The Pink Report

Points And Order

Thanks to the ever-helpful Ellery at New Zealand Cricket, this week I’ve got my pink mitts on a shiny new copy of NZC’s Playing Conditions. Ninety-two pages of cricketing nitty-gritty. Bliss! It’s coming in handy already as I try to get my head (which is generally a calculus- and algebra-free zone) around the significant changes to the way teams bag points this summer.

Here’s how it works in the Plunket Shield. You get 12 points for a win, six in the unlikely event of a tie, and none for a loss or a draw (apart from first innings bonus points, which is coming up in following paras). That’s an increase on last season when teams got eight points for an outright, or six if they’d won the match but trailed on the first innings.

Remember the old two points for a first-innings lead? That’s history. From now on, both teams can take bonus points out of the first innings, regardless of who gets the lead - which doesn’t count for points itself. If you score 250 runs in the first 110 overs of your first innings, you get one point. If you score 300 runs inside those 110 overs, you get another point. And another at 350, and another at 400, so long as you do it inside the 110-over cut-off. Good incentive not to dilly-dally, since that means you’d need to score at nearly four an over.

Likewise, the fielding team has incentives to get cracking, too. They get a point if they take three wickets before the 110-over mark in the first innings, a second point if it’s five wickets, a third point if it’s seven wickets and a fourth if it’s nine wickets. So despite trailing on the first innings and ultimately losing the match last week, all was not lost: the Yahoo! NZ Northern Knights still secured four points thanks to their excellent pace bowling attack in the first innings.

The points have also been reconfigured to reflect different scenarios should a game not go the distance. For a simple abandonment (when no one gets to take the field at all), it’s two points each. Ditto if the teams are only on the park for 10 hours or less and it’s a one-innings draw: two points each, and curses to the rain.

But, we now also have the exciting possibility of what’s called a One-Innings Match Won - so if, say, you are playing a rain-affected game in which there’s still time for one innings per team (in 10 hours or less), you can channel your inner Twenty20 self and take a handy six points if you win that single-innings contest. Both teams’ first innings will be automatically forfeited if there’s only 10 hours or less to play, so no bonus points will be up for grabs - and the remaining single innings won’t be limited by overs.

Likewise, you’ll get three points for an official One-Innings Match Tie, if the teams happen to end up on exactly the same score, which after all that rain would really lighten the mood all round (not!). And if it ends up a no-result, you’ll still get two points.

Verdict? I think the new points system is a good call by New Zealand Cricket. The fact that both teams can take points out of the first innings from a single match has the potential to keep the leaderboard spicier in the race for the title. Imagine if we get to the final round in March, the teams are on half-decent tracks - and there’s only a few points in it between three or four or five teams? It would maximise the nerves, the pressure, the impetus and all the fun of watching the battle for death or glory.

On the other hand, the volume of points on offer for a nice clean win means that a team in great form is going to be handsomely rewarded - perhaps with an intimidating break on the field. In theory a team could walk away with 20 points from a single game.

So after two quite incredible, even improbable victories last week - what a way to start the season - here’s how the new-look Plunket Shield points table stacks up as we head into round two at Lincoln today: