The Pink Report

Message from the Bridge

Eight days of good cricket. Twenty-four sessions. That’s what it’s come down to as the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights look to define their 2011 season with the Plunket Shield. Retain the first-class silverware for an impressive third summer in a row and all their frustrations from the one-day and Twenty20 comps will be vapourised. Fall short and it will seem emblematic of a season in which the spoils were so often just out of reach.

As I’m writing, the guys are dishing it up in the first session - Graeme Aldridge having snaffled two wickets in his tight opening spell, forcing Otago onto the back foot before the first-change bowlers had even warmed up; making them clamp down and be more cautious in their strokeplay. Ideal. I admire the way “G” hits his line and length from the get-go, and his consistency from one innings to the next. And, with the pitch and conditions at Seddon very similar to their last outing here against the Aces, the team has the advantage of having played here recently - motivated, moreover, by the opportunity to rectify what happened in that last game.

James Marshall, sidelined by a stomach bug, was a bystander to that ultimately enervating 18-run loss, so I was interested in his perspective as a fellow frustrated spectator - and how instructional it might yet prove as the team goes gunning for the last available 16 points under maximum pressure.

There had been some good positives in the match - they bowled Auckland out twice, after all, and James Baker stood up tall on debut, which in turn inspired the attack around him. The team had just come off an outstanding finish with the bat in Whangarei and they were playing a side that hadn’t threatened anyone else in the competition. Yet they lost, unable to chase down 191 under pressure.

So after all the analysis had been done, what were the most important take-home messages - and what did the captain say to the team when they regrouped? The key message, James says, was that the team must seize its opportunities. Auckland’s tailend resistance proved that even when you’ve got a side eight-down and the limbs are tiring, as a bowler it’s essential to find the energy within yourself to stay on-target, and the acuity to execute the last of the strategies to finish them off. Ditto for the supporting fieldsmen: every ball, every catch is an opportunity to be taken.

“We had several little opportunities in that game to take it away from Auckland - and we didn’t take them,” James assesses frankly. “We dropped seven or eight matches across the whole match: you can’t do that and expect to win a competition. Dropping catches can also take a little bit of wind out of a bowler’s sail, and out of the rest of the team; if you keep dropping those catches. But when a great catch is taken, it lifts the whole side, lifts you and the gives the bowlers a great reward for a lot of hard work.

“So clearly we need to lift our game there. As much as you want to be doing well with bat and ball, the little areas like your fielding can make the game a lot easier to win - therefore that’s one area that’s really important for us.

“We knew we missed an opportunity when the Aces were 120/8. Sure, we still got a 70-run first innings lead, but then we missed another little opportunity there in that we could easily have turned that into 150, with hindsight. So we kept them in the hunt. I think there were four turning points, or critical moments in that game, where, if we’d taken two of those, we would have won the game - because it would have meant that we wouldn’t have found ourselves having to chase down 191. For me, watching from the outside, that was the main thing to take out of it - and it’s a big thing for us. When we get the opportunity, we need to absolutely take control of the game - to really, absolutely nail that.”

So that was the big focus of the team talks as they headed down to Napier last week, and again yesterday and this morning as they finally readied themselves for some action against the Volts, following the McLean Park washout. It’s just that this isn’t the first time this season that the refrain has been recited. Remember the Knights’ HRV Cup campaign? The team started with a hiss and a roar, but the back end of the competition saw them miss out on valuable wins by ultra-slim margins - the narrowest when they tied against these same Volts in Whangarei.

“Just a few overs here and there really took the game away from us in the Twenty20s - and yes, it’s important that we recognise that in these next eight days,” James agrees. “Every day there’s a little period in the match which determines whether the day is yours or the opposition’s. For me it’s really important that we recognise those critical moments, and that we apply ourselves and win those moments. That’s the message. We’ve played some pretty consistent cricket otherwise, but we have, at times, let ourselves down with those failures. So when those moments come, if we nail those in the coming games, we’ll make ourselves hard to beat.”

Assuming that the Stags, meanwhile, don’t collect maximum points from their remaining encounters, away to the Firebirds and at home against the Aces. The Aces have already dipped out of the running in the title race, but they’re the only team wearing that ignominy with two rounds to go and even James acknowledges that it’s exciting to have five teams in serious contention at this late stage in the season - usually by now just two or three are left in the hunt. “It’s a good thing going into the end of the season knowing that there’s so much more to play for.”

See: told you players are relentless optimists, always looking for the upside. Last summer the Knights were in pole position at this stage; this season they’re going to have to squeeze up the inside track after three big wins, two stinging losses and a drawer-full of draws, some of which have had their moments all the same and delivered six points. But while the Stags get to finish off against two of the weaker sides in the competition, the Knights have got the two teams breathing hot down their necks.

“They’re both very good sides, Otago and Canterbury, both very solid batting line-ups,” says James. “Otago has quite a nice, balanced bowling attack as well and is never an easy side - we always have some good battles against them, you give them a sniff and they’re dangerous. One thing you don’t do with Otago is relax at any stage of the game, because they’ve got some good experience there, it’s a strength of theirs that they have been together as a team a long time now and so understand their games and know what kind of game plan is successful for them.

“And Canterbury, in their own conditions [which, post-earthquake, will be Mainpower Oval in Rangiora instead of QEII in Christchurch], they know how to play down there and it’s never easy to come away with an outright. So there are two big games ahead of us. No side is going to give the other side too much - all three of us are going to try and get that win and keep pushing for points. We’ve got to play our best cricket session after session, but if we can do that then we should be able to control the games.”

In the time that I’ve written up this piece, the team has restricted the Volts to just over 100 runs in the morning session at Seddon Park and James Baker has struck his first blow soon after lunch, removing Neil Broom for little more than a start - a batsman who’s dined out on the Knights’ attack more than once this summer. Encouraging, so long as this time they can maintain that intensity and exactitude throughout the match.

Twenty-three sessions to go, meanwhile the captain gets the last word. “We’ve played this competition and been successful in it in the last two years, so we know what it’s like and that trying to win this competition, even at the top, is very difficult, as much as we do have a lot of experience to fall back on in that area. It’s something I’ve asked the guys to really draw on. In these next two weeks, it’s important that we just rediscover that little bit extra that we need to really push and get over the line.”