El Niche Cache
April 2nd, 2021
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 11
The Niche Cast: The Epics
Reading Menu
The Premmy Files – Eastern Suburbs & Waitakere Utd 2020-21 Season Reviews (Football)
Flying Kiwis – March 30 (Football)
Charlisse Leger-Walker Is Already Dominating College Basketball And She’s Only Just Getting Started (Basketball)
Kiwi Steve in the NBA #5: Trade Deadline Bonanza (But Not Really) (Basketball)
Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Winning An Epic Encounter in Canberra (NRL)
Aotearoa White Ferns vs Australia: Drawn T20I Series! (Cricket)
The Curious Case Of Kyle Jamieson and Finn Allen With Royal Challengers Bangalore (IPL) (Cricket)
Canterbury Owns Aotearoa Cricket: Canterbury Women Debrief (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
End of Blackcaps summer…
It wouldn’t have felt adequate if the Blackcaps Aotearoa summer finished without Finn Allen dropping bombs and Todd Astle playing a game. I don’t place a high value on either and I’m fizzing for the Blackcaps overseas adventures to begin, however last night’s T20I in Auckland against Bangladesh laid things to rest perfectly.
Allen basically moved his Super Smash work into Blackcaps clothes, which isn’t as difficult as it would seem when hosting a weaker sub-continent team. Kudos to Allen and he now moves into the rather packed bucket of fresh Blackcaps who look amazing in Aotearoa, now needing to play cricket overseas.
Astle’s funny because he’s been in T20I squads and played four games in five years. Nonetheless, these are thrown up because there wasn’t much to gather as far as insights go from this series vs Bangladesh. We finish the summer watching a Blackcaps team that resembles a 2nd 11, bullying Bangladesh.
Tim Southee is a certified 1st 11 cricketer and he is good at T20I bowling, especially when he is the captain…
As captain: 19.88avg/7.70rpo/15.4sr.
Not captain: 26.95avg/8.58rpo/18.8sr.
Throughout this summer, Southee played 12 T20I games and bowled 44 overs. Southee took 21 wickets @ 16.71avg/7.97rpo and that’s rather impressive compared to his last two summers where he averaged 40+. As it stands right now, Southee has 12w in 2021 and Southee took exactly 12w in each of the three years prior; he’s already on track for his best T20I wicket-taking year.
Southee is the 2nd highest T20I wicket-taker ever.
Ish Sodhi is the 2nd best kiwi and 9th overall. Two bowlers are in the top-10 for T20I wickets having bowled less than 200 overs; Sodhi and Rashid Khan. Three of the best Aotearoa T20I wicket-takers are currently playing with Santner ranked 19th overall for T20I wickets.
Devon Conway now has 11 T20I innings to his name, chasing that 20 innings mark which will have him ranked in the best T20I batting averages on Cricinfo. Right now Conway is averaging 59.12 in T20I cricket and that’s still better than Virat Kohli’s 52.65avg. The best kiwi averages are Brendon McCullum’s 35.66avg, then Martin Guptill’s 32.29avg.
Conway’s T20I strike-rate of 151.11 is ranked 12th all time, while Colin Munro leads the kiwis and is 4th overall with 154.44sr. Munro’s Blackcaps T20I career appears to be over, despite starting 2020 with two 50+ scores in 5inns @ 35.60avg/130.88sr. Here’s the Blackcaps team from Munro’s last game (Feb 2nd, 2020)…
Martin Guptill, Colin Munro, Tim Seifert, Tom Bruce, Ross Taylor, Daryl Mitchell, Mitchell Santner, Scott Kuggeleijn, Tim Southee, Ish Sodhi, Hamish Bennett.
Kiwi-NRL stretching…
The Kiwi-NRL playing stocks are slowly swinging in our favour after the first few rounds saw many of last year’s debutants/youngsters drop back down to reserve grade. Injuries, suspensions and crappy teams mean that this is changing. The Sharks vs Cowboys game for example, has two intriguing Kiwi-NRL prospects named on extended benches with the Sharks naming Jensen Taumoepeau and Cowboys naming Griffin Neame.
Taumoepeau is from Taranaki, a Western Suburbs junior and is an outside back.
Neame is from Greymouth, a Suburbs RL junior and is a middle forward.
Simi Sasagi has steadily been named on the Newcastle Knights extended bench. Sasagi is an Ellerslie Eagles junior, who forecasts forward as a versatile half. Northland’s Caleb Aekins has also featured in Canberra Raiders squads to cover their outside back spots and as I’ve noted the Raiders deep Kiwi-NRL stocks previously, their reserve grade team is jam-packed with young kiwis. This is from the team named to play this weekend…
Fullback: Caleb Aekins (Northland)
Centre: Matthew Timoko (Auckland)
Wing: Brigham Moeokiola (Waikato)
Forwards: Corey Harawira-Naera (Northland), Leo Thompson (Hawkes Bay), Sila Tituiti (Auckland).
Having seen them play last weekend: Leo Thompson resembles James Fisher-Harris.
It’s also been reported that Wiremu Greig has signed with Parramatta Eels from North Queensland Cowboys, with an immediate release. We’ll see what officially eventuates here, it’s a beautiful signing for the Eels as they already have a Northland connection with Dylan Brown and this will be bolstered by Greig’s arrival. Marata Niukore is dominating at centre, Isaiah Papali’i looks rejuvenated by his move to Parramatta and Nate Roache is named in reserve grade.
Greig came through the Northern Swords system, while also playing 1st 15 for Whangarei Boys High. Deep in the archives I found Wiremu Greig playing for Northern Swords Academy against the NZ Warriors Academy, where Waikato Chiefs #10 Kaleb Trask was playing in the Warriors Academy team.
Wildcard’s Notebook
I’ve been updating the kiwis at the NCAA national tournament in this email over the last few weeks, so if you want more from where that came from then you’ll definitely want to read this article which focusses on Charlisse Leger-Walker (and sister/teammate Krystal) for the most part but also at the end recaps all the other kiwis who partook in the big show as well so heaps of yarns therein.
There’s a funky aspect to that stuff too which is that the NCAA have allowed for an eligibility waiver thing where if players want to do one more year after they graduate then they’re allowed to on account of covid wrecking one of them. That applies most to Krystal Leger-Walker, who if she returns to Washington State then they’ll be able to keep their entire starting five together... but that’d mean holding off on potential professional deals and while the WNBA might be a stretch there she’d walk into the Aussie comp for sure. Reports from out of WSU suggest that maybe she’s more likely to leave than stay but we shall see. There are no wrong decisions. Akienne-Tera Reed is also a senior and if she chose to return (I dunno how it works but I assume she’s eligible for the same dispensation) then she’d almost certainly beat Erin Rooney’s record for the most points in Division 1 basketball by a New Zealander. But the same dilemma applies to Tera Reed and then some because her VCU school definitely aren’t as upwardly mobile as WSU is right now. Might not be much point in a fifth season.
But back to Charlisse Leger-Walker, look at a stat like this and ponder just how good she’s gonna be...
For reference...
Kelsey Plum: First overall WNBA draft pick in 2017
Kristine Anigwe: Ninth overall WNBA draft pick in 2019
Candice Wiggins: Third overall WNBA draft pick in 2008
Chrishae Rowe: ... well she disappeared, kicked off of both Oregon and Kentucky for protocol violations whatever that means and never did get her basketball career back on track, which is sad
But you see the pedigree that she’s hanging out with (that scoring dipped to 18.8ppg by the end of the season but doesn’t affect her all-time Pac-12 standings there). Cannot emphasise enough how cool this pass was too. Shoulda been leading the sports news that night but nah that’s why you read The Niche Cache, isn’t it?
Now for some cheeky Phoenix stats.
Total xG For: 17.46
Total Goals For: 21
Total xG Against: 16.36
Total Goals Against: 21
So the notoriously bad finishing Phoenix are actually comfortably outscoring their expected goals mark. That’s in part down to Ulises Davila being able to score half-chances (and Cameron Devlin did his bit for the metrics the other game too, phwoar) and partly because they’ve plain and simple gotten better recently. Tomer Hemed and David Ball don’t waste many chances. They perhaps also don’t get enough chances to begin with but that’s a work in progress – as we know, the first rule of finishing school is that it’s not how many you miss, it’s now many you score so keep the xG stuff in mind with a grain of salt. But as much as they exceed the expected goals for, they’re worse when it comes to expected goals against. Sloppy mistakes, bad set piece defending, that sorta thing. Far too many poor goals sneaking in... no pressure on Steven Taylor or anything.
Results When The Nix Lead The xG stats: L D L L D W L D W (9 pts/9gms)
Results When The Nix Trail The xG Stats: W L L W L (6 pts/5gms)
It’s a new month and that means there’ll be an Album Jukebox up soon on the site. Always a lot of fun to write those ones, it’s a bunch of one-paragraph reviews of new release albums that we’ve been digging and from the contingent that I’ve chucked forward there are three separate records spawned out of Aotearoa, to go with a few belters that snuck into last month’s effort and... well, I s’pose what I’m trying to say is that kiwi tunes are at some outrageous heights right now. I remember when I was at school and there’d be that big push for NZ Music Month each year feeling like it had the aura of a charity drive. I dunno if those days were just a down period for kiwi tunes or if I was just young and didn’t know where to look. And maybe I’m much better at knowing where to look now. Maybe both things are true. Who cares. It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to highlight a bunch of albums all from the last couple years, all from the creative minds of NZers, which I reckon are fantastic and worth digging into yourself:
Aldous Harding – Designer (2019)
The Beths – Future Me Hates Me (2018)
The Beths – Jump Rope Gazers (2020)
Earth Tongue – Floating Being (2019)
Emily Edrosa – Another Wave Is Coming (2020)
Kane Strang – Happy To Perform (2021)
The Leonard Simpson Duo – LSD (2020)
Mermaidens – Look Me In The Eye (2019)
milk – milk (2019)
Na Noise – Waiting For You (2020)
Nadia Reid – Out Of My Province (2020)
Opposite Sex – High Drama (2021)
Marlon Williams – Make Way For Love (2018)
Marlon Williams – Live At The Town Hall (2019)
Purple Pilgrims – Perfumed Earth (2019)
Racing – Real Dancing (2018)
Tom Scott – Avantdale Bowling Club (2018)
Troy Kingi – The Ghost Of Freddie Cesar (2020)
Wax Chattels – Clot (2020)
Wax Chattles – Wax Chattels (2018)
Wet Specimen – Wet Dreamin’ (2021)
Wurld Series – What’s Growing (2021)
Yumi Zouma – Truth Or Consequence (2020)
There’s a 100% chance that I’ve forgotten something that I loved. There’s a 100% chance that there are albums released in that time which I haven’t discovered yet but will and will immediately wish I’d gotten to them earlier to include on that list. Which is obviously to my own personal tastes so it only really hints at the outstanding kiwi hip hop scene that’s out there at the moment, what with so much of my time spent listening to distorted guitars and whatnot. Also you’ll notice: zero Six60 albums included. Obviously not a coincidence but I shan’t take cheap shots, still hope they sell the hell outta Eden Park even if you’d sooner catch me in a Manchester City jersey than at a Six60 concert. That’s the moral of this story though: kiwi music goes deep. There’s squad depth.