Maximum Grouse
Women's Cricket World Cup, Shane Warne vs the Blackcaps, NRLWahine Round Two, Lydia Ko in Singapore, CJ Bott in England & more
Podcast
TNC Variety Show 53
The Niche Cast: Those Who Wander
Reading Menu
Cashmere Technical Are Chatham Cup Champions, How About It (Football)
27fm Weekly Playlist - March 7 (Music)
Updating Aotearoa Warriors Juniors With Redcliffe Dolphins (Benjamin Kosi & Tome Poona) (NRL)
2022 Women's World Cup: Shook Ones (West Indies Defeat Aotearoa) (Cricket)
2021/22 Aotearoa Test Summer: Who Is Using What Bats? (Cricket)
2021/22 Plunket Shield: Auckland And Northern Wins (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Women’s Cricket World Cup…
Funky start to the World Cup in Aotearoa and I’m writing this while rain has delayed the start to Aotearoa vs Bangladesh. I’ll hold fire on White Ferns stuff here and hope they can step up after low key concerning loss first up to West Indies. Generally, this World Cup has already been fun with the first four games showcasing women’s cricket and how different it is to blokes cricket.
Australia are the best team at this WC. England showed plenty of mana in their loss to Australia which is encouraging for the poms as they had their Ashes series a few weeks ago and can now settle into a groove against the other teams. South Africa avoided a niggly finish against Bangladesh and eventually won by a comfy margin. SA are a team to keep very close tabs on throughout this tournament as they feel like the best sneaky contender with quality players in every department.
West Indies reflect the general premise of this WC as most teams have four-five high quality players and unless it’s Australia, don’t assume much. Windies are not a dominant force and have A) not played much cricket against Australia and England B) lost plenty of games leading into this WC. They do have Deandra Dottin, Hayley Matthews and Stafanie Taylor who are all world-class cricketers. Factor in an energetic bowling unit for a competitive unit.
I have a theory about late-summer spin bowling in Aotearoa that along with World Cup and Plunket Shield featured in this morning’s Patreon Podcast. Warmer conditions, pitches in northern Aotearoa and how spin bowlers benefit from this. Remember that South Africa played Keshav Maharaj vs Blackcaps on a different deck, but same Hagley Oval block as the first Test. Many of these WC teams have multiple funky spinners and roll through different spinners as opposed to rotating seamers.
This has already been on display in a few games (India vs Pakistan most notably) and while every team has really good seamers, right now we are at this juncture: the narrative of Aotearoa spin bowling meets late-summer conditions and wahine cricket where there is a greater variety of spinners (undercutters, side-armers, leggies etc).
Don’t overlook the wahine seamers. Embrace the variety of spinners and how they apply their skillset to Aotearoa conditions.
Lydia Ko in Singapore…
The LPGA is in Asia and unfortunately for Lydia Ko, this saw a Tied-23rd result in Singapore. Ko started the year with T10 and 1st finishes, so Singapore was a dip in her 2022 mahi although she did finish strongly with rounds of 69, 73, 72 and 67. Most of the top-10 had final rounds of 67 or better, so Ko was following the trend there.
Next up is the Thailand event later this week and below are Ko’s current stats for 2022 compared to last year (2022 | 2021)
Average Driving Distance: 258m - 5th | 259.2m - 64th
Driving Accuracy: 67.86% - 108th | 65.52% - 129th
Greens in Regulation: 73.61% - 22nd | 73% - 34th
Putts per GiR: 1.77 - 39th | 1.72 - 1st
Putting Average: 29 - 22nd | 28.79 - 2nd
Sand Saves: 83.33% - 4th | 59.34% - 3rd
Scoring Average: 69.75 - 9th | 69.33 - 3rd.
NRLWahine Round Two…
Bit of a bummer that Newcastle Knights have the biggest Kiwi-NRLW presence and show up eager to battle, but continue to make costly errors throughout their games. The Knights are now 0-2 along with Roosters and this week was extra funky as the Knights promoted Ngatokotoru Arakua and Maitua Feterika to their playing 17, after both missed the first game.
This resulted in eight Kiwi-NRLWahine in the Knights team; Katelyn Vaha’akolo, Autumn-Rain Stephens-Daly, Krystal Rota, Annetta Nu’uausala, Charnay Poko, Charlotte Scanlan, Arakua and Feterika.
The Knights are fun to follow due to Kiwi-NRLW quantity and how they improve. Vaha’akolo, Stephens-Daly and Scanlan are playing NRLW for the first time, while the rest form the core of the team which leaves plenty of scope for further intrigue. If you’re looking for an NRLW team to follow, Knights are the easiest pick and hopefully your support brings a first win.
Broncos and Dragons are the best teams so far, with Amber Hall dominating on an edge for Broncos and Madison Bartlett doing her job on the wing for Dragons. Both are established Kiwi Ferns who have played multiple NRLW seasons.
Titans defeated Roosters which was great and a bummer. Raecene McGregor was promoted to starting half for Roosters but couldn’t quite flourish, while the Roosters gave Mya Hill-Moana her NRLW debut. Hill-Moana is a big, mobile middle forward from Waikato who has quickly risen through NZRL wahine ranks and ventured into Australian systems. Hopefully Hill-Moana gets plenty more game time.
Titans are the funkiest team this week though. Kimiora Breayley-Nati won the Kiwi Ferns halves battle against McGregor, while Georgia Hale was typically solid playing as a middle forward and plugging a hole in whatever role needs doing. Hale has made 45 tackles @ 97.8% so far.
Tiana Raftstrand-Smith is the one player I ponder the most. All of these NRLW ideas stem from my weekly previews and ahead of round rua, I highlighted Raftstrand-Smith’s pending eligibility saga. First, Raftstrand-Smith is (like most Aotearoa youngsters) full of lovely mana and learning about her in recent days led me to watch her closely at centre for the Titans. Raftstrand-Smith is bigger than most centres, runs like a winger and her physicality is that of a middle forward. The bloke she reminds me of is Kotoni Staggs, while a wahine comparison is Honey Hireme.
Golden Aotearoa Hip Hop…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Warnie
One thing that I’d like to write later in the week if I can find the time (once I’ve done with Flying Kiwis and then also a Welly Nix Wahine season wrap) is a stats-based look at some of the late great SK Warne’s efforts against the Blackcaps.
Of which there were many indomitable examples. After all he combined our two greatest weaknesses: Spin Bowling & Australians. Needless to say he did some damage, needless to say he got well and truly into the heads of the fellas. Not sure how else to explain something as out of the box as this (although I do love it)...
In fairness to Macca, he was far from the only kiwi to find himself getting shredded by Shane Warne on the international stage but the sound of Adam Gilchrist’s laughter behind the stumps here is extremely patronising...
Warnie’s name came up recently when I was doing some standard research on spin bowling in Aotearoa. That’s because in the five Tests that he played in Aotearoa he caused untold havoc.
In a nation which is notoriously tough on spin bowlers to the point where the Blackcaps don’t even pick one most Tests now, Shane Warne had no such troubles. In fact, he has the second equal most wickets by a spinner in NZ. Ever, by anyone. Including kiwis. It goes Daniel Vettori with 159 wickets in NZ, then Dipak Patel and Shane Warne on 49. Needless to say, Warne’s average of 21.30 was almost twice as good as Patel’s 40.22 – taking the same amount of wickets in thirteen fewer matches.
In fact he was on par with the best travelling seamers too. Only Wasim Akram has taken more Test wickets as a foreigner in Aotearoa:
Wasim Akram (PAK) – 50 WKT | 17.18 AVE | 41.0 SR | 7 MAT
Shane Warne (AUS) – 49 WKT | 21.30 AVE | 51.3 SR | 9 MAT
Chaminda Vaas (SL) – 36 WKT | 22.55 AVE | 48.3 SR | 8 MAT
Erapalli Prasanna (IND) – 35 WKT | 19.25 AVE | 50.1 SR | 7 MAT
Waqar Younis (PAK) – 34 WKT | 27.17 AVE | 54.3 SR | 8 SR
Stuart Broad (ENG) – 34 WKT | 28.47 AVE | 60.1 SR | 9 MAT
Zaheer Khan (IND) – 33 WKT | 28.27 AVE | 50.3 SR | 7 MAT
Had Muttiah Muralitharan, who took 30 wickets at 19.96 ave in NZ across six matches, played a little more in this country then he’d have been up with Warne, which is poetic given the push and pull between those two throughout their overlapping careers. But volume does count. And Warne taking 49 wickets as a foreign spinner in NZ is nuts. Here’s a list from a piece I wrote back in April 2020...
Worth noting that Keshav Maharaj would surely be on that list had he played the first Test of the recent South Africa series. He’s taken 19 wickets @ 22.10 ave in NZ. Strange how these things go.
Of course Warne played against the Blackcaps in Australian conditions too. Surprisingly his average was a lot worse against the Blackcaps in Oz but he still took 54 wickets at 27.16 in those conditions. All of which adds up to is this...
103 wickets | 24.37 average | 56.0 strike-rate | 20 matches
Take a second to ponder whether you reckon that’s the most that anyone has taken against the Blackcaps in Tests. That’s what I just spent five minutes thinking about.
Thoughts going through my head included how we never play more than 2-3 Test series, therefore it’d have to be someone with longevity. Someone with strike power too, naturally. The main competitor had to be Murali but knowing that he played fewer games in NZ than Warne, did we travel to Sri Lanka often enough for him to tally up enough? Or would it be a boring answer like Stuart Broad or Jimmy Anderson simply because of excess opportunity?
Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis potentially shared too many wickets between themselves. Surely Ravi Ashwin would be high up the list too, although it’d be tough for an active player to beat those with full careers under their belts. And anyone in the old days probably didn’t get enough cricket against New Zealand. Hmm.
Okay you can stop your speculating now. All of those aforementioned names were in the top ten. Guys I didn’t think of who are also in the top ten: Dale Steyn, Ian Botham, and Bob Willis.
But in answer to the initial question, hell yeah it’s Warnie and it’s not even bloody close. Murali is second with 82 wickets – taken at a better average but again he just didn’t get the games in. Six fewer than SKW overall. Interesting sidenote: only Sachin Tendulkar (24), Allan Border (23), Steve Waugh (23), and Shivnarine Chanderpaul (21) played more Tests against the Blackcaps. Very surprised to see three Aussies on that list considering their historical reluctance to throw us a bone.
It ain’t all the bowling either. Warne’s highest ever score famously came against the Blackcaps. Caught Richardson, bowled Vettori for 99 in Perth in 2001. Legendary celebration from Rigor. Warne was always quick to remind people that cameras later showed it should have been called a no-ball. Then there’s the Warney’s Grouse At Cricket dude in the crowd. Many-a legendary instance stemming from that single delivery.
I’ll see what else I can dig up down that rabbit hole later in the week when I flesh this out.
CJB x WSL: Part II
Wrote about CJ Bott’s move to Leicester City on Friday, guess what she’s already debuted. Came on for half an hour against Man United (in a 4-0 loss) and provided a bit of energy. More on that in Flying Kiwis tomorrow, of course, but in the meantime shout out to Botty for becoming the fifteenth New Zealander to play in the Women’s Super League of England.
The complete list, in order of appearances:
Ria Percival (61), Olivia Chance (26), Rosie White (22), Hayley Bowden (15), Betsy Hassett (13), Anna Green (12), Katie Duncan (10), Ali Riley (9), Katie Rood (8), Rebekah Stott (7), Sarah Gregorius (6), Emma Kete (5), Anna Leat (3), Aroon Clansey (1), CJ Bott (1)
Hopefully she’ll work her way up that list a couple spots by the end of the season. Hopefully also there’ll be a couple more names to add to the list before the 2023 World Cup – Meikayla Moore’s Liverpool only drew this week but are still cruising towards promotion so there’s one candidate.
And since we’re here, how good was this assist from Katie Rood this weekend? Roodie also scored in this game, a National League Cup semi-final, but even a goal doesn’t top the rewatchability of this banger...
