ROUND TWO
Wednesday 25-Saturday 29 November 2025
- Bay Oval, Mt Maunganui: Northern Districts v Auckland Aces
- University of Otago Oval, Dunedin: Otago v Canterbury
- Cello Basin Reserve, Wellington: Wellington Firebirds v Central Stags
Jeet Raval is the 30th NZ batsman to reach 10,000 FC runs. He fits in at #17 in the averages with 38.07 between BJ Watling (10,034 @ 38.44) and J Crowe (10,233 @ 37.90. Devon Conway (9396) and Will Young (8572) are next closest of current players.
— Francis Payne (@FPayne100) December 1, 2025
Welcome to the 10K club, Jeet Raval.
The Northern Districts Plunket Shield captain celebrated a princely milestone in the latest round of the first-class championship when he became the 30th New Zealand cricketer to reach 10,000 first-class runs in his career.
When Peter Fulton, now the Canterbury men’s head coach, got there in 2016, he was the just the 25th player, so you could say that in recent years there has been a bit of a rush.
Raval’s own head coach, BJ Watling, is another to have since chalked up the elite milestone. The tallies include international matches (Tests and other first class matches for the likes of New Zealand A; overseas stints).
The same summer that Fulton was reaching his 10K, a younger version of Raval (above, PHOTOSPORT) was furiously chalking up 1,000 runs in a season — with the Auckland Aces and for New Zealand A.
He’d scored 152 for New Zealand A against Sri Lanka A at the start of that season and it was the start of a special epoch in his career - making the BLACKCAPS, playing 24 Test matches.
PHOTOSPORT
He reached a Test century and seven half centuries in that arena before the stately left-hander began to struggle hard for consistency.
All of those good knocks came in his first three seasons of international cricket, between 2016/17 and 2018/19; then from 2019 until his last Test in 2020, runs dried up for the opener and he was sent back to Domestic cricket.
This interview with Jeet Raval is so revealing of journeymen professional sportspeople, sometimes just happy to be there. This section on his final innings, only scoring 31 but finally free of pressures and expectations is v touching. https://t.co/TX4QvwIQ4E... pic.twitter.com/hbRFzFjz5L
— Matt Nippert (@MattNippert) December 3, 2025
His influence there has been invaluable in growing and nurturing the Domestic game and its new faces.
From Suburbs New Lynn, a club that also produced Martin Guptill; and Avondale College, where his schoolmate was Ajaz Patel; Raval began his first-class career representing Auckland in 2008/09. He's had two stints representing Auckland, either side of a season as a Central Stag.
After moving to the Mount, he joined Northern Districts in 2020 and captained them their drought-breaking Plunket Shield title at the end of last summer. He'd already lifted it with the Aces.
PHOTOSPORT
There had been speculation then that it might have been the 37-year-old’s last hurrah, but Raval is clearly still driven, albeit with his focus narrowing — he has not been part of ND’s Ford Trophy squad this season.
His influence in the hard graft arena of first-class cricket can’t be underestimated.
Deeply respected by his peers (teammates and opponents alike), Raval is a gentleman’s cricketer, infallibly polite, and can bat all day for his team if he has to.
A little bit infamously, last season he nearly broke the world record for the slowest (by minutes) first-class century in order to save a match against the Central Stags. It does now stand as the national slowest hundred.
View this post on Instagram
It was at the same ground, his local home ground, Bay Oval, last week that he fittingly got his 10,000th run, the royal milestone of the domestic game and he did it in a massive partnership with Henry Cooper, the two centurions again helping save Northern's bacon and Cooper pounding out an epic double century.
Raval got to the 10K mark once he reached two* in the second innings, but carried on to 129 regardless, in their 272-run opening partnership.
A fitting innings for such a landmark.
•••
Raval wasn't the only player scripting some fancy stats in the latest round.
Down in Dunedin, Canterbury's eighth-wicket revellers, Ish Sodhi and Sean Davey, were both tonking maiden first-class centuries which also meant, uncommonly, a second consecutive match featured three centurions in one innings.
PHOTOSPORT
Sodhi's unbeaten 108 not out bettered his previous best of 82 not out - and was marked with an ebullient celebration, while Davey blew away his previous PB of 55 with his undefeated 101* - after which captain Henry Nicholls declared at 501/7.
The late order duo busted a few batting records with their massive unbroken partnership of 204*.
It’s the second highest eighth-wicket partnership in all first-class cricket in Dunedin (JR Murray 141* and AC Cummins 107, put on 215 for the West Indians v Otago in a West Indies tour match at the previous venue, Carisbrook, in 1994/95).
So, Sodhi and Davey can claim the highest eighth-wicket stand in Plunket Shield history in the city, and, highest at University of Otago Oval.
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It was also the third highest eighth-wicket partnership in New Zealand Domestic cricket, nothing to sneer at, and curiously all are by Cantabrians.
Paul Wiseman (130) and Brandon Hiini (100*) put on 220 together versus ND in 2005/06; Gary Stead (190) and Shane Bond (100) put on 210 against ND in 2004/05.
The highest eighth-wicket stand in NZ Domestic cricket by any other Domestic team is 189 by WN Carson (136) & AM Matheson (90) for Auckland against Wellington, and for that you have to scroll all the way back to the 1938/39 summer.
After Nicholls’s 111 earlier in the Canterbury innings (see below), remarkably it meant Otago had been involved in two consecutive matches in which three batters had all scored hundreds in the same innings - Jack Boyle, Jacob Cumming and Tom Jones for Otago in the opening round in Wellington last week; and now the Canterbury trio against Otago in Dunedin.
•••
Someone didn’t lift their feet up off the floor at a sunny University of Otago Oval on Day One when Canterbury skipper Nicholls (above, PHOTOSPORT) reached one of cricket's special numbers of superstitious portent, 111.
Canterbury ended the first day at 356/7, after having been sent in by Otago skipper Luke Georgeson for what turned out to be a drawn runfest.
Nicholls's prolific form in both red and white-ball cricket continued as he went on to become just the sixth man to score a century in each innings of a match for Canterbury - and the first since Fulton’s twin tons for the team in 2012/13, coincidentally at the same Dunedin ground.
PHOTOSPORT
Nicholls reached an unbeaten 109* in the second innings before declaring at 223/4, with Otago having needed to find 356 on the final day in the drawn match.
The Canterbury icon now has 8,167 first-class runs.
•••
Did you know?
Jeet Raval's father Ashok Raval played Volleyball to a high level
Points after Round Two of Eight
27 Auckland Aces
26 Otago
24 Canterbury
20 Central Stags
9 Northern Districts
9 Wellington Firebirds
All live and completed scorecards
