El Niche Cache
January 29, 2020
Podcast
TNC Variety Show: Episode 2
iTunes | Youtube | TNC
The Niche Cast: Secret Selector’s List (Super Smash Extravaganza)
iTunes | Youtube | TNC
Reading Menu
Crunching The Numbers From The Blackcaps’ Undefeated Home Test Match Streak (Cricket)
Sean Marks Has Now Completed His Team Of Brooklyn Nets Supervillains (NBA)
Monday Morning Dummy Half: Big Future Kiwis (NRL)
The Welly Nix Still Aren’t Finishing Their Chances And It’s A Problem (Football)
Flying Kiwis – January 27 (Football)
The Premmy Files – Men’s Premiership, Week 9 (Football)
2020/21 Aotearoa Super Smash: Wellington Cricket Appreciation (Cricket)
2020/21 Aotearoa Super Smash: Update #7 (Deep Cuts) (Cricket)
27fm Weekly Niche Cache Playlist: January 25 (Music)
Blackcaps T20I Landscape Reality Check (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
A sports theory I’m working on…
Winning teams have older/more experienced role players.
This has been a seed of a theory for a couple months now and I’ve either pondered this with different sports, or I’ve had it reinforced in my consumption of various sports media around the world. I won’t write an essay to explain it, this is just a nugget that I’m confident can be stretched out around the sports world and applied to most (not all) winning sports teams - ponder it yourself.
Not a theory, just an idea…
The post New Zealand tour buzz.
I didn’t note this with West Indies, I have noted this with Pakistan. That may be because Pakistan are playing South Africa on the telly in the evenings and to be fair, I wasn’t tuned into what the Windies were up to after touring NZ. Watching Pakistan though, there is a energy and intensity that resembles the Blackcaps in Aotearoa. The easy example is Pakistan’s fielding which was highlighted in their broadcast - go to NZ, feel the impact of Blackcaps fielding and take that back home with ya.
Upon reflection, I loved having Pakistan in Aotearoa. They were competitive and also appeared to be eager to learn from the Blackcaps, especially Shaheen Shah Afridi who I always saw chatting with any Blackcap who would listen. How can you not like Yasir Shah? And one bloke who was perhaps Pakistan’s low key best player in NZ has continued to impress - Faheem Ashraf.
Ashraf hit 64 batting #8 as Pakistan’s bottom five batsmen hit most of their first innings runs vs South Africa and he’s doing a solid job as an extra bowling option - Pakistan are playing with Shah and lefty spinner Nauman Ali. Ashraf has the First-Class all-rounder stat marker locked down (above 30avg batting, below 30avg bowling) in averaging 27.52 with the ball and 31.26 with the bat.
Part of this is my fetish for Pakistan cricket. Part of this is post NZ tour intrigue. Part is a love of cricket and I can see that Pakistan are assembling a reasonable Test cricket unit to compete around the world … and in Pakistan!
This Test vs South Africa is in Karachi, Pakistan.
Between 2009 and 2019, Pakistan did not play any Test cricket in Pakistan.
For security reasons, Pakistan hosted all their cricket in UAE and now they are back in Pakistan. Take a moment to ponder all these sporting bubbles and covid dramas for sport, while Pakistan’s cricketers had to leave their country every time they wanted to play cricket for Pakistan … for 10 years. Somehow Pakistan remained competitive during that period and are now producing some high quality cricketers, coinciding with international cricket in a country that genuinely loves cricket.
Quick Steven Adams check…
New Orleans Pelicans won a game vs Washington Wizards and who knows what’s doing with the Pellies. I saw this presented as ‘snapping a losing streak’ by an NZ media outlet and that’s true - they have only won 2 of their last 10 games. During that 10 game stretch, Steve had 23 turnovers (2.3 per game) and had a Field Goal % of over .500 in five games. Tough times, but it’s a long season and there have been a few trade rumours floating around that could inject some new funk to the Pelicans team.
Those trade rumours didn’t seem to involve Steve - mainly guards and shooting.
Steven Adams season stats:
30.3 mins | .600 FG% | .488 FT% | 9.6 rebs | 2.6 ast | 1.0 stl | 0.7 blk | 2.0 to | 9.1 pts
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck…
The annual Roger Tuivasa-Sheck to Super Rugby/All Blacks yarn has appeared again and I’m not mad at all. More than anything, it’s fascinating to see how this plays out as it has been a consistent rumour thrown up at regular intervals and it’s either media hype or where there is smoke, there is fire. Consider this a case study.
Auckland Blues are serious. They recruited Beauden Barrett among various other moves that signal a nifty organisation and I do not doubt their power in recruiting RTS. I also don’t care how RTS will fit into rugby union, whether he will make the All Blacks etc - if he wants to play then all good.
I love RTS. There is always someone fresh coming through the ranks though and regardless of how great RTS is, or how much I love RTS - I’ve learned that there is genuinely so much talent in these rugby codes that some new beast is coming.
Maybe being so deep in the cross over between rugby league and rugby union gives me a different perspective. As I first noted with NZ Warriors and the Konrad Hurrell/Ngani Laumape era, if NRL clubs are diving super deep into recruiting 1st 15 players then the NRL community has to stay open to these players moving back to union.
Sidenote: nearly all these kids are talented enough to play both codes and it’s how Aotearoa sport is.
In a recent Monday Morning Dummy Half, I put the focus on Canberra Raiders and how their recruitment from Aotearoa is roughly a 50-50 split between rugby league juniors and 1st 15 players. The truth is, I missed a few lads deeper in the Raiders system…
Canberra Raiders named a 2021 Jersey Flegg (U21) squad, but announced this week that they won’t play in the Flegg comp and will instead opt for their own NSW Cup team (NSW reserve grade). That’s cool because some of their #KiwiNRL prospects will play reserve grade and not Under 21s.
In that Flegg squad, the Raiders have lads like Leo Thompson, Ata Mariota, Brigham Moeakiola, Temple Beauchamp and Sione Moala. All recruited to the Raiders from Aotearoa and I mentioned these lads in that MMDH.
I missed Jack Sandford and Sila Titiuti - both were recruited from 1st 15 rugby along with Thompson, Moeakiola and Beauchamp. Sandford played for Christchurch Boys High School 1st 15, Titiuti played for St Kents 1st 15. That’s five young kiwis in the Raiders (now scratched) Jersey Flegg squad who came from 1st 15 rugby.
Last year, Sandford was named in the Junior Crusaders Camp. Also named were Felix Fa’atili (Canterbury rugby league monster linked with Brisbane Broncos) and Ethan Faitaua who has featured in various NZ Warriors junior camps/games.
See the rather crazy cross over here? Rugby league and rugby union are intertwined at the junior level and thus, when it comes to someone like RTS moving and grooving between the codes at the top level - it makes sense. Again, Aotearoa’s the best sporting nation in the world and Aotearoa’s ability to produce rugby ballers is unmatched.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Shall we start things off with video of Chris Wood scoring a 79th minute winner for Burnley? Can’t even stress enough that they were getting slaughtered in the first half, somehow survived to only be down 1-0 at the break, then turned the tables for a 3-2 victory. It was a bonkers game of football... but that’s a fourth league goal for The Woodsman this season. Probably not gonna get to the 20 goals (in all comps) that he targetted at the start of it but you never know, long way to go yet.
There’s a sneaky theory I have that Chris Wood is at his best when he’s being flagged for offside more often. This season his offsides had plummeted from the rate that had him winning the esteemed Golden Flag in each of the last two seasons. But these last three games he’s been flagged five times (compared to 10 offsides in 16 games before that) and this comes at a time when Burnley spring a fantastic upset win over Liverpool and then a comeback win against Villa in which Wood scores? Seems to add up.
Offsides might be measure differently this year because of the VAR, not really sure how that’s being accounted for by the stat folk. Play tends to be allowed to continue even for blatantly obvious offsides just in case the video ref wants to step in and overrule something, leading to a lot of stupid phases of play where everybody knows it’s gonna be called back but gotta play to the whistle and all that. And some that don’t ever get called because the game moves on. But yeah when Woodsy is getting flagged it means he’s playing off the last man. It means he’s stretching that defence and trying to get things closer to the goal – which as touched upon in a previous email is a notable thing about his lack of goals this season... he’s shooting on average from further away from goal than last term. This guy is a 10-yard poacher at his peak. That’s where you want him hunting.
Chris Wood has 131 career offsides in the Premier League, that’s drawn him level with Luis Suarez for 24th all time though he’s got a long way to go to catch the mighty Emmanuel Adebayor and his 328. Not sure how long back those stats go but it’s from the Premier League’s official website so it’s as authentic as it’s gonna get. Obviously won’t go back further than the advent of the EPL. Doubt the fellas played too many high defensive lines back in the old days anyway.
So there’s this unofficial All-Rounder criteria that people like to go by which is that you qualify for all-round status if your batting average is above your bowling average. It’s not a foolproof criteria because by that measurement Daniel Vettori falls short (although he’d get up there if you only factored in his career after he scored his first Test ton in 2003 onwards) whereas Kane Williamson does make the cut. When you average 54.31 with the bat, even rubbish part-timer bowling would do the trick and Kanos is a step above that as a bowler for sure, even if he’s a reluctant tweaker.
Actually if you filter for blokes with a minimum of 10 Test wickets for Aotearoa there are only eight players with positive average differentials. Guys like Cairns, Oram & Coney are obvious ones. Colin de Grandhomme gets in there too, as does Sir Richard Hadlee. And big ups to Giff Vivian. Not sure I’d ever heard that name before but he did the goods in those very early years of kiwi Test cricket. This from Wisden/Cricinfo:
“Henry Gifford Vivian, who died in Auckland on August 12, 1983, aged 70, was only 18 years 267 days when, as a left-handed allrounder of much natural ability, he played in the first of his seven Tests for New Zealand. That was at The Oval in 1931, and, besides taking the wickets of Sutcliffe and Ames, he was top scorer, in New Zealand's second innings, with 51. His record on that tour (1,002 runs and 64 wickets) included centuries against Oxford University and Yorkshire. At Wellington in 1931-32, against South Africa, he scored 100 (his only Test century) and 73, the highest score in each innings. On his second tour to England, in 1937, he opened New Zealand's innings in the three Test matches, three times reaching 50. A charming person and welcoming host, he had been only 22 when appointed to the captaincy of Auckland. By the time a back injury ended his first-class career and confined him to the game's administration--he did not play after the Second World War--he had scored 4,443 runs (average 34.71), including six centuries, the highest of them 165 for Auckland against Wellington in 1931-32, and taken 223 wickets. He also played with success in the late 30s for Sir Julien Cahn's XI. His son, Graham, played five times for New Zealand between 1964 and 1972.”
John Reid falls agonisingly short by 0.07 (shout out to James Bond), literally one more wicket would have done it and he for sure deserves to be amongst that crowd – though he did become less of a bowler after a few injuries midway through his international career, pretty sure. Martin Crowe also narrowly misses out.
But it’s Kyle Jamieson who stands out above the crowd, both statistically and also physically...
Six Tests into his career is a miniscule sample size but jeezus, a PLUS-FORTY-THREE!? That batting average will come down a long way from those heights, it’s higher than his high score at the moment thanks to not outs (and we all remember how a blistering start with the bat saw Tim Southee labelled a future all-rounded early in his career and that’s not exactly worked out as it was foreseen) and nobody is sustaining a bowling average of 13s in this day and age, no way no sir no how. He hasn’t even played an away match yet.
But we can only work with what we’ve got and, as things stand, when you add in that 10 wicket minimum cut-off point Kylo has the greatest average differential in the history of Test cricket by almost twenty runs. Absolutely dwarfing all-time legends of the game like Gary Sobers, Jacques Kallis, Wally Hammond, Clyde Walcott, Imran Khan & Keith Miller.
In conclusion: based on the evidence that we have at hand, Kyle Jamieson is the greatest all-round cricketer in the history of the sport. End of email.