With a boundary to square leg, and not an iota of fuss. A bit of gardening afterwards, while the pertinent applause peppered around the Basin Reserve died down.
Cricket aficionados wouldn’t normally applaud a batsman for reaching 29 on the first morning of a Plunket Shield match — especially not when he captains the away team.
But this was a bit spesh. "Two Metre Peter" Fulton had just collected his 10,000th first-class run — becoming only the 25th New Zealander in our long first-class history to reach the royal milestone of the domestic game.
A rare event at the Basin. PHOTOSPORT
It was a quirk of both fate and scheduling that he should do so against the Wellington Firebirds, where his opposing skipper was none other than the next most recent man to have joined the 10K club: Michael Papps achieved the mark last season, and of course spent many of those run-accruing days batting alongside Fulton in his former life as a Canterbury representative.
Fulton was so low key about the impending milestone in the build-up to the match that his batting partner, Chad Bowes, reportedly was not aware of it until asking why people were clapping a bit extra for the boundary Fulton had just whipped off Anurag Verma.
The towering 37-year-old in his 16th Plunket Shield season would go on to contribute 76 in all today, and helped Bowes along to 81 — having built up a second wicket stand of 158 before youngster Ken McClure came out and smoked his second first-class century to carry Canterbury almost to stumps; and a solid 359/9 — after having been sent in.
That was no doubt more the kind of statement for the day that Fulton had had in mind all along.
Jeet Raval cracking it again in Napier. PHOTOSPORT
Fulton’s 10,000th run wasn’t the only notable batting milestone on the opening day of round 10, which is the final edition of New Zealand's 2015/16 first-class summer.
Up in Napier, at McLean Park, Mondiale Auckland Aces opener Jeet Raval continued a serious season with his fourteenth first-class century — and, when he reached 141, he joined the quality club of batsmen to have scored 1000 first-class runs in a New Zealand season.
Scorecard
Raval’s 1000 runs include the 236 runs he scored for New Zealand A against Sri Lanka A at the start of the season, which featured a knock of 152.
Dismissed on 147, Raval has now scored 770 runs in this season’s Plunket Shield competition (among a total first-class career tally of 4902).
Raval’s blossoming opening partner Michael Guptill-Bunce was not so lucky today with just six runs, now needing a further 183 to make the 1000 club, with only one innings in hand for the summer.
More statchat for an intriguing week here.
