ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2018

New Zealand in 2017/18 For a nation with a modest population and necessarily limited resources, New Zealand’s Test team has consistently punched above its weight in recent years, and at the end of the 2017 season stood in fourth position in the ICC Test table. But the remarkably light programme in 2017/18 meant that the side lacked opportunities to demonstrate its abilities: only four Tests were organized, all of them at home, a schedule more typical of struggling sides than of a team in the top half of the table. West Indies visited for two Tests in December. The first was a remarkable affair. New Zealand were always on top after dismissing the visitors cheaply on the first day, but the likely win acquired crushing proportions thanks to a stand of 148 for the seventh wicket by Colin de Grandhomme and Tom Blundell, de Grandhomme racing to his first Test hundred in only 71 balls (believed to be a record for a maiden ton, although of course details of balls faced are not available for many early Tests). The progress of the second Test was more orthodox but the outcome was another big win for the home team. Late in the season New Zealand hosted an England side still reeling from a 4-0 trouncing in the Ashes. In the first Test Trent Boult (6-32) and Tim Southee (4-25) swept the visitors aside for a paltry 58 before Kane Williamson set a new record for a New Zealander by striking his eighteenth Test hundred. Better batting at the second attempt was unable to save England from an innings defeat. The visitors carried this improvement through to the second Test, but New Zealand, set an unlikely 372 to win, batted stubbornly through the final day and held out for a draw with eight down. Three wins and one draw was a good return by New Zealand, so far as it went, and the side’s Test rating actually improved to 102 compared with 97 a year earlier. But Australia’s greater improvement meant that the Kiwis slipped a place to fifth in the ICC Test table. Nevertheless New Zealand remained a highly effective and efficient Test side, particularly in home conditions, with definite potential for improvement if given the opportunity of a more active programme in future seasons. The Plunket Shield was claimed by Central Districts, with a powerful record of six wins and no defeats from their ten matches. Wellington, in second place, also had six wins but suffered three defeats. With two rounds of matches to go, indeed, Wellington had led the table and looked likely winners, but they went down to defeat in their last two games. Central Districts, meanwhile, hammered Canterbury in the penultimate round before holding out for a draw in their final match, against Northern Districts, despite being dismissed for 99 in the first innings. In what was very much a table of two halves, the top three sides claiming seventeen wins between them and the bottom three only six, defending champions Canterbury plunged to bottom place. Their cause was not helped by the abandonment of the game at Rangiora against Auckland in circumstances that gave rise to much ill-feeling. In reply to the home side’s 485-6d, Auckland had faltered to 66-6 when the umpires ruled that the pitch was too dangerous to continue. Canterbury, thus deprived of a commanding position, alleged that the visitors had deliberately batted in a manner calculated to influence the umpires by exaggerating any deficiencies in the pitch. In the first-class season as a whole the run-scoring was led by the veteran Michael Papps of Wellington, whose total of 814 at 50.87 was boosted more than a little by his mighty 316* against Auckland. This innings made Papps, at the age of 38, the oldest first-class triple-centurion since Patsy Hendren in 1933, and with Luke Woodcock he achieved a New Zealand record opening stand of 432 – and this after hapless Auckland had been shot out for only 62. Not far behind Papps in the run aggregates was another long-serving cricketer, Greg Hay of Central Districts, who made 786 at 60.46. 247