through [a child’s] lens, sports are clean. Sports are innocent. Sports are fun, as in the kind of fun only a kid can understand. And kids have a right to see things in that manner, even if the rest of us no longer are capable of doing so. Try to imagine, then, the pure joy that was experienced by the thousands of kids who attended the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade. We adults can only vaguely remember such innocence; the kids are blanketed in it. Their team. Their heroes. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl! Again! What buzz there must have been at school Monday as the kids shouted over each other with their favourite moments from the game.
What anticipation there must have been for the kids who attended the parade… As the festivities were winding down Wednesday, the Chiefs, winners of those two straight Super Bowls, had just made a promise to bring a third straight Lombardi Trophy home to Kansas City.
The crowd cheered mightily. And then the guns went off.
So screwed up.
NB. The Weekend That Will Be returns next week.
Thanks one and all for the comments. I can get a bit slack replying, but I almost always read and use them for fodder either in the Bounce or BYC.
With Jamieson out, you’d think WOR is now a shoo-in for Australia. There might be some reluctance to push him too far, too fast but he just looks the part. If KJ was fit, I’d doubt Wagner would be in the mix, but I can see him in a 13-man mix now, although bowling coach Kyle Mills said something interesting before the start of day two. He mentioned that Wagner and he had talked and that the bowler had indicated that at this point in his career, he was no longer interested in carrying drinks. Unless they pick him specifically to rough up Smith and Labuschagne, which he might not be capable of doing anyway these days, he might miss the squad altogether.
As for Conway, there are shades of late-test-career-Jeet Raval right now. You can almost see the confidence sapping from him with each failure. The difference is Conway has a significantly higher base to work from than Raval had. I think they stick with Conway at the top but like most of you I’m torn on that. It almost feels cruel unless they can turn him around in the nets in a week.
I had an interesting message yesterday from a guy I know who has worked in first-class cricket for years. He said he’d play Young against Australia but he’d play him instead of Rachin. Again, it’s not going to happen, but his reasoning was that RR is hyper-talented but just too loose outside off at this stage of his career to take on an Australian red-ball attack.
A bit of food for thought.
Great read Dylan, an incredibly erudite synopsis of the key points of the test I reckon. Hard to argue with any of it.
Conway is in truly dreadful form. As you point out long half volleys are not litmus test. After one of those someone in the commentary said “that is Conway at his best” and I rolled my eyes. That front foot plant and falling head is terminal and Oz will exploit it like a killer whale circling an iceberg full of penguins.
I was really impressed by O’Rourke, he was quicker and more incisive than I expected and tbh our attack needs it - Southee and Wagner are down on pace and on current form unlikely to trouble Oz. That altercation between them was fascinating, what’s going on? My pick is that Wagner knows the flame is dying and was frustrated watching others do all the bowling.
I think the bold selection for Oz is to drop Conway; open with Ravindra; bring Mitchell up to 4; put Young in at 5; and bring Phillips up to 6. With O’Rourke’s performance I think the top 4 seamers pick themselves (no Wagner) with Santner rounding out the 12. However, I suspect they’ll go conservative on the top 6 though and either keep Conway or put Young in to open as a straight swap.