Spinner Ajaz Patel comes into the fray as CD try to register their first victory in a historic season in the quest for three consecutive crowns. PHOTO/FILE
Central Districts Stags have brought former captain Kieran Noema-Barnett and red-ball spin king Ajaz Patel into their mix in the hope of reversing their fortunes in the one-day men's domestic cricket campaign tomorrow.
The pair come in amid some ongoing tinkering but also with the necessity to inject some allround ability from Noema-Barnett due to a plethora of injuries to blokes who can bat and bowl.
"He'll be classed as an overseas player because he's still contracted with Gloucestershire," says CD team manager Lance Hamilton of the man who was known to fellow CD cricketers as Barney.
"He's always had a lot of mana about him and there's a lot of respect for him within the playing group," says Hamilton of the former NZ U19 cricketer who will be accessible to captain William Young for consultancy on the field.
Noema-Barnett, who former Black Cap wicketkeeper Kruger van Wyk replaced as skipper, left for the English county cricket club in 2014.
The 29-year-old lefthand batsman and right-arm medium pacer is a British passport holder owing to his English father.
He has been playing for Big Barrel Napier Technical Old Boys (NTOB) in premier men's club cricket for the past few weeks before the CD coaching stable approached him to help the Stags.
"With all the injuries we've got we have a special seam attack on the sidelines," says Hamilton of Black Cap Doug Bracewell, Adam Milne and Bevan Small.
This week Black Cap Ben Wheeler was rested because of some stiffness in his back.
"Ben's seeing a sports doc and having a scan so he's rested for the next couple of games as a precaution till we know what's going on in there."
Small, Bracewell and Wheeler also come under category of unavailable allrounders.
Blair Tickner and Navin Patel only have three 50-over games between them while NTOB allrounder Christian Leopard also has a back complaint.
"With Tom Bruce, Dane Cleaver and Josh Clarkson all batting in that middle order we needed someone who can give us 10 overs and add to that allrounder role for us, batting at No 7 or 8," he says, revealing Noema-Barnett's selection was a no-brainer.
"He jumped at the opportunity to help us out."
The Heinrich Malan-coached Stags, who are defending champions and in the hunt for a third consecutive Ford Trophy bragging rights, have hit the judder bars in their opening two matches against the Canterbury Kings and the Wellington Firebirds.
Hamilton says it was always intended to involve Ajaz at some stage.
White-ball, first-choice tweaker Marty Kain is out.
"Marty was a little bit unwell the other day and, perhaps, didn't perform to his best so Ajaz has come in and gets an opportunity on the back of some good performances," says Hamilton, alluding to the country's No 1 first-class domestic spinner last summer and runner-up so far in the Plunket Shield this season to Auckland Aces counterpart Tarun Nethula by a wicket.
"He certainly spins the ball and gives it a bit of flight so he'll get a crack for the next few games and, hopefully, he'll go well."
However, CD's top-order batsmen will need some tenacity to occupy the crease to build partnerships for a total that offers their bowlers something to work with.
Ajaz Patel, of Auckland, has only played one Super Smash T20 game this season but is it a big deal to differentiate between red and white ball?
"It's two different games but I don't think it's such a big deal because it's still cricket," he says.
While disappointed to be marginalised in white ball, he remains passionate about playing.
"I like to see it as a positive thing rather than a negative disappointment."
Black Caps legspinner Ish Sodhi's 6-11 from 21 deliveries this week for Adelaide Strikers in the T20 Big Bash League in Australia again highlights the minimal opportunities tweakers have to showcase their talent in a country where coaches leave them out of their equation on the grounds of a wicket that doesn't offer them much purchase or the balance isn't right.
Evidently, in some cases, if the top seven, selected to amass runs, fail seldom are they dropped from the line up.
Ditto seamers and medium pacers who stray from the blueprint of frugality.
A half-glass full kind of guy, Patel says any Kiwi cricketer who does well on the global stage tends to put New Zealand on the grid.
Sodhi is now seen as a sought-after leggie for the lucrative IPL auctions but he has remained in the periphery of Black Caps selection this summer.
"It can be a tough place to be a spinner in New Zealand because, one, we don't have wickets that are conducive to spinning a lot and, I suppose, we're playing in a lot of small grounds."
Patel says the degree of error from tweakers has to be claustrophobically narrow but the players go into battle prepared to overcome those odds, no matter how lopsided.
"I think it's a bit of a catch-22 [situation] as to who can adapt to the conditions the best," he says, adding playing in the subcontinent also offers different variables.
In predictable Patel fashion, the 28-year-old sees his isolation from the white-ball arena as a catalyst to his voracious appetite to claim wickets at Seddon Park tomorrow.
"I think it'll be the same for me whatever level of cricket I play, how much I play so it's a good opportunity if I do get out there [because] it'll give me more exposure to the white-ball stuff, especially in Ford Trophy which I haven't played a lot of," says the orthodox left-armer who enjoys playing for the Pay Excellence Hawke's Bay senior men's representative team when not required domestically.
"The more cricket I play, the happier I am," he says, taking immense pride in representing his adopted province. "When I go there I try to do my best with a match-winning performance to help the team."
Patel has been in the position before so his goal is to rely on a healthy dose of self-belief and back his ability to come off the park with an empty tank and dirt-stained greens on a Seddon Park wicket that traditonally offers some turn but he's mindful it isn't the biggest ground, either.
"I might try to spin the ball a lot more to get wickets rather than just bowling quick and flat."
The beast that white-ball cricket has evolved into now, he says, means not adhering to the doctrine of dot-ball deliveries will render bowlers futile but, again, the variables will dictate terms.
"It's hard to get dot balls with fielding restrictions in one-day cricket so bowlers, I think, who'll stay in the park will have plans so they can get back."
Those who thrive in the frugality stakes will claim wickets or enable others to do so when batsmen free up their arms to take risks against another they consider playable.
"I'm an attacking kind of bowler so I'm always looking at taking wickets and, hopefully, bowl more dot balls to force batsmen to try something outside their comfort zone."
Patel, who sees his batting as a work in progress, has no qualms about opening tomorrow if Young chucks him the ball at Seddon Park, in a ploy that the late Martin Crowe employed radically with success in an ODI World Cup in New Zealand.
While he follows the Stags' games religiously he focuses on where he should mentally be so that when the opportunities arise he'll be ready for them.
He oftens steers clear of TV to not overload his spare time with international cricket so when the time comes to play he's fresh.
His father, Yunus, like many Indians, is passionate about the game and isn't shy to impress on him some of his peceived salient points on spinners, in particular.
"I think he's got a valid point but with so much cricket I kind of switch of. I suppose he's right that there should be more research done and see what areas they bowl and what kind of fields they are setting to which batsmen," he says of his father who is in the construction business.
"I think the passion for cricket within the Indian community is massive, regardless of who it is, so he just loves it.
"He watches cricket more than me and he's one of my No 1 supporters but he's one of my biggest critics as well."
ND KNIGHTS: Dean Brownlie (c), Joe Carter, Nick Kelly, Corey Anderson, Tim Seifert (wk), Scott Kuggeleijn, Brett Hampton, Jono Boult, Zak Gibson, Freddt Walker, Brett Randell, Peter Bocock.
Coach: James Pamment.
CD STAGS: Ben Smith, George Worker, William Young (c), Jesse Ryder, Tom Bruce, Josh Clarkson, Kieran Noema-Barnett, Dane Cleaver (wk), Seth Rance, Blair Tickner, Navin Patel, Ajaz Patel.
Coach: Heinrich Malan.