Finn’s first game. Australia’s throw away. Wood’s rockets. Stokes’ armchair ride. Afghanistan’s lack of runs. Matchups. Mitch.
Day seven from the World Cup
99.94 has a new Podcaster. The Mitch Johnson show is on YouTube every week.
Or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Mitch has moved into commentary and the media, and you can hear his thoughts on modern cricket. Still, he feels like he never fully opened up about his career and life, even in his book. So he has decided to do that on this show with his co-host, Bharat Sundaresan. But the first episode is me having a chat with him.
If you lived through the Mitch years, I think there is a lot here you will like. I was captivated by it all when I was listening as a producer. And I already lived this once, but not like this.
New Zealand win
Good to see that everyone sleeping on New Zealand again has meant they look better in a World Cup than they should. It's like we have learned nothing.
There were questions over this team in terms of the batting. Ross Taylor is gone, Kane Williamson's elbow has rendered him impotent and Martin Guptill isn't the player he once was. But New Zealand have barely used Glenn Phillips and Finn Allen. Devon Conway is very good. Neesham can hit, Mitchell is constantly surprising, Bracewell is intriguing, and Mark Chapman has been just on the outside for a long time now. And their batting has never been awesome in white ball cricket; it is usually that their bowlers keep them in games.
Boult, Southee and Ferguson is such an impressive and well-balanced seam lineup. Then they have a wrist spinner and finger spinner who can bat and does better against left-handers than he does righties.
Williamson is good enough as a leader to have been given a million to do that in the IPL. They have made the last final in every format. They didn't even need to unleash Daryl Mitchell today.
You can see they were not even in the most popular bets. It took beating Australia for anyone to wager on New Zealand at all. They're currently the third favourite for the tournament after one game. The real question is did we sleep on them enough for them to have harnessed that energy into another run towards the final.
Finn Allen
All out attack against Mitchell Starc's first over doesn't always go well for New Zealand. Just ask Brendon McCullum. Perhaps all he needed was to have grown a mullet.
Starc was a first over specialist. Today he went for 14 runs in the first over. In his career he's gone at 5.7 runs an over up front, while also averaging 23.
But Allen is something special. Of batters who have faced over 500 balls, he has the highest power-play strike rate in T20 history. That figure of 178 putting him well ahead of Luke Ronchi with 164 and Will Jacks with 159.
This is what Finn Allen does and everybody knows it. Well not quite everyone, it turns out, the Australian commentators were treating this as if it was his first game. Allen is at least certainly known to Scotland's players. He marmalised his way to a T20 hundred against them earlier this year. Plus, he was sold in the IPL, has played for four different English sides.
In truth, he could have had even more from Starc's first over, mistiming a couple more attacking shots straight to fielders. The Black Caps had 15 from the second over, then 17 from the third. They were 46/0 after just 18 balls and Allen had 35 of them. He only faced 15 balls yet squeezed 42 runs with 5 fours and 3 sixes. New Zealand left out Martin Guptill, the man with the third most T20I runs of all time, to bring in Allen and when he plays like this, you can see why.
New Zealand absolutely battered Australia from the very start, and that was Allen.
Devon Conway
In 2017 Devon Conway made a double century for Gauteng in the regional domestic l first class system. It was Conway's last runs as a South African domestic player. He sold up his entire life and moved to New Zealand after suggesting it to his wife over a game of Golf.
Conway moves to Wellington, and all that natural talent is unlocked so much that he's playing Test cricket as a makeshift opener in England with a huge score.
But he didn't just start making more runs, that makes sense. Change your life, refresh your outlook, start making runs more consistently. Fine. But Conway had never been known as a white ball player much at all. He was an anchor, and people see him as a red ball guy.
So here we have his stats for playing T20 in South Africa compared to what he has done when playing in New Zealand. At his old home, he averaged 30 at really not much more than a run a ball, he has doubled his average in New Zealand alone.
But also scoring at .3 runs a ball more. Or 1.8 runs an over more. He's a different human. And it's not just New Zealand is it? We have seen him in the IPL, and even here in Australia. He's just a different player.
Matchups
Conway is so good that Australia didn't use Glenn Maxwell today, it may have been the left/right thing messing with short boundaries. But it looked like a matchup thing to me. This may not immediately make sense, as left-handers usually struggle with offspin.
Devon Conway is the best southpaw against offspin. He scores fast while not being dismissed. Oh, and by best, he's in a world of his own.
This is not normal. Now today, maybe Maxwell doesn't bowl anyway. But Australia like the flexibility of Stoinis and Maxwell when it suits them. Today they were being bashed everywhere, and Maxwell never entered the attack.
And just on matchups and offspin, another interesting one is coming up. Pakistan will probably play two of Fakhar Zaman, Shan Masood and Muhummad Nawaz in their next game. They are all cack-handed. But more interesting is their openers. But as Sarah and Nikesh talked about in their last show, Babar and Rizwan are scoring basically near run a ball
Yeah, last two years Babar and Rizwan have just knocked offies around. They are both right-handers. And I think part of this is not that they can't score from it, but that it's bowled at a period in the game when they aren't taking any big chances. Weirdly enough, Masood is the second-best lefty of offspin over the last couple of years. So he would strengthen them against it if he plays.
It does show you how confusing matchups are.
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