El Niche Cache
June 4, 2021
Podcast
The Niche Cast: Two Is A Number (Kiwi Sports Wrap)
Almost Daily Patreon Podcasts:
Hold up, gotta sign up to our Patreon for these bad boys. Sneaky bonus podcast goodness for those of y’all who are chipping in to keep the TNC train on the tracks - eternal gratitude in your direction if you’re one of them.
Anyway, yeah, we’re serving up quickfire Blackcaps reactions the morning after each day (for which our schedules align to allow it).
Minimum pledge on Patreon is $1/month, cheap as chips. Feel free to offer more if you can spare it but mostly we’re just trying to get the numbers up.
Reading Menu
Monday Morning Dummy Half: Shaun Johnson and Aotearoa Kiwis Friends (NRL)
Flying Kiwis – June 1 (Football)
Welly Nix: A Season In Three Acts (Football)
Chris Wood’s 2020-21 Premier League Season In Review (Football)
Riding The Young Wave: Reasons For Otago Sparks Optimism (Cricket)
Exploring Wellington Firebirds Recruitment and Player Development (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Blackcaps vs England…
Two days deep into the first Test and I’m reminded why I don’t really like writing about Tests during the Test. Five days of cricket is a long time and my preference is to absorb it all then cut through the insights, take in the whole Test as a piece of art and digest it as such. Some days the pitch might be a bit flatter than the day before, some days might have more cloud and thus more swinging etc.
Hence, talking through ideas mid-Test with the Almost Daily Blackcaps podcast for our Patreon whanau is an interesting task. We did the first one yesterday after day one and we’ll have another one uploaded this afternoon to recap day two, then we’ll have a weekend break and let the Test simmer. Big thanks to those who support the Niche Cache on Patreon and we’ll keep trucking along with the Almost Daily Podcasts as well as out best efforts in kiwi sports yarn to honour the Patreon whanau, as well as building that community with more supporters.
The star for the Blackcaps has been Devon Conway and having yarned about Conway through the domestic cricket lens for a few years, then the Blackcaps lens last summer; I don’t know what else to say. The dude is a run-scoring monster.
Henry Nicholls hit 61 and was obviously overshadowed by the Gunn & Moore of Conway. Nicholls’ Gray-Nicolls bats have low key been churning out runs for a while and as I pondered a slightly different angle of attack to the first two days of the Test, Nicholls is where I settled. Partly because Nicholls doesn’t give a fuck in the same way that BJ Watling or Neil Wagner don’t really give a fuck…
Nicholls’ last T20I was January 2019 and he did not play a Super Smash game last summer. That’s a decent pivot from when Nicholls was one of a few kiwis who were allowed to play in the Big Bash League with Sydney Thunder and while Nicholls couldn’t quite make an impact in T20I chances, he does have a healthy T20 record of 29.63avg/126.52sr.
Here’s what Nicholls did last summer in domestic cricket…
Plunket Shield: 4inns, 229 runs @ 57.25avg/65.42sr, 2 x 50 - 35th.
Ford Trophy: 5inns, 365 runs @ 121.66avg/91.23sr, 2 x 100 - 7th.
Of the 34 batsmen with more Plunket Shield runs than Nicholls, only four batsmen had higher strike-rates: Doug Bracewell (68), Tom Latham (67), Glenn Phillips (78), Leo Carter (82).
Only one of six batsmen with more Ford Trophy runs than Nicholls had a higher strike-rate: Ken McClure (93).
All up Nicholls scored 594 runs in 9inns. If you divide 594 by 9 for a more basic average check - 66 runs per innings in domestic cricket last summer. Nicholls has scored a Test century in every calendar year except for his debut year in 2016 and if you subtract 2016 from the equation, Nicholls’ Test average jumps from 44 to 51.
Perhaps most impressively, this was Nicholls’ first Test innings in England. Conway went much bigger in a funkier scenario (Test debut), Nicholls is perhaps in a more intriguing position as we’ve seen him settle into Test cricket and I’ve been extremely impressed by his pure weight of runs (especially in helping Canterbury dominate last summer). Here’s a breakdown of Nicholls’ work overseas…
In Australia: 4inns - 15.25avg.
In England: 1inns - 61avg.
In India: 2inns - 12.50avg.
In Aotearoa: 36inns - 50.03avg.
In South Africa: 2inns - 56avg.
In Sri Lanka: 3inns - 27.66avg.
In UAE: 6inns - 57.40avg.
In Zimbabwe - 2inns - 16.50avg.
Kiwi-UFC / UFC 263…
UFC 263 goes down next weekend with the Israel Adesanya vs Marvin Vettori rematch and Brad Riddell vs Drew Dober. A big Kiwi-UFC fight week means a few preview yarns to be done and until we hit hard-mahi mode, let the below content help set the scene for what will be an almighty card for Aotearoa…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Ah bugger. Basically after drawing with Perth at Eden Park, the Nix were left needing a series of other results to go their way to keep them in the mix for the top six and pretty much none of them did. Western United couldn’t take points off Macarthur, Brisbane beating Perth was not the worst case scenario but what we really needed was a draw, then last night Western Sydney weren’t able to beat Adelaide like we needed them to do.
Dammit they were all close though. Western pretty much battered Macarthur thanks mostly to the magic of Alessandro Diamanti but fell short for a 2-1 loss, Perth similarly mounted a late comeback from two goals down but similarly lost 2-1, then WSW... mate. They were already out of contention thanks to that Macarthur win and fell down 1-0 early but managed to score twice to take a 2-1 lead into the break. Unfortunately they also copped a red card soon after taking the lead. Adelaide equalised with the man advantage and it was only a couple rattles of the post and some top saves that kept them from winning, although WSW did have one golden chance late on which could have given them the points and handed the Welly Nix one last lifeline...
Honestly. It just wasn’t meant to be, was it?
I’m strangely not that disappointed though. Probably because the Phoenix were genuinely excellent over the last couple of months, giving themselves a real chance of finals football in a season when they had the huge disadvantage of only getting two home games. Not to mention all the injuries, the awful start, the inconsistent finishing, etc. That’s all been covered in this article.
It also helps that Steven Taylor just re-signed for another season. The difference he made to this team when he returned has been nothing short of immense. So many of those early season defeats came down to poor execution, both from a finishing standpoint and also dumb errors at the back. The latter haven’t been nearly so prevalent since Taylor returned and tell ya what but Tomer Hemed’s done a heap to fix the former too, interesting to see if they bring him back or not. It feels weird to say but Hemed is actually a more effective player without Ulises Davila when the team plays more directly. Davila is a better player but... well, that was all covered in this article.
The second day of the Blackcaps Test at Lords didn’t go ideally. Middle order failed to fire. An outstanding platform ended up going just a little bit to waste. Just quietly I’m not a hundy percent convinced Devon Conway was actually run out there, seemed like there was an assumption made that the bails came off between frames but okay, so it goes, we’ll cop that one. Usually prefer ones as close as that to be benefit of the doubt to the batsman but whatever. Here’s what I will say about a first innings total of 378, take a peek at all the recent first innings scores at Lords...
Match | Date Played | First Innings Team & Score | Match Result
ENG vs NZ | June 2021 | New Zealand 378 | TBD
ENG vs AUS | August 2019 | England 258 | Match Drawn
ENG vs IRE | July 2019 | England 83 | England won by 143 runs
ENG vs IND | August 2018 | India 107 | England won by an innings & 159 runs
ENG vs PAK | May 2018 | England 184 | Pakistan won by 9 wickets
ENG vs WI | September 2017 | West Indies 123 | England won by 9 wickets
ENG vs SA | July 2017 | England 458 | England won by 211 runs
ENG vs PAK | July 2016 | Pakistan 339 | Pakistan won by 75 runs
ENG vs SL | June 2016 | England 416 | Match Drawn
ENG vs AUS | July 2015 | Australia 566/8d | Australia won by 405 runs
ENG vs NZ | May 2015 | England 389 | England won by 124 runs
While Lords might have been a ground where plenty of runs could be scored from the get-go half a decade back, that hasn’t been the case of late. It had been four years since the team batting first last topped 300. England themselves got bowled out for 83 against Ireland before the last Ashes... though they did rally back to win that Test.
The Blackcaps did let control of the match slip away somewhat in that final session of day two but honestly that English batting lineup ain’t exactly early-00s India or anything. It’s Joe Root and Ben Stokes been doing the heavy lifting the last few years and only one of them is playing. All about getting Joe Root out early, that’s the ticket. Supposing they can manage that somehow (Tim Southee’s got him five times in the past, including three times bowled) then you’ve gotta feel good about the runs the Caps put on the board already – even if they should have gotten a few more.
Phwoar mate and one more thing... if you haven’t watch that Bo Burnham special thing on Netflix yet then make that a weekend priority, it’s absolutely brilliant. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a comedy special before where I’ve felt like: this sucker’s going into the Criterion collection one day (by the way, will Aotearoa ever have access to the Criterion Channel? Very rude of them to not let us into the Film Snob club, I’d instantly delete Netflix if I could stream the Criterion films at the touch of a button instead – I know there are VPN loopholes but that’s too much of a hassle).
Basically Burnham – an OG youtube comedian back in the day and more recently seen with a big role in Promising Young Woman – spent his 2020 lockdown filming a bunch of new songs and skits to arrange into a comeback special (he quit doing standup a few years back for anxiety reasons). It’s all done entirely within his own house, all made entirely by himself. He’s the director, the performer, the editor, the cinematographer, etc. And not in a half-arsed way either, there are some gorgeous shots and it’s pieced together so well. This is what I’m saying about how brilliant it is.
Plus then you’ve also got this ongoing descent into madness theme going on, where his hair and beard get longer to reflect the passage of time and his quest to finish the special becomes this Herzog-styled obsession... which he delivers so well that people are out there on the interwebs worried for his state of mind. Mate, do you know how long it takes to edit something like that by yourself? There’s nothing – literally nothing – in the show which is not there on purpose. The man is a performer. A consummate pro. Chill on all that... next thing these jokers will start calling for Anthony Hopkins to be arrested for murder because they watched Silence of the Lambs (if you haven’t rewatched Silence of the Lambs lately then you’re overdue).
And it’s so bloody funny. No spoilers but it’s hilarious. Dark, yes, but also hilarious. I loved it. I shall be watching it again post-haste.