After a disappointing first-innings score of 237 all out against a slightly rotated Somerset side, the New Zealand XI playing at Taunton needed to start positively with the new ball. Despite having Neil Wagner and Doug Bracewell, who are both in the Test squad to face England later this month, in the side, stand-in captain BJ Watling threw the new ball to two younger players; Jacob Duffy and Ben Wheeler.
Only in the side due to the IPL commitments of six members of the Test squad, Duffy and Wheeler reduced the hosts to 9/3 in the sixth over, and then 139/7 later in the innings; only Peter Trego’s 46-ball 40 dragged Somerset up to 204 all out.
Duffy took the wicket of 21-year-old Tom Abell early on, but it was his only scalp, despite an encouraging early spell.
However, Wheeler, known as the ‘Marlborough Express’ according to the Central Districts site, did not concede a run until the fifth over of his spell, and his figures were exemplary throughout.
With Johann Myburgh trapped lbw five balls into Wheeler’s spell, and Tom Cooper having his middle stump taken out the ground after an attempted expansive drive, the left-arm quick had two wickets in his first four overs, all of which were maidens.
In the final two overs of his opening spell, he grabbed another pair of wickets; James Hildreth was flummoxed by an in-swinger that he tried to leave, and Jim Allenby, who has struggled for form since his move from Glamorgan this winter, was caught in the slips to leave Wheeler with figures of seven overs, five maidens, and four wickets for just six runs.
His consistency was remarkable for a young bowler; even during the Somerset fightback, he maintained a low economy rate, finishing the day with 5/18 from his eleven overs. Debutant Josh Davey was his final wicket, which completed his third five-wicket haul in his 29th first-class appearance. He now has 91 wickets in those games, an impressive haul for a 23-year-old.
New Zealand will be looking to accelerate on the third day of the game, as they attempt to set Somerset a big total to chase down in the final innings of the game. With fellow left-armers Bracewell and Wagner both leaking over five runs per over, could there be a space for Wheeler in the Test squad before too long?
Of course, it must be pointed out that Somerset’s batting has been extremely fragile this season. In six innings in this season’s County Championship, they have managed totals of 299, 230, 408, 310, 250 and 90, with the 39-year-old Marcus Trescothick and Hildreth being their main source of runs. After much pre-season hype, the aforementioned Cooper and Allenby are both yet to pass fifty in the Championship, and with the exception of his hundred against Durham, Myburgh has barely managed a run.
However, for a man who is in the United Kingdom for the first time in his life, this was still a fantastic performance. Swinging the ball into the right-hander, Wheeler zipped the ball through at pace, and despite not featuring in any of the national team’s squads for this tour, he will have alerted the selectors of his presence here.
Somerset’s stand-in captain Trego praised Wheeler after the close of play, telling fan-site The Incider: “We can’t take anything away from him, he bowled a magnificent spell and was really on song. However, this is first-class cricket and you expect people to be high-quality and bowl good spells, so we have to come up with a way of counteracting that in future.”
After the success of left-arm seamers such as Mitchell Starc, the ICC’s man of the tournament, Wahab Riaz and Wheeler’s countryman Trent Boult at the World Cup earlier this year, there seems to be a surge of them in the international game at the moment, and there is a fair chance that Ben Wheeler will join them soon.
Even though Wheeler is still young, this spell of bowling showed his immense potential: don’t bet against him going on to become a world-class player before too long.
