The domestic season final almost passed without notice in the excitement of the World Cup. And we never really took the chance to look back over the domestic season to look for rising stars.
The obvious star of the season was of course Michael Papps. 1005 runs at 91.36 was just senstational. The problem Papps might face is that he his international reputation has been damaged by last season's conks on the head by Brett Lee. Once you get a name for being poor against the short ball, it is very hard to lose it.
Other batting stars include a bunch of other southern stalwarts like Neil Broom (644 runs at 71.55), Gareth Hopkins (514 runs at 85.66), Aaron Redmond (555 runs at 55.50) and Gregg Todd (522 runs at 52.20). Of the North Islanders Hamish Marshall (766 runs at 54.71), Rob Nicol (519 runs at 51.90) and old Wellington campaigner Michael Parlane (613 runs at 51.08) stood out. There are not an awful lot of new names there. Youngsters like Ross Taylor (348 runs at 49.71), Jesse Ryder (498 runs at 41.50) and BJ Watling (564 runs at 37.60) had solid rather than spectacular seasons.
The bowling averages were again dominated by the older crowd. Andre Adams (32 wickets at 18.78), Ian O'Brien 34 wickets at 20.85), Chris Martin (31 wickets at 21.70) and Graeme Aldridge (33 wickets at 25.84) were the best performed. Leigh Burtt (20 wickets at 28.05) was one of the few youngsters to make much of an impression.
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
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2 comments:
Thansk for another interesting blog post guys, keep up the good work. I am stuck in a country with no TV cover of the World Cup (Japan) and your blog is one of the ways I keep in touch with NZ's progress (good so far, touch wood).
Just one thing... I don't wish to sound like a spoilsport, but Mike Parlane is not really an 'old Wellington campaigner'. He played for Northern Districts for ten years or so, IIRC he is from the ND catchment area as well, and as an ND fan I was very unhappy when him and brother Neil moved to Wellington.
Cheers,
G
Hi G,
I totally sympathise. I am an ND fan too and wrote "old Wgtn campaigner" with a bit of bitterness in my heart. Fact is though, the guy turned his back on ND in 2002/3 so has been in Wellington for a while now.
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