The Pink Report

Points & Permutations

With a heading like that, it feels rather like I'm about to write a Jane Austen novel. But since we're not in early nineteenth century rural Hampshire, I'll stick to the knitting: a quick run-down of what needs to happen for the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights to make the 2012 HRV Cup final.

It's now just 10 days away and there will be two rounds left after this evening's match between Otago and Canterbury. The Knights play the Stags away in Napier tomorrow evening (Saturday, 5pm) and have their final home match in Hamilton against the Volts at 5.30pm on Thursday evening.

Defending champions the Auckland Aces are already in the final, and deservedly so. They've been clinical in their systematic destruction of the other teams, dropping just one match in the HRV Cup season to date.

The Wellybirds, on the other hand, became the first team to drop from contention. They're the strugglers of New Zealand cricket at the moment and you feel for their diehard supporters, waiting season after season for things to start gelling and happening again.

The Stags and Volts both sit on 12 points, four points or "one win" below the Knights. The Volts have that extra game in hand, however, so if they beat Canterbury tonight, they'll draw level with ND and then be in the same boat with the last two rounds to go.

The Stags are meanwhile hanging by a thread: they must not only win both their remaining matches to get into the final, but hope that Canterbury lose all three of their remaining matches - and with one of Canterbury's remaining matches being against Wellington, the odds of that are slim.

Canterbury are sitting in the best "chaser" position, on 18 points. If the Knights win both their remaining games, ND will finish on 22 points. So if the Knights can take care of that first part, they still need Canterbury to lose twice (against Otago, Wellington or Auckland), plus will want their own run rate to get up in the meantime, because Canterbury's net run rate is better and that's what it will come down to if the two teams both finish on 22.

So now that that's all clear as mud, how's it looking for the big one tomorrow? The Stags are smarting from their seven-wicket defeat to the Aces, which my gut tells me is a little inconvenient. Their batsmen particularly will be keen on not letting themselves get out like that two games in a row, so I suspect we're in for the usual ND-CD scenario where they play like fighting cats.

The weather at McLean Park is apparently going to be fine, though possibly quite windy - and after a couple of very windy, hot 30-degree days in the Bay, if the track's not a belter, I'd ask for my money back. So it all comes down to partnerships, partnerships and partnerships - and not letting a well-matched opponent psyche them out regardless of who gets to bat first.

***

While Scotty, Pete, Hamish and others were tackling the Cape Kidnappers golf course on their afternoon off yesterday, Daniel Vettori was in Melbourne preparing for his second match for the Brisbane Heat in the Big Bash.

Dan's self-styled batsmanship is in the unorthodox-yet-effective box at the best of times, and by those standards Thursday evening's performance was a classic. The Heat's batting was in tatters when he joined Roelef van der Merwe, but their 72-run partnership was the best and liveliest of the innings. Dan top-scored with 40 off 25, including a six, four fours and a whole lot of audacious walking miles across the line to club the ball into unexpected areas. The best bit was when Dan hit a ball from Dirk Nannes down the throat of deep square leg. Dan was seemingly out for 22, but the dismissal was quickly ruled invalid, a no-ball as the Renegades had too many fielders outside the circle. Nice spotting.

Those whacky boundaries from Dan's bat turned out to be vital as the Heat beat the Melbourne Renegades by just 12 runs - ending the Renegades' chances in this year's Big Bash. Let's cross our pink fingers that the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights can pull off a similar sort of back-end bonanza in the HRV Cup.