Old-Timey Elbow Grease
Some 2021 Test Cricket Statties + Concerning Chris Wood/Burnley Woes
Podcast
The Niche Cast - God SZN (Blackcaps, Ajaz Patel, Super Smash)
Reading Menu
Finn Allen Is Aotearoa's Funkiest Domestic Cricketer (Cricket)
Gotta Keep This First Welly Nix Women’s Season In Context (Football)
Luteru 'Ross' Taylor Retires From International Cricket (Cricket)
2021/22 Men's Super Smash: Wellington Firebirds Chasing Three Super Smash Championships In A Row (Cricket)
2021/22 Women's Super Smash: Wellington Blaze Are Still Really Good (Cricket)
2021/22 Women's Super Smash: Otago Sparks Keep On Groovin' (Cricket)
National League South Central Series – Women’s Team of the Season (Football)
National League South Central Series – Men’s Team of the Season (Football)
Wildcard’s Notebook
Solo mission on the email today. No dramas. Let’s get at it.
2021 in Test Cricket
Cricinfo did one of them things the other day, dropping a Test Team of 2021 which only included one player from the World Test Champion Blackcaps side. That dude being Kyle Jamieson.
It was something I read with initial disdain and disappointment and then quickly changed my mind after thinking about who exactly else should be there from that team. The Blackcaps didn’t play a heap of Test cricket last year. There was the second Test against Pakistan (one on Boxing Day, one early 2021) and then it was all limited overs stuff until the successful tour of England, the Test Champo Final, break for more limited overs cricket around a T20 World Cup, and then a stink couple matches in India. Six Tests all up.
Aotearoa’s top Test run scorer of 2021 was... drum roll… Kane Williamson. Who only batted seven times. 395 runs at 65.83, good for 31st overall in Test runs last year. Devon Conway also scored 379 runs at 63.16 while Tom Latham and Henry Nicholls each scored exactly 323 runs with averages in the 30s.
Joe Root’s 1708 runs in the calendar year of 2021 was an all-timer however thanks to his relative struggles in Australia his average actually dipped below what Williamson or Conway did. But he batted 29 times in 15 matches so that’ll do it. Rohit Sharma and Dimuth Karunaratne were next on the list with tallies in the early 900s. Meaning that Joe Root’s run tally was only 100 runs exactly behind being double the second and third top run scorers of the year.
The underlying moral of that tale being, as inconceivable as this scenario would be to a kiwi supporter, that England plays too much Test cricket (especially for a nation that continually undermines its own domestic red ball competition).
Karunaratne had the top score of 2021 with his 244 against Bangladesh back in April, an absolute mammoth effort that lasted 698 minutes and 437 deliveries. Match ended as a draw though. He then scored 118 and 66 in the second Test in a match that they did win. Then 147 and 83 in the first Tests against the West Indies in November which made it six consecutive innings with 50+ scores, three of them tons including a double-up.
Ah but the second highest individual score of 2021? Kane Williamson’s 238 against Pakistan in Christchurch. Other double centurions of 2021: Joe Root x2, Abid Ali, Kyle Mayers, Hashmatullah Shahidi, and Devon Conway. Aotearoa the only nation with two separate fellas on the list.
Also the best batting partnership of 2021 was Kane Williamson and Henry Nicholls who put on 369 for the fourth wicket against Pakistan in that same Christchurch Test (not the last time I’ll mention that game either).
Flip that over to bowlers and Ravi Ashwin’s 54 wickets led the way pretty comfortably with Shaheen Shah Afridi next with 47 from the same number of games. Hasan Ali third with 41. Afridi and Ali laying it down for a Pakistani team that keeps going from strength to strength lately. The Blackcaps beat them both times when they toured last season but damn they pushed them close in the first one (at Bay Oval) which went down to the last few overs of day five. Hasan Ali wasn’t on that tour and neither was Babar Azam. Can’t wait for the two Tests that NZ & PAK are playing in a year’s time (as part of the penance for the abandoned ODI/T20 tour before the T20 World Cup)... even if it’s baffling that they’ve scheduled it for smack-bang the middle of the kiwi summer.
Also it says a lot about England’s Test schedule that for all the complaints about James Anderson and the England pace attack’s rest and rotation strategy... nobody bowled more overs than Anderson in 2021. 399.5 of the buggers. The tenth year in his career where he’s bowled at least 390 Test overs. Not sure how he even still gets out of bed in the morning.
Blackcaps Top Wicket Takers in 2021:
Kyle Jamieson – 27 wickets | 17.51 average | 41.8 strike-rate | 188.2 overs
Tim Southee – 22 wickets | 23.45 average | 57.4 strike-rate | 210.5 overs
Ajaz Patel – 21 wickets | 20.66 average | 40.8 strike-rate | 143.0 overs
Trent Boult – 16 wickets | 20.62 average | 43.0 strike-rate | 114.5 overs
Neil Wagner – 10 wickets | 28.00 average | 60.6 strike-rate | 101.0 overs
So... all the usual suspects. Needless to say that Ajaz Patel’s 10/119 was the best individual bowling effort of that calendar. Tim Southee also came in at ninth with 6/43 vs England at Lords and Kyle Jamieson with 6/48 vs Pakistan in Christchurch. Jamieson also had 5/31 in the WTC final at Southampton and 5/69 in the other innings of that Christchurch match. And Southee took 5/69 in Kanpur against India. There ya go.
Is This The Season That Burnley *Don’t* Dig Themselves Out Of Trouble?
They do it every bloody year, Sean Dyche’s old-timey elbow grease able to wiggle Burnley clear of relegation dramas with a cheeky win streak doing just enough. Every single year people predict them for the drop, they spend a good chunk of it looking like those predictions will come true, then ultimately they never do. Their finishes since being promoted: 16th, 7th, 15th, 10th, 17th.
Burnley left it into the last month to secure survival the first time around. Season after that (2017-18) was when they signed Chris Wood for a then-club record fee and incredibly finished high enough up to qualify for the Europa League despite a run of 11 games without a win during the mid-season. Probably because they won 6 of 8 preceding that and then five in a row afterwards. Didn’t win any of their last five games yet still ended up with 54 points and seventh.
Those fluctuating runs of form have come to be a feature of the Clarets and Chris Wood fits right into them. A stretch of games without a goal or a win will be followed by a flurry of both, usually just in time to nudge them clear of the drop zone. Burnley didn’t cope too well with slapping some Europa League qualifiers into their 2018-19 preseason and after a 5-1 defeat to Everton on Boxing Day they were sitting awful with only 12 points (and two wins) from 19 games. Naturally they then took 18 points from their next eight matches, Wood scoring six goals in that streak, and that did the trick.
Season after that one, the covid lockdown season, they had three separate losing streaks of 3+ games and after a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea on New Years Day they were in 15th place but only four points clear of the relegation zone with almost all the teams below them having played fewer games. They only lost twice in their remaining 16 games and one of those was in the last round with safety long since ensured.
Then last season they didn’t win any of their first seven matches yet a few timely 1-0 victories peppered the rest of their fixtures and combined with a tendency to grind out draws plus the futility of the three teams who were ultimately relegated meant that while Burnley only finished 17th... they were 11 points clear of relegation despite losing seven out of their last nine games.
Perhaps that campaign hinted that the darkness was catching up with them though. Despite an ownership takeover, they haven’t really made a major addition to strengthen the squad for a couple of years. Not since Wood and Jack Cork joined four years ago have they added a genuine first eleven fella into the mix (with respect to Erik Pieters, maybe). Dwight McNeil came up from the academy in that time and otherwise they’ve relied on the same key players for like six years. It’s gotten kinda stale, to be blunt.
Maxwel Cornet is the one exception, coming in during the last window and hitting the ground running with some wonderful goals and the ability to spark something out of nothing which is unique in this team. A great sign of progress. Except he’s off to the African Cup of Nations for the next month leaving his team with 11 points from 17 games, with fewer than a goal per game, with a few covid cases affecting their notoriously shallow squad and vast swathes of the rest of them out of form... including Chris Wood. One win all season.
The typical Burnley thing is to steal out one of those great months of form to help them out of trouble but there are no signs of that happening yet. Assuming that Newcastle United get a big injection of expensive talent to their team in the January window that could leave Burnley needing to haul in Leeds or Everton, currently 8 points ahead of them, if they’re going to survive (unless Newcastle continue to suck which would be hilarious to have their newfound financial might in the Championship). Note that the Clarets just lost 3-1 to Leeds this morning.
The omens aren’t great. Burnley picked up fewer points per game than any other club in the top four flights of English football in 2021...
Tommy Smith’s Colchester and Nik Tzanev’s Wimbledon are also both in the bottom twenty, dammit. Let’s see Joe Bell to Bournemouth or something to change the pattern. Or we could try force the dude directly to a Premier League club. Keep spamming Directors of Football with his highlight packages because the way that Burnley are tracking there’s a very real possibility that an 18-season streak with a New Zealander in the Premier League may be under threat. From Ryan Nelson to Winston Reid to Chris Wood there’s always been this convenient progression but if the Woodsman gets relegated (and isn’t sold to a rival) then we might have to start panicking.
Another Burnley yarn: not sure if it’s the best thing in the world that their most common progressive pass combination is the goalkeeper punting it long to the target man...
Burnley are now in an awkward place where the off-contract James Tarkowski can’t be cashed in on because a few more months of him helping them avoid the drop is more important. So it goes. He’s huge for them not only as an excellent central defender but also as an attacking weapon considering that we all know what the Clarets need to do to fix things: Burnley Ball, efficiency 100%. This is the way.
See, Burnley have the fewest shots and lowest xG in the entire competition from open play situations. Bear in mind they’ve had a few more games postponed than most but still. However their xG from set pieces is fourth best behind Brentford (who are super clever with seeking out areas where they can find an advantage)... and Manchester City and Liverpool (who have the most attempts and the best set piece deliverers). They’re very good defensively against set pieces too. Just those open play areas where they get carved up a little... gonna put that down to a hampered midfield as much as anything.
Gotta be tight, gotta be physical, gotta be direct. Just maybe not too direct. Bring the fullbacks into the mix. Get crosses into the area from more advanced areas. Burnley have the fewest sequences of 10+ passes in the PL and the fewest number of build-up attacks (I’m getting these yarns from here btw). Only Aston Villa play more directly in terms of speed but Villa play more passes in that time. They’re moving defenders around better. Burnley average 2.42 passes per sequence. Worst in the PL. Next four worst are Watford, Newcastle, and Everton who are all in the bottom six as we speak. Not a coincidence.
We’re still talking about that direct approach from Burnley but they can afford to be a little more crafty about it. A little more patient. Not just hoofing it forward at the first opportunity and then blaming Chris Wood when it doesn’t work.
It’s easy to see why there’s frustration towards Wood in the Burnley fanbase (his reception when he was subbed off versus Leeds was not particularly nice). He’s missed some big chances. He missed a few this very week. When a team isn’t scoring often, those missed opportunities linger in the mind a lot longer but it’s not like he’s had a heap of misses. Three goals this season from an xG of 4.97. Yes, he’s underachieving from that metric but also that’s only 28th in terms of xG and if you adjust that to xG/90mins (since Burnley have played the fewest games) then he drops to 47th equal for all players with 500+ mins played.
Give him better service, give him three major chances per game, and he’s guaranteed to supply goals. Give him only one or two and the confidence soon drops with a few shanks. Here’s a better indication of that...
CHRIS WOOD BY SEASON (w/Burnley)
2017-18: 10 goals | 1639 mins | 0.42 xG/90 | 2.20 shots/90
2018-19: 10 goals | 2603 mins | 0.32 xG/90 | 2.01 shots/90
2019-20: 14 goals | 2462 mins | 0.63 xG/90 | 2.38 shots/90
2020-21: 12 goals | 2765 mins | 0.42 xG/90 | 2.28 shots/90
2021-22: 3 goals | 1403 mins | 0.32 xG/90 | 1.92 shots/90
Chris Wood feeds on service. He’s not Mo Salah out there gliding past defenders and creating his own chances. He scores most efficiently (as most strikers do) the closer he is to the goal. A six-yard box merchant. His Premier League career shows that the more shots he takes the more goals he scores but a guy like him, when he’s not getting those shots he’s gonna look pretty messy.
As I say, he’s missed some decent looks. He’s not an innocent victim here. But his type of striker as much as any feeds on the strength of the team around him which lately ain’t been great.