Only three rounds are left to determine New Zealand's 2018/19 first-class cricket champion and interest centers on how this weekend's Round Six — beginning this Friday in Christchurch, Napier and Whangarei — will serve to drive apart the top five teams.
Even from fifth spot, the Wellington Firebirds are not out of the title race, heading into an away match against Canterbury at Hagley Oval just 21 points behind new leaders the Auckland Aces.
There are a total of 60 points available to each team from the last three rounds. Both teams in each match are able to pocket up to eight bonus points by meeting first innings targets, with a further 12 runs available to a team that wins outright. The big movers over the upcoming two rounds will be the teams that control their own destiny heading into the final round in just a fortnight's time.
The Aces will take in a two-point edge over defending champions the Central Stags when they hurtle up the State Highway to play neighbours Northern Districts at Whangarei's Cobham Oval, where a warm and largely fine four days awaits.
The Stags will meanwhile be home at their Napier fortress against cellar dwellers the Otago Volts, who are the only side yet to chalk up an outright victory this season.
Keen to reclaim their lead, the Stags have not been defeated at McLean Park since February 2016, when Northern Districts beat them by 284 runs. Subsequent Plunket Shield matches at the premier Hawke's Bay venue has seen a win and a draw from two matches with the Wellington Firebirds; two wins against the Auckland Aces; and wins against the Volts and Canterbury (innings victory) at the back end of last season.
- A hot, dry summer normally goes hand in hand with the high batting statistics. After five rounds, Wellington Firebird Devon Conway (605 runs from eight innings this summer at an average of 151.25, with the next best being Central Stags wicketkeeper-batsman Dane Cleaver some 200 runs back with 406) is the runaway leader nationally in individual runs scored, two large unbeaten knocks included in his tally. Conway has a maximum of six innings left to reach the coveted mark of 1000 runs in a first-class season; on current form it is not beyond his reach even in an eight-round summer.
- The last batsmen to achieve the 1000 runs in a season milestone in a New Zealand domestic season was Northern Districts’ Bharat Popli in 2015/16 — another season in which extended periods of hot, dry weather provided ideal conditions for batting in much of the parched country.
- Last season saw a glut of three hat-tricks in the Plunket Shield. Twenty-three-year-old left-armer Ben Lister’s hat-trick for the Auckland Aces last weekend was the first of the current Plunket Shield summer, and the second in the space of two seasons at Eden Park Outer Oval — his teammate Matt McEwan having achieved the feat last year (on the same day as Logan van Beek who meanwhile claimed a hat-trick for the Firebirds. Stag Blair Tickner also took a hat-trick last season). Lister's is just the sixth first-class hat-trick in Auckland’s lengthy history:
W. Lankham v Taranaki at the Auckland Domain, 1882/83
F. Barclay v Canterbury at the Auckland Domain, 1903/04
C. Olliff v Wellington at the Auckland Domain, 1912/13
Tama Canning v Central Stags at Colin Maiden Park, 1999/2000
Matt McEwan v ND at Eden Park Outer Oval, 2017/1
Ben Lister v Otago Volts at Eden Park Outer Oval, 2018/19
- Northern Districts veteran opening batsman Daniel Flynn has now scored 6,132 first-class runs for ND. If he scores 287 runs from his remaining innings this season, he will become ND’s most prolific first-class batsman in history, with the recently retired James Marshall the only player ahead of him (6,418 career runs for ND).
Daniel Flynn. MBUTCHER
- Meanwhile for the Firebirds, Jeetan Patel (328) requires just three more first-class wickets to leapfrog Bob Blair on the all-time wickets list for the Association. Blair (330) sits in fourth spot behind Mark Gillespie (344), fellow spinner Evan Gray (357) and the all-time number one Ewen Chatfield (403).
- Frontline left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel requires a further 12 wickets to reach 200 first-class wickets for the Stags. Patel has a further 13 first-class wickets in matches for New Zealand, for a current first-class career tally of 201 overall.
