Cricket: CD Stags show character in grinding down Otago Volts to regain top perch on ladder

CD Stags spinner Ajaz Patel grinds away as Otago Volts batsman Nathan Smith stays tuned to remain unbeaten on 75 runs, despite losing the match in Napier. Photo/Paul Taylor

Never mind how you look at it, it's a collective four-day highway to heaven for the Central Districts Stags at McLean Park, Napier, today.

The Greg Hay-captained Stags crushed the win-less Otago Volts by an innings and five runs to scramble back to the top rung of the Plunket Shield table with a 12-point buffer over the Auckland Aces who held a slender two-point lead before round six of matches.

But as the Heinrich Malan-coached CD reload for the penultimate round against the Northern Districts Knights at the same venue on Saturday, it's hard to go past the gargantuan efforts of one Stag, Ajaz Patel.

The Black Caps test spinner, not wanted for the Bangladesh tourists in the current test series, had rolled his arm for a gob-smacking 67 overs in two bowling innings.

Sure, he doesn't have to fire up the high-twitch fibre muscles that international speed merchants in the mould of Seth Rance, Ben Wheeler, Doug Bracewell and Blair Tickner do but it still doesn't detract from Patel's labour of love that demands attention to detail and zero-tolerance line-and-length discipline.

Perhaps the best analogy of his wicket grind and, appropriately, in summer is that of fruit pickers at the sultry Bay orchards.

"It's hurtful days but that's four-day cricket, isn't it?" said the 30-year-old orthodox left-armer, who claimed five wickets and grafted 22 maidens over two innings, not long after soothing his aches and pains from a hot/cold session under the Harris Stand changing rooms.

Patel said he was accustomed to that sort of workload so it gave the CD quickies the freedom to express themselves in attack mode in fulfilling dual roles as a tweaker.

"I suppose in the first innings you're looking at containment from one end so the seamers can attack from the other end and then, in the second innings, you look to attack a little bit more but then you also try to contain at the same time."

The two-innings statistics attest to that — Tickner claimed four scalps in the first dig and one in the second while Bracewell matched that five-wicket haul with three in the first and two in the second with Rance two apiece.

Patel put his portfolio down to a cat-and-mouse game where it's becomes the grind of a fruit picker who picks the choice bearings without worrying too much about how many bins have been filled until the end of a day.

"You just keep grinding away, keep grinding away until it bears fruit."

He tended to adopt a team approach to his grind on a ball-by-ball basis which prevented him from "looking too far ahead".

"I rarely look up to see how many overs I've bowled," he said. "If anything, I look at how many runs an over I'm going at and how many maidens I've bowled."

For the record, Patel was the second most economical (2.22) in the first dig, behind Tickner's 1.67 and fractionally ahead of Bracewell's 2.86.

In the second innings, the You Travel Taradale CC premier club player was the man on 2.40 with Rance behind him on 2.78.

"Don't get me wrong I'd be happy if I was all done in 20 overs and I had played my part but if I have to longer than that's fine by me to help the team and contribute towards a win," he explained of a misunderstood role that once earned ex-Black Cap Dipak Patel the nickname of "Six-pack Patel" from the great unwashed.

CD seamer Blair Tickner took four wickets in the first innings and then followed it up with one in the second, a complete reversal of what spinner Ajaz Patel did. Photo/file

All that doesn't detract from a stellar knock from the top order of George Worker (110), Hay (158), William Young (150) and Dane Cleaver (83) as CD posted 584-8, after winning the toss, to put the batting pressure on Otago on a benign batting wicket.

After the Southerners were skittled for 244 on a tail-end first innings, they predictably put up a dogfight in the follow-on on a patch where the batsmen pretty much had to get themselves out through a loss of focus and lethargy.

Co-skipper Hamish Rutherford frustrated the CD bowlers, anchoring the innings until Wheeler had him caught Young agonisingly a run short of a century.

Otago No 7 Nathan Smith must be demanding a higher order after scoring 42 runs in the first innings and 75 not out in showing he has the temperament for red-ball cricket.

Patel labelled Smith "a very good cricketer in both facets of the game".

"He batted well and so did Ruds [Rutherford] but it was unfortunate for him he didn't get that 100 but we were happy to get him out as he was a big anchor in that side with the experience he's got," he said of the former Black Caps opener.

A chuckling Patel felt the CD batsmen were quite relieved not to have to pad up again to score a few more measly runs to drag the game out after mid-afternoon.

"It was nice because our batters played their part in the first innings and really put us in a great position to try to knock us over twice."

He said the wicket offered more up and down movement rather than sideways so it was a matter of application where the Stags batsmen showed those who applied themselves had cashed in.

"We now have to put this behind us and focus on the next two big games coming up if we really want to win this championship," he said of the defending champions who will finish the season against ND in Hamilton.