The 2015/16 Plunket Shield season has already been a statistician's delight — cold, hard stats that only serve to emphasise the magnitude of achievement by a respected echelon of New Zealand players.
MORE: Stats and stars of the first-class season
Last season, Wellington Firebirds captain Michael Papps became the 24th New Zealander to amass 10,000 runs in an overall first-class career — joining a list of great names who also totted up thousands of runs for County sides (Glenn Turner, for instance, scored 22,298 runs for Worcestershire in his daunting overall career tally of 34,346).
Today, in the final round of the Shield for this summer, Papps went one better by becoming the first batsman ever to post 10,000 runs from New Zealand's domestic first-class seasons alone.
Batting against his former team Canterbury in the second innings at the Basin Reserve, when Papps reached eight, he had 3,337 runs for the Firebirds, to go with his 6,663 for Canterbury.
The strong, always organised and inherently dangerous 36-year-old opener won't at all have enjoyed the moment, having been bowled shortly afterwards on 17 by one of the young bucks of the game, Kyle Jamieson, after Canterbury had enforced the follow on today.
But that doesn't dim a mountainous achievement that started many a game back in the 1998/99 season.
Papps has now scored 10,010 runs in total for Canterbury and Wellington combined, reports statistician Francis Payne. Thirty-seven of those runs were for Canterbury against England in 2001/02, so "Mick Pappy" remains a few good drives away from yet another milestone: becoming the first to score 10,000 runs in New Zealand's national first-class domestic competition alone.
If he is to carry on and crack it, it will need to wait, now, until next season.
New Zealand Cricket heartily congratulates Michael Papps on setting an impressive new milestone in our first-class game.
