Cooking Like A Summer Hangi
Blackcaps stat dump, Plunket Shield spotlight, Warriors centre vibes, Jack Salt retires, Sean Marks/Brooky Nets resurgence & more
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Francis Manuleleua And The Kiwi-NRL Panthers (Rugby League)
The Six Aotearoa Warriors Juniors To Learn About (Rugby League)
2022 Kiwi-NRL Team Power Rankings (Rugby League)
How The Aotearoa Warriors Spine May Operate In 2023 (Rugby League)
2022 Women’s National League – Grand Final Review (Football)
Kiwi Steve in the NBA #3: Tackling The Big Assignments (Basketball)
2022/23 Super Smash: Update #2 (Cricket)
2022/23 Women's Super Smash: Update #2 (Cricket)
2022/23 Super Smash: Three Intriguing Lads (Rob O'Donnell, Rachin Ravindra, Jacob Duffy) (Cricket)
2022/23 Women's Super Smash: The White Ferns Mixer (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Auckland and Otago are in the Super Smash spotlight as they just played and will play again on Monday. Let's start with some notes about the wahine teams...
Auckland defeated Otago, led by Arlene Kelly's 2w @ 3.75rpo and Lauren Down's 44* @ 129.41sr. 19-year-old Anna Browning also played a classy opening knock (42 runs @ 97.67sr) and Izzy Gaze chimed in with 26 runs @ 104sr.
Down started with 13 runs @ 56.52sr vs Canterbury and she has now played a game-winning knock. Down is Auckland's best batter so her runs are crucial and these knocks are exactly what White Ferns want/need. Same with Gaze who helped rebuild the innings with Down and if they can do this again, or a few more times, they will strengthen their case for T20 World Cup opportunities.
With that in mind, Fran Jonas and Molly Penfold are interesting to track. Jonas took 2w @ 7.25rpo against Otago, giving her 2w @ 27.5avg/6.87rpo overall. Penfold has 1w @ 49avg/6.12.
Kelly, on the other hand, lacks the blatant x-factor of Penfold yet she steadily gathers wickets. This was Kelly's first year playing for Ireland and she took 21w @ 15.23avg/5.92rpo. Kelly has taken wickets in 14 of her 16 games, plus she's in a streak of 11 consecutive games with T20I wickets.
Kate Ebrahim scored 40 runs @ 102.56sr for Otago and Caitlin Blakely scored 25 runs @ 138.88sr. No Otago bowler took more than 1w and they were without Eden Carson.
Last summer Ebrahim had a strike-rate of 91, improving to 111.2sr this season. Blakely has a T20 career strike-rate of 85.49, improving to 120sr this season. Blakely has also taken 7w in her last four bowling innings.
Emma Black didn't take a wicket vs Auckland and she has 4w @ 19.5avg/6.5rpo, after taking 16w @ 19.5avg/6.78rpo last season.
Otago defeated Auckland in the men's competition and Dean Foxcroft is cooking like a summer hangi. Foxcroft hit 44 runs @ 129.41sr as Otago's leading run-scorer and then took 5w @ 2.75rpo with his offies. Foxcroft took two catches as well for a giggle.
As of Friday morning, Foxcroft is 1st for runs and wickets. Foxcroft has a T20 career record of 41.75avg/127.48sr with the bat and 23.3avg/7.97rpo with the ball. Foxcroft is now on the all-time T20 batting average rankings...
Chris Harris: 1st - 70.66avg/120.68sr
Devon Conway: 3rd - 44.08avg/128.25sr
Dean Foxcroft: 12th - 41.75avg/127.48sr
Rob O'Donnell: 27th - 37.89avg/130.67sr
Foxcroft also has a List-A batting average of 42.31 and First-Class bowling average of 19.08 (steady LA bowling and FC batting). T20 is his best all-round format but he has excellent stats in pockets of other formats.
In Plunket Shield this season, Foxcroft has 239 runs @ 34.14avg and 3w @ 26.33avg/3.95rpo.
Foxcroft has 12 runs @ 4avg and hasn't bowled in Ford Trophy yet.
Otago has Foxcroft and Michael Rae (6w @ 6.33avg/6.51rpo) as their leading bowlers. Their best bowlers should be Michael Rippon (1w @ 37avg/7.4rpo) and Jacob Duffy (1w @ 57avg/9.24rpo). That could mellow out with more games.
I'm curious about the development of Rocco Berry and Viliami Vailea with NZ Warriors. Judging them on their mahi during the pandemic doesn't seem wise as both joined Warriors from 1st 15 rugby, with little rugby league experience.
Berry finished school and had his first summer training block in 2019/20, then started at fullback in NSW Cup for one game before the 2020 lockdown. Vailea was playing SG Ball to start 2020 while still at school, then his first year out of school saw him shipped over to Brisbane. Two lads with minimal rugby league experience and a lack of consistent reserve grade footy probably stunted their development.
Especially as centres. Defending at centre is niggly with all sorts of attacking shape directed your way, while centres also need to have quick decision making with the footy. Playing centre at a high level requires subtle skills and mental processing which comes with experience.
I'm not heavily invested in this idea, but Berry and Vailea have plenty of scope beyond centre. Berry was a fullback in union and then started 2020 at fullback, while Vailea was a first-five in union and handled most of his team's kicking. I have been pondering this as a doosra (curveball) selection idea and I'm quietly intrigued about Berry settling as a fullback, then how Vailea develops with more footy. When Vailea is comfortable in league, he may expand his role into other positions.
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
There’s nothing like a Blackcaps Test match to spark up a stat dump, here we goooo...
Kane Williamson has now scored five double centuries, a New Zealand record surpassing Brendon McCullum’s four. There are only twelve men in history with more than five double tones and of them only Virat Kohli is still active. Joe Root has five, same as Williamson.
This was Williamson’s first hundred since January 2021, an unusually long drought for him in terms of time although because of his elbow injury and the post-covid schedule (which prioritised a couple T20 World Cups) he actually only batted ten times during that stretch. And immediately prior he had that home summer where he scored 251, 129, 21, and 238 in a row against the Windies and Pakistan. That means three double hundreds in the space of fifteen innings for Kanos.
Having said that, ten innings without a hundred was still Williamson’s longest drought since going 13 straight way back in 2016. There were a couple longer ones near the start of his career too.
This hundred also maintained a remarkable streak at probably the last feasible opportunity... as KW has now scored a hundred in every calendar year since 2011 (which is the only year in his career that he failed to reach triple figures). To be fair he’d only had four innings in 2022 prior to this one but still.
Eleven consecutive years with at least one Test century is the longest active streak in the world. Joe Root didn’t ton up in 2020. Steve Smith missed out in both 2018 and 2020 (the two years he batted the fewest innings, the latter was due to covid, can’t think why he didn’t play much in 2018 though... lol). David Warner missed out last year (and only just got there this year, same as Williamson). Virat Kohli, the wee battler, kept pace with Williamson from 2012 until 2019 but hasn’t tonned up in Tests since November 2019... 36 innings and counting.
Williamson has also now scored hundies under five separate Blackcaps captains: Vettori, Taylor, McCullum, Williamson & Southee.
This was obviously the first time that Williamson has played in Pakistan... and he tonned up at opportunity number one. That makes Pakistan the tenth separate nation that he’s scored a hundred in. Of the countries in which he’s played, only South Africa is yet to host a Kane Williamson century.
Williamson’s average has risen to 54.04 thanks to the not out here. That’s the highest his average has ever been and the list of batsmen in the entire history of the spot with higher Test averages is not a long one, no matter how you slice it.
Okay, moving on from that fella, Devon Conway missed out on a hundy but he did surpass 1000 Test runs in just his 19th innings. Not particularly close to Herbert Sutcliffe’s record of 12 innings back in the 1920s for England but it does set the Aotearoa record, beating John F Reid and Mark Richardson who each reached 1000 runs in their 20th innings.
Not to be forgotten, Tom Latham scored his 13th Test century as an opener in this match which surpasses John Wright’s NZ record. He’s also fast closing in on Wright’s record for total runs as an opener. Wright scored 5260 runs in those spots (144 innings averaging 38.12) while Latham is up to 4707 runs (118 innings averaging 41.65). Each also had a couple spare innings batting elsewhere in the order if you’re wondering why those numbers almost but don’t quite match with their overall stats.
Among active players, only David Warner, Dimuth Karunaratne, Kraigg Brathwaite, Tamim Iqbal, and Dean Elgar have more career runs as an opener than Tom Latham, who debuted more recently than all of them and has a better average than all but Warner.
Latham also just became the seventh New Zealander to score 1000 Test runs in the continent of Asia. Kane Williamson tops that list, naturally. Stephen Fleming, Ross Taylor, Brendon McCullum, John R Reid, and Bert Sutcliffe are also up there.
Tim Southee snuck up to 51 wickets in Asia during the first innings. Dan Vettori took 98 at 28.86 while Richard Hadlee got 68 at 21.58. Southee is next of everybody else with 51 wickets at 25.49 which is pretty outstanding for a modern pace bowler. Trent Boult also has 50 wickets in Asia... but probably won’t play another Test there (31.70 average). And fifth on the list is Ajaz Patel.
Ajaz Patel (and this is prior to whatever he does in day five tonight) has taken 41 of his 45 Test wickets in the continent of Asia. 17 in India, 13 in the UAE, 9 in Sri Lanka, and so far 2 in Pakistan. He also took 4/81 across two games in England over the last couple years but is yet to take a wicket in 49 overs in Aotearoa. Weird. Not surprising... but still weird.
Tim Southee has taken 100 wickets in every format. He already had prior to this match but still a cool stat. Lasith Malinga and Shakib Al Hasan are the only other jokers in that club. Nobody else keeps Southee company in the 300 Test/200 ODI/100 T20I wicket club though.
Southee took his 350th wicket in the first innings. It won’t be long until he passes Daniel Vettori’s 361 for second on the all-time NZ list and at this point you’ve gotta think he’ll eventually overtake Sir Richard Hadlee’s 431 as well... although he’s already played more matches than Sir RJH, to be fair to the great man.
Might just finish with this wee hypothetical about Blackcaps spinners and their batting...
Mitchell Santner – 766 runs | 24.70 average | 3x 50+ | 32 innings
Ish Sodhi – 513 runs | 23.31 average | 4x 50+ | 26 innings
Michael Bracewell – 101 runs | 20.20 average | 0x 50+ | 5 innings
Ajaz Patel – 91 runs | 9.10 average | 0x 50+ | 18 innings
Rachin Ravindra – 73 runs | 14.60 average | 0x 50+ | 6 innings
Jack Salt retired from basketball this week, making the announcement via Instagram on Wednesday. With him it was a case of injuries/health spoiling what could have been a really great professional career and causing him to hang things up at the age of 26. But while Salt’s pro career never got the chance to take off, his college career will always be one of legend thanks to his NCAA national championship season with Virginia in 2019.
Across five years with the Virginia Cavs he was never a huge scorer or rebounder - he averaged in the threes in both across his 127 games. But much like Sean Marks’ NBA career before him, you get to a point where you have to stop wondering about stat lines and start admiring the things he brings to the table to still play so often despite those minimal numbers.
Salt was beloved at Virginia. The epitome of a team-first player who does the dirty work so that others can thrive. Some games he’d get big minutes as a rim-protecting, screen-setting enforcer. Other games he wouldn’t really be required and would settle for being a leader on the sidelines.
And that formula helped him to an NCAA Division 1 national title which is something that no other New Zealander has ever achieved in American college basketball (as far as I know). The closest before him was Jillian Harmon who made the final with Stanford in 2008 in the women’s comp. Kirk Penney got to the final four in 2000 with Wisconsin. But Jack Salt won the whole thing… and here’s an article I wrote about him back at the time when they won that ‘ship. Congrats to Jack Salt on what he did achieve during his basketball career and best wishes for the future.
The Brooklyn Nets were 2-5 when Sean Marks and company made the call to fire Steve Nash as head coach. Since then they’ve gone 21-7 with Jacque Vaughn in charge (first as interim, then as the official HC). They now have the second best record in the league, second only to the Boston Celtics. Since the coaching change, the Brooklyn Nets have...
The best winning percentage in the NBA of 75%
The best field goal percentage in the NBA of 51.8%
The best three-point percentage in the NBA of 40.6% (!)
They’re fourth in assists per game (26.9)
They lead the NBA in blocks per game (6.4)
Are second in the NBA for plus/minus with a +5.5 margin
Have the third best offensive rating (116.2), eighth best defensive rating (110.5), and second best net rating (+5.7) in the NBA
The Nets also have the best effective shooting percentage (59.2%) and are allowing the second best effective shooting percentage against (51.6% - slightly behind the Memphis Grizzlies, chur)
So, yeah, as much as Sean Marks got ragged on earlier in the year for sticking with the team he’d assembled despite all the drama that it entailed... then also for clumsy way in which their head coach search went about with the links to the suspended Celtics coach Ime Udoka and then backtracking to promote interim/existing assistant Vaughn into the job instead... turns out he may have been right to dig his heels in over the Durant/Irving combination and perhaps it really was as simple Steve Nash simply not being a very good head coach in his first ever gig of this magnitude. Also getting a healthy/available team has certainly helped too.
Kevin Durant is leading the way averaging 29.9 points per game on 56.0/37.0/92.8 shooting while Kyrie Irving is adding another 26 points per night. The pair are combining for 10 assists each game as well, with Yuta Watanabe, Markieff Morris, Patty Mills, Day’Ron Sharpe, Royce O’Neal, Seth Curry, and Joe Harris all shooting at least 38% from deep. In differing roles, of course, but only Sharpe could be said to be outside the main rotation.
O’Neale in particular has been a superb pick up, traded for in the offseason at the expense of a draft pick. Watanabe equally so, a free agent signing who has made 34/65 triples this season and seems to have found a home in the rotation during the team’s current 10-game winning streak.
They doubted you, Sean, and they were wrong.
Finally, here’s one for the In Memoriam crowd. Greatest of All Time arguments are extremely pointless... though it’s hard to argue that many footballers were more influential than Pele. His success, his achievements, his highlights packages which hold up sixty years later despite him playing on lumpy surfaces against psychotic defenders with a ball that was heavier than lead, and perhaps most important of all: the way he served as an ambassador for The Beautiful Game, glorifying the artistic and aesthetic peak of the sport for generations of fans.
RIP to Edson Arantes do Nascimento...