1975: The Season Begins

 

Saturday 26 April 1975 – Friday 2 May 1975

There was no Cowdrey Stand; the white scoreboard and the lime tree would be a surprise. The incongruous brick dressing rooms between the pavilion and what we called the wooden stand would offend the eye. But take anybody who knows the ground only in the present back fifty years and they would recognise St Lawrence straight away. It is there that you find me, huddling for warmth in the wooden stand, as the 1975 season gets under way.

Anticipation of first day of the season kept us going through winter, which in cricket terms was longer then, beginning in early September and ending only now, in the last week of April. The season opener was not worth the wait: the Minor Counties (South) visited for the first of four zonal games in the 55-over competition. They were one of three teams included to make up a round 20, along with their northern counterparts and a combined Oxbridge side. The only opposition player with significant first-class experience was Keith Jones, who had a few years as a trundling lower-order all-rounder for Middlesex.

Put in by Mike Denness (who got into a putting-in habit that was to lead him into trouble  a couple of months down the line) the  MC South team were about grim survival, as if they were the inhabitants of a besieged town who had eaten the cats and dogs and were rounding up the rodents for stewing. They achieved their goal by being nine down after 55 overs, but for a total barely more than two an over. At first, Kent went about the pursuit with “aggravating patience” (The Observer), 44 ground out of 23 overs.  After tea Graham Johnson took things in hand, and finished with 85 while Brian Luckhurst stayed in low gear with 30 as Kent won by ten wickets with almost 20 overs to spare. Having spent the winter being pummelled by the Australian quicks, Luckhurst might be forgiven for wanting to face as much tepid trundling on a sluggish pitch as possible.  

Though the scoring rate at Canterbury was the most egregiously slow, it was not exceptional. Only Lancashire, against Yorkshire, scored more than 200. None of the 16 teams in action that day reached the stratosphere of four an over.

The innocuous three-day friendly between Oxford University and Sussex was deemed worthy of reports in the broadsheets (as they then were), and by two of the leading writers of the day, both of whom we will hear much more from as the weeks go on. Those familiar with Henry Blofeld only in his my-dear-old-thing mode may be surprised to learn that in the mid-seventies there was no writer who wrote better reports on a day’s cricket if what you were after was an account of what happened combined with perceptive analysis of why. In 1975 Blofeld was No 2 at The Guardian to John Arlott. If you wanted to be entertained, details of the cricket not compulsory, you went to Alan Gibson in The Times, for whom the play was incidental to the journey to the ground, the people he ran into, and any other tangential fun that was to be had. 

The County Championship began on Wednesday. Only two matches resulted in wins. Lancashire polished Warwickshire off in two days, Lancashire quick Peter Lee had the game of his career, taking 12 wickets including the extraordinary second-innings figures of 9.2-6-8-7. Lee was one of those players who, with better luck, would have played a few tests and could have done well.

Hampshire beat Essex. Barry Richards made 72 and 94. John  Woodcock, still the cricket correspondent of The Times described Richards’ batting in the first innings as “exhilaratingly good” and in the second “it was the batting of Richards that dwarfed all else”. Opening the bowling for Hampshire was Andy Roberts, who Woodcock tells us that in the year since Roberts made his debut for Hampshire had taken 207 wickets (though it was the more mundane Mike Taylor who took six in the second innings to seal the win). Gordon Greenidge was Richards’ opening partner. What a time it was for county cricket.

Woodcock notes that the 21-year-old Graham Gooch made 50 of a partnership of 67, but describes him as “heftily built (unless he takes care he will be vast before long)”. Perhaps it was these words that spurred Gooch to become a famously dedicated runner and trainer.

World news was dominated by the fall of Saigon, allowing a united Vietnam to rule itself for the first time in the twentieth century. The western consensus was that this was a domino falling and that the red menace would be as far as Singapore within months. Half a century later, Vietnam is still ruled by the Communist Party but you wouldn’t know it from photos of downtown Ho Chi Minh City (as Saigon became), which is as full of the logos of the multinationals as anywhere else outside the communist world. I saw a TV report the other day that said that Vietnam’s young population is largely unaware of the victorious Vietnam War, on which the country does not dwell. Britain might follow this example.

Another contributor to The Times was Kim Il Sung, leader of North Korea. For reasons that remain unclear the comms team of the Democratic People’s Republic considered it worth paying for the Great Leader’s speeches (on Wednesday it was the one on education) to be reproduced in the newspaper of the British establishment, in the hope that its readers would cast aside their bowler hats and umbrellas and devote their lives to the revolution. Now, as regular readers will know, their main outlet for misinformation is the Basin Reserve scoreboard, which has been under their surreptitious control for some years.

 

1975: Setting the Scene

Eight years ago I retrospectively chronicled the English cricket season of 1967 as it unfolded, a half century after it happened. Daily posts on Twitter, as if it had existed in the time of flower power and Tom Graveney, were supplemented by weekly blog posts using hindsight to the full. The cricket was placed in the context of events of the day. This was great fun to do and attracted favourable reviews, notably from Brian Carpenter’s annual round-up of the cricket blogs in Wisden (sadly missing from the 2025 edition). 

I have not repeated the exercise since, largely through lack of time. For six of the intervening years I was House advisor to the New Zealand government of Labour PMs Ardern and Hipkins, responsible for wrangling the government’s programme in Parliament, which kept me busy. The result of the 2023 general election reversed that role into one of undermining the government. Happily, the new administration is doing such a fine job of that themselves that I have been able to cut my hours, and have the time to repeat the exercise in cricketing retrospectivity, this time looking at the cricketing summer of 1975.

Why 1975? It continues the fifty-year-anniversary theme. But mostly, it was a great summer, both for cricket and the weather. There was the first World Cup, the Ashes and county cricket everywhere, all the time. And the sun shone through high summer more than any other in my life to that point (but not as much as the following year).

English cricket began the season in a state of shock following the drubbing received over the winter at the hands of Australia in general and Lillee and Thomson in particular. Kent’s Mike Denness was the incumbent England captain, but it was not yet confirmed that he would still be when the World Cup started in early June. Hampshire’s Richard Gilliatt led MCC in the season opener against champions Worcestershire. The obvious successor was Tony Greig, an option found distasteful by the cricketing establishment mostly because of Greig’s brash approach to cricket and life. His close-of-play riot-provoking running out of Alvin Kallicharran at Port-of-Spain the previous year was still held against him.

The County Championship of 1975 was a contest of 20 three-day matches per county. A possible 60 playing days was only four more than the current programme of 14 four-day games offers, though the Championship then was for high summer not the scrag ends of the season. The 55-over competition started with a group stage of four games a side preceding the knockouts. Sundays were for the 40-over league, and the 60-over knockout took place over the second half of the season.

I am always suspicious of people who proclaim their youth as the best of times. Usually, they are merely regretting that they are no longer young. Nevertheless, I contend that the mid-seventies were a golden age for county cricket. Every county (except Yorkshire, for self-imposed reasons) could sign a world-class player or two. This meant that young English players could learn by bowling to the likes of the Richards, or facing Andy Roberts or Sarfraz Nawaz. Paying at the gate to watch a county game came with a virtual guarantee that an international star or two would be on the field, and, with four trophies to contend for, every county had a chance.

As before, I will mix the cricket together with news and events of the time, one generally regarded as low point in modern British history, with inflation rarely used without its companion adjective “runaway” and strikes, be they lightening, wildcat or other dominating the news. Two of the most prominent television news journalists were Peter Sissons and Ian Ross, industrial correspondents of ITN and the BBC respectively.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson struggled to maintain a bare majority in the Commons, a battle brilliantly recounted in James Graham’s play The House, and one that fascinated me as I was drawn into the world of parliamentary process and procedure as I had been into the world of cricket a few years before. For Christmas that year I asked for the first volume of Richard Crossman’s Diaries of a Cabinet Minister to sit on the shelf alongside Wisden.

Internationally, as the first balls of the season were bowled thousands of Vietnamese associated with the collapsing government of South Vietnam struggled to escape as Saigon fell. Gerald Ford (another Republican who we now view with unexpected nostalgia) was President of the USA; Giscard d’Estaing led France; Gough Whitlam was Australian PM, but was to fall to the Governor-General’s DRS later in the year; Labour’s Bill Rowling was New Zealand’s PM, but was gone by the end of the year.

One change from last time: daily social media updates will be on Bluesky rather than Twitter. I can be found there as @kentkiwi.bsky.social with username Cricket1975. As with 1967 eight years ago, the dates fall conveniently on the same days of the week as they do in the present.

I’d welcome contributions from others with memories of the summer of ’75.

The CricInfo Years 2000-01

 

The speed of the communications revolution around the turn of the century was astonishing. In 1997 it was potted scores in the stop press. By 2000 satellite TV was bringing us games from across the globe and I was clicking instantaneous news of cricket in New Zealand by return. The contrast between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries could not have been sharper. 

It emerged that CricInfo was to set up an operation in New Zealand with a good slice of funding from New Zealand Cricket, who were concerned at the decline of press coverage and did not want to miss out on the dotcom explosion. Lynn McConnell, one of New Zealand’s most renowned sports journalists, was appointed New Zealand editor. I let him know about my recent work for CricInfo and that I was available throughout the summer. In return I received an offer of 20 (later increased to 24) days’ work as a reporter, filling in across the middle of the North Island when nobody more reputable was available. The pay was $150 a day, which was ok for 25 years ago, with generous expenses for overnight stays and mileage.  

There were two CricInfo representatives at each fixture. As the reporter my job was to write a series of up-to-the-minute reports through the day. For a first-class game this would be a morning preview followed by reports at all drinks breaks, lunch, tea and the close, with a wrap on the day to follow embellished by a few quotes from coaches and/or players. This was demanding, but easy compared to the ball-by-ball scorer, who had to record and briefly describe each delivery, a heroic feat of concentration over a full day. I was fortunate to work mostly with Gareth Bedford and a Canterbury University student called Dean, whose surname I can’t remember. Both were extremely capable and very good company. One day Gareth went a bit quiet, and in response to enquiries revealed that he was live scoring not only the game we were working on in Hamilton, but also the one in Dunedin, 1200km away. I began to suspect that scorers were recruited from another planet of superior lifeforms. Few of the live reports survive. Here is one, from a 50-over game.

Cricket Max was to T20 what Cro Magnon Man is to Homo Sapiens, though Australopithecus might be a more appropriate comparison, given its southern hemisphere origins. It was the invention of Martin Crowe at the behest of the new Sky TV company here in New Zealand. The network wanted some cricket to retain subscribers through the oval-ball free summer, and to establish a foothold in the cricket market with an eye to nabbing the rights from TVNZ a few years down the line. 

There has been a recent spike of interest in Cricket Max, with articles in both The Cricketer and The Nightwatchman. Both acknowledge the inspiration it offered for the development of T20. By the time I encountered it, most of the fripperies—the earliest iterations had a fourth stump—had been removed. It was a 20-over game of cricket, but divided into four innings and still with the double-scoring max zone between long on and long off. 

By 2000 Sky had a satellite and the rights to cricket on both sides of the Tasman, so had no further use for Cricket Max. New Zealand Cricket recast it as a curtain-raiser to the season played mostly in small towns. So it was that my career as a professional cricket writer began in the unlikely surrounds of Albert Park, Te Awamutu, a pleasant town in the southern Waikato that has plenty to offer except, on that occasion, a cable long enough to connect the press tent to a phone socket. So once again, I had to speed back to Rotorua to file my reports.

My debut as a reporter providing live updates came a few days later at Rex Morpeth Park, Whakatane, on the Bay of Plenty coast, another town getting its first and last exposure to provincial cricket. CricInfo’s view of the game was through a slit in the wall in the hospitality area of the pavilion. Despite the testing surroundings I managed to file a report within seconds of the end of each innings and felt quite pleased with my efforts until I discovered that I had missed a hat trick. In my defence, everybody else had missed it too, including the scorers (who found it during their post-match checks) and the bowler himself, Simon Doull. It was spread over the two innings, effective camouflage in the frenetic surrounds of Max. Doull also registered a king pair, all within three hours. 

That summer I reported from six other locations around the North Island. The ground I spent most time at was Seddon Park (then WestPac Park), Hamilton, Northern’s HQ. It had the best media facilities, with a press room with a great view of play, and a fridge with an endless supply of refreshments. Not only was I paid to watch and write about the cricket, I was also given a free lunch everywhere. It was what heaven must be like. 

At first, the presence of we amateurs in the press box was greeted with polite suspicion by the professional journalists, but we were accepted once we showed that we could do a reasonable job. The two reporters with whom we shared the Seddon Park press box most often were Terry Maddaford of the New Zealand Herald and Ian Anderson of the Waikato Times. Newcomers were invited to guess the date on which Terry had last not gone for a run. It was sometime in the early 60s. “What happens if you get a cold?” someone once asked. “I go running everyday so I don't get colds” was the reply.

It was in Hamilton that I reported on first-class cricket for the first time, in what was called the Shell Trophy, the Plunket Shield with a whiff of the forecourt about it. Auckland were the visitors. The national team were in South Africa, losing all but one of the six ODIs and one of the three tests, but there were plenty of familiar names left at home, careers in ascent or decline, Lou Vincent, Dion Nash, Doull and Bruce Martin among them. 

Only the report on the second day appears to be accessible. I made full use of ongoing disputes about who had actually won the 2020 US presidential election.

This was a day so tense and full of unexpected twists and turns that it would have been no surprise had Al Gore turned up to demand a recount…With thirteen wickets having fallen on the first day the batsmen had as much trust in the pitch as in a Florida election official. 

Who would have thought then that we would come to feel nostalgic about the presidency of George W Bush? 

I also covered domestic four-day games at Owen Delany Park in Taupo and at McLean Park in Napier. The latter, between Central and Northern, was the best contest I reported on in the Shell Trophy that season. The daily wraps are here (but the scorecard and heading that it is under relate to a different match altogether: the CricInfo archive is chaotic). Central’s Craig Spearman made chasing 290—by 70 the highest total of the match—look simple. 80 of his 90 came in boundaries. On his day Spearman looked a world beater as Gloucestershire supporters were later to discover.

At the conclusion of that match I drove to New Plymouth on the other side of the North Island to cover a four-day game between the under-19 teams of New Zealand and South Africa, the final contest of a three-match series. The venue was Pukekura Park, quite the most beautiful cricket ground I have ever seen. On three sides there are grass mounds shaped like ziggurats with room for just one row of seats on each level. The fourth is open, giving a view of the Tasman Sea, which generally has the aesthetic decency to shimmer with a deep blue hue. If ever a cricket ground deserved a pavilion with a thatched roof it is this one, but its only disappointment is the nondescript building that serves this function. Happily, we were stationed therein, so did not have to suffer a view of it to spoil the idyll.

New Zealand’s captain was one Brendon McCullum. This was my first look at a player who became one of my favourite cricketers. My report on the first day shows that I liked what I saw, but as McCullum had scored a century in each of the first two games of the series and repeated the feat here, it did not require profound insight to identify his promise. What impressed me most about McCullum’s innings here was not his aggressive strokeplay but his reaction to getting out for exactly 100. It was reasonable to expect that a young cricketer who had just made his third international century in three games might return to the rooms sporting a satisfied grin at the very least, but McCullum was furious, his ire directed only at himself for giving it away.

Ross Taylor was in the New Zealand XI, at sixteen, three years younger than most of the rest. He knew scorer Dean, so spent a bit of time with us and impressed with his composure. The other big star of the future in this game was Hashim Amla, who completed his third half-century of the series. My assessment: “Amla is a fluent timer of the ball and particularly strong on the off side” was on point, but again no more than a statement of the obvious.

The second and third days of the match were washed away by the rain. A family of ducks moved from its pond to deep mid-wicket as it was wetter there. I had several chats with the South African coach Hylton Ackerman, who was gratified that I remembered him playing for Northamptonshire and the International Cavaliers in the sixties. With Ackerman’s approval I turned these conversations into a feature.

I also covered three ODIs between the two teams, two at Owen Delany Park and one at Eden Park No 2 in Auckland. I was again impressed by Hashim Amla:

 

But it was the batting of 17-year-old Amla that really took the eye. He seems to have the right shot for every delivery and all the time in the world to play. His fielding is somewhat short of the rigorous standards demanded by the modern game, but if he has the temperament to go to the top, he surely has the class.

There was a flash of Bazball too:

 

McCullum threw it away by hitting Botha straight to Zondeki at mid off. His 44 came from 23 balls, and included six fours and two sixes. McCullum's innings was glorious, but his departure meant that a New Zealand batsman was out in the forties for the fifth time in the series.

Most of the players in that series went on to have solid careers in domestic cricket, notably Wellington’s Luke Woodcock. A few, besides those previously mentioned, performed well on the international stage, intermittently, at least: Ian Butler, Jesse Ryder, Johan Botha (then a notably ill-tempered quick bowler; the transformation into a dodgy-actioned spinner came later)  and Monde Zondeki. For a few, this was their zenith, though Taraia Robin can be satisfied that he was the inspiration for my best headline: “Batsmen and Robin Rescue New Zealand”.

In those pre-T20 days it was the 50-over Shell Cup that occupied the holiday weeks of high summer. Northern’s home opener in Hamilton saw CricInfo’s reporter in sardonic mood:

 

In an age when cricket scores and other, less important, information, can go round the world in the blink of an eye, it is amazing that communicating a simple decision over the length of a cricket pitch can sometimes prove so,,  difficult. Yet this was the downfall of Central Districts in Hamilton today, as five batsmen were lost to run outs.

The highlight of this game, and of several others over the next couple of seasons, was the reinvention of Simon Doull as a pinch-hitting opening batter.

The week between Christmas and New Year took us to Blake Park, Mt Maunganui, adjacent to where the Bay Oval now stands. The media facilities here consisted of a truck with one side opened up. I had a dodgy back at the time, and the pained manner in which both I and Radio Sport’s Kevin Hart went about boarding it caused one of our colleagues to claim that they had reported two beached whales to the SPCA.

The first of two games provided controversy for the tyro reporter to sir up. What should have been a brief interruption for rain was prolonged because of a tear in the covers. This meant that play extended into a gloomy evening, causing the umpires to agonise over whether there was threat to life from medium-pace bowling on a slow pitch. Repeated conferences on this matter occupied time in which the game would otherwise have finished, until the Northern batters were finally given the option of going off, an offer that, nine down but ahead on Duckworth/Lewis, they were quick to accept.

The lead umpire (but you have already guessed this) was Billy Bowden, who CricInfo held chiefly responsible for the day’s perplexity. This was the start of 25 years of gentle fun that I have had mocking Billy’s propensity to discover reasons for preventing cricket from being played. The live reports for this game survive. The unusual ending was discussed on Radio Sport the next day, in reaction to which I wrote an opinion piece that was appropriately mocking in tone.

The reporters were expected to embellish the close-of-play wrap with a few quotes from those involved, usually the coaches. This example, from a wet day at Cornwall Park in Hastings, has contributions from Dipak Patel of Central and Tony Sail of Auckland. Patel was always good value, offering honest and interesting views, delivered in a New Zealand accent that suggested he was a born-and-bred Kiwi. Yet fifteen years before I had had  a chat with him in the Bat and Ball Inn opposite the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury when he spoke with the brogue of the West Midlands in which he was raised. As someone who has tried and failed for almost 30 years to acquire a New Zealand timbre, I remain envious of such linguistic adaptability.

Other coaches were less loquacious and needed a bit of help. For one I adopted the practice of saying “would you agree that” followed by a take on the day’s play. The interviewee would consider this for a few seconds and then say “that sounds about right”. My words would then be attributed to him in the report.

What a summer it was. Being paid to travel round one of the world’s beautiful places to watch and write about cricket with free accommodation and food. My work had been judgesdsufficiently satisfactory for me to be first call for anything south of Auckland and north of Wellington in the following season.

The CricInfo years: 1999-2000

In 1999 I turned 40. It seemed as venerable then as it does youthful now. I had lived in New Zealand for two years, a big jump that had paid off royally. It was time to take another. I resigned from my teaching job to have a go at making my living more creatively, particularly through writing.

I bought a computer, complete with TV-sized monitor, and connected it to the new wonder of the time, the internet. My email address was simply my initials, pph@... There are plenty of things in my past that show how much the world has changed in my lifetime. When I was a child I had measles. Learning to drive involved mastering the choke if you wanted the car to start on a cold morning. And, when I moved to New Zealand in 1997, if I wanted to know how Kent had got on overnight I had either to ring my mother and wait for her to find the right page on Ceefax or hold fast for 24 hours for the potted scores in the New Zealand Herald. The full scorecard was not available until the following Thursday when I would buy (and in itself this shows how a desperation for information can erode all standards of decency) the international edition of the Daily Express.

So the first website I looked at was CricInfo. I had heard about this. A place where you could access the latest scores of matches around the world, sometimes ball-by-ball as they were played and run by cricket enthusiasts much like myself. It was almost time travel. I noted that the daily global email newsletter contained little or no New Zealand content and saw an opportunity as I strove to conjure up a freelance existence.

Over the next few months I sent in articles on domestic cricket such as regular round-ups of domestic matches, relying heavily on the comprehensive radio coverage then (but no longer) provided by Radio Sport. Of the pieces that survive online, the earliest is this one, an untypical contribution putting the possibility of an Indian victory after a low first innings score in the test match being played at Chandigarh in historical context. It may be surmised that the bar for accepting contributions was set barely off the ground. There is also a piece reflecting the “outrage”, real or imagined, of the South Island at being denied international fixtures in the forthcoming season. 

The West Indians toured in December and January. I submitted a preview. They were to play New Zealand A at Owen Delany Park, Taupo, an hour south of Rotorua where I lived. My offer to provide a daily report (unpaid, as was all my work that summer) was accepted. So began my career as a cricket reporter. In the following years I joined the rest of the media in the press area at the back of the stand at Owen Delany Park, and was appreciative of the free lunch, perhaps the finest on the circuit. But in December ‘99 I was unaccredited and still apprehensive about masquerading as a journalist in the company of professionals, so I wrote from the anonymity of a garden chair on the grass bank that surrounded most of the field. The same diffidence inhibited me from approaching Viv Richards, briefly West Indies’ coach, when he paused close by as he prowled the boundary. I was yet to appreciate the credibility, deserved or otherwise, that a byline could bestow.

“Wrote” is a precise description too. Wifi was not in anybody’s vocabulary and laptops were as exotic and expensive as they were unreliable, so the reports were compiled with pen on paper, constructed in fragments during the day, and stitched together in the last hour, the aim being for the last full stop to coincide with the final delivery of the day. Then it was into the car for the drive against the clock back home, where I would key the piece into Word, click on the internet connection, hoping for the reassuring four notes followed by white noise, and off it would go at 56kb/s, if I was lucky. Several hours later the daily CricInfo newsletter would make the return journey with my name over the report. I found this unreasonably exciting. Each day’s report is still listed on CricInfo but all the links lead to that for the second day (which reads as if it is incomplete). They were also carried by the Barbados Nation, whose reply to my invoice I still await. 

The match was dominated by a double hundred by Shiv Chanderpaul. It was not so much the work of an artist as that of an efficient painter of walls and ceilings. Of batters since, only Steve Smith has equalled Chanderpaul in scoring massive amounts of runs in such an aesthetically unsatisfying manner. 

It was a pleasure to once again watch Courtney Walsh, having done so throughout his Gloucestershire years. With the possible exception of his predecessor Mike Procter, nobody has offered more value as an overseas player than Walsh. There is an excellent interview with him in the latest County Cricket Matters by the wonderful Annie Chave (subscribe if you haven’t already). He speaks of the value to West Indian cricket that the county game offered and of his enjoyment of the “family” of Gloucestershire. Another time. 

I watched most of the first test, played in Hamilton just before Christmas, though I wasn’t reporting. It was a good match, mostly remembered for the statistical anomoly of the highest first-wicket partnership for a losing team: 276 by Adrian Griffiths and Sherwin Campbell in the first innings. That this was so was largely down to Chris Cairns. He top-scored with 72 in the first innings, coming in at No 8 with New Zealand 107 behind, out when the lead had been achieved. This was followed by one of the finest bowling performances in test cricket for this country: seven for 27 to rout West Indies for 97 to set up a comfortable nine-wicket victory. Cairns is the forgotten man of New Zealand’s cricket history, but is our greatest all-rounder, capable of seizing any match of whatever format and transforming it with bat or ball, or, in this case, both.

The only other match that wrote a report on that summer was the second of five ODIs against the visiting England women in Hamilton, once again composed from a garden chair on the bank followed by a foot-down drive back to Rotorua and more frantic typing. 

The best thing that has happened to cricket in the intervening quarter-century is the revolution in the funding and status of women’s cricket. There was no TV coverage of this series and radio coverage, at a time when there was extensive commentary on men’s domestic matches in New Zealand, was limited to brief reports. There was no English media presence (apart from me, I suppose). Women’s cricket was making its first tentative steps into the professional era. England had Paul Farbrace and Graham Dilley as coaches. I had come across New Zealand’s bowler of the day, Rachel Pullar, a year or so before when she and Chris Harris visited the school I was teaching at, both employed to run a series of coaching sessions, one of the first opportunities that women players had to earn a living within the game (and showing that the men were not rolling in it either). Pullar and Harris were both superb, by the way. None of those playing in Hamilton that day would get rich from playing cricket at that time. 

Both teams had suffered a clean sweep in ODIs in Australia before this series. England’s response was to change captains mid-tour, reportedly in response to a threatened mutiny against Karen Smithies, who quit, handing over to Clare Connor. My most prominent memory of that game in Hamilton is not of the play, but Smithies walking a lonely, forlorn circuit of the ground having been dropped from the playing XI. New Zealand’s resounding win was the fourth in a five-match sweep, led by Emily Drumm, one of those leaders who you could tell was in charge from her demeanour even if you were looking down from space. Drumm, together with her predecessor as skipper Debbie Hockley, were among the initial inductees to the New Zealand Cricket Hall of Fame recently. She led New Zealand to victory in the World Cup later in 2000, a team that contained eight of the players in the XI at Hamilton. 

The other international visitors that season were the Australians, who played three tests, six ODIs and two other first-class games. I did not report on any of these contests, but did provide a preview or two, which have not survived on CricInfo’s database. Chris Rosie, a very nice guy who had recently retired from the New Zealand Herald, but who had not been a sportswriter, covered the test series and the game against Northern Districts, but there are no reports on the ODIs. Apparently, it did not occur to me to offer to write reports while watching the TV coverage. Not the done thing at all. Now (and starting only two or three years after that) most CricInfo content is written by people watching the telly.

I was there for most of the test match and provincial game at Seddon Park, Hamilton (though it was then masquerading as WestPac Park). By the turn of the century warm-up games for tourists had lost their allure in most parts of the world. When we lament their disappearance from the schedule it should be remembered that the failure of home teams to provide the best available opposition was a factor in their decline. Not so in New Zealand at that time. Northern Districts put out their strongest team, one that contained nine past,  present or future internationals. Justin Langer and Damien Martyn put on 197 to set up a comfortable five-wicket win. 

Two memories from that game. Brett Lee, presumably at the receiving end of an untypically churlish remark from one of the batters, went “through the crease” and unleashed one of his thunderbolts from about three yards short of the traditional 22. Colin “Funky” Miller, he of the electric blue hair, bowled off spin to the left-handers and seam up to the right-handers, swapping as many times as was necessary in the course of an over. Maybe this was not unprecedented; but it would have taken a Sobers or Barnes to do it, and it was the first time I had seen it. 

Australia returned to Hamilton a few weeks later with the series already in the bag after two wins. Though culturally disinclined to remove the foot from the Kiwi  throat, they teetered at 29 for five in reply to New Zealand’s first innings 232. Adam Gilchrist was next in and ignored completely the constraints that the situation would conventionally impose. His 75—64 of them in boundaries—took just 80 balls, secured a first-innings lead and provided the basis of Australia’s for a six-wicket win. Bazball is really Gillyball recycled. McGrath and Lee took 14 of New Zealand’s wickets between them and Langer made another Hamilton century. 

In May 2000, Dave Crowe, father of Martin and Jeff, passed away. He was the New Zealand correspondent of The Cricketer at the time, so, with my freelancer’s instinct to sniff out possible work overcoming natural reticence, I emailed the magazine to offer my services. They replied thanking me for my message, saying that they were wondering why they hadn’t received Crowe’s copy for the next edition. Bryan Waddle was appointed as his successor. However, the dotcom boom was on and CricInfo was taking a greater interest in New Zealand…

Sri Lanka Shivers

 New Zealand v Sri Lanka, ODI, Basin Reserve, 5 January 2025

Scorecard

Mrs Scorecards is in Toronto, Canada on grandma duty. The temperature rarely pokes its head above freezing point there at this time of year. Yesterday, a blanket that she put out to dry moulded itself into the shape of the chair it was placed upon, an instant ice sculpture. Yet, it would be valid to have a conversation about whether it would have been less pleasant watching cricket there or at the Basin Reserve for this ODI. The New Zealand summer, often a hard dog to keep on the porch, has absconded completely over the holiday period. Elsewhere on the North Island there has been fresh snow on both Mt Taranaki and the Desert Road, which should not happen at this time of year. 

Readers concerned for the welfare of My Life in Cricket Scorecards need not be. I was in the safety and warmth of the Long Room, along with all other sensible people. I did not share the view of my Petone and Brooklyn correspondents—the Scott and Oates of the Basin Reserve—that true supporters should put their lives on the line in the cause of sport by facing the southerly in the RA Vance Stand.

Williamson and Conway were both absent from the New Zealand team, giving preference to playing in the South African T20 franchise competition. It might seem odd that New Zealand Cricket is being so indulgent as to permit this, but we do not have the cash in the quantities needed to purchase the exclusivity of all the top players. They have done a good job of ensuring that key players are available for much of the time. Both Williamson and Conway will be available for all New Zealand’s cricket for the rest of this year. Of the other players not on full NZC contracts, only Lockie Ferguson might have been selected if not at the BBL. Tom Latham was injured, so Canterbury’s Mitch Hay took the gloves, and so was one of the few on the field or in the stands to retain feeling in his fingers throughout the game. 

Mitch Santner, now New Zealand’s captain in white-ball cricket, put Sri Lanka in, a decision that paid off to the extent of 23 for four after ten overs. For most of the sixty or so years of the limited-overs era, in this situation  the orthodoxy would have been to treat the innings like a first-class game in the hope that sufficient wickets would remain for a dash at the end. 

Here, the first ball of the eleventh over was pulled to the boundary by Avishka Fernando off Henry, caution excised from cricket’s dictionary. The approach was not reckless, but was underpinned by an acceptance that a gritty score fewer than 200 will not win a one-day game, so a level of risk that kept the boundaries coming was acceptable. 

It seemed to be working, for a time. Fernando and Liyanage put on 87 for the fifth wicket in 15 overs, but the last five wickets could muster only 68 between them, just over half of which came from Hasaranga, the only batter to exceed a run-a-ball strike rate. 

Any template for a report on a New Zealand match might as well include the phrase “Matt Henry bowled superbly”. Here, he finished with four for 19, with a combination of pace, movement and consistently putting the ball where the batter least wanted it. A word in favour too of Duffy and Smith, both of whom had to run into the gale, something that would probably be illegal if you made an animal do it. It is good to see both these players doing well after impressing in domestic cricket over several seasons. 

The New Zealand fielding was good too, which it has not always been in recent times. Of particular note were three catches from skyers, all tricky with the wind blowing the ball about like a leaf in autumn. 

Some of the Sri Lankans would never have experienced cold like they felt at the Basin. The wind made their trousers flap like flags at the top of a hill, and the interval between their hands emerging from pockets before, and being thrust back in after, the bowler delivered had become imperceptible by the end of the match. There was a rare consensus in the body language of fielders, spectators and even umpires that the sooner it was over the better. It pretty soon was, the target of 179 reached in the 27th over.

Will Young opened and batted throughout, finishing with a faultless 90 at a little over a run a ball. It was a reassuring, calming performance, though it reminded us of how much we had missed him at the recent test match against England when he was omitted despite having been player of the victorious series in India. There should be no question about his inclusion in the XI for the Champions Trophy. 

Rachin Ravindra batted like a billionaire, but a generous one who tips extravagantly, as he did when giving a catch to deepish square leg when well set on 45 from 36 balls. On the TV highlights it was said that he timed the ball too well, a problem that only the finest players have.

Mark Chapman accompanied Young to see New Zealand home, and it was hot soup all round to celebrate. 

Both the remaining games in the three-match series were won by wide margins: New Zealand by 113 runs at Seddon Park, and a consolation 140-run victory for Sri Lanka at Eden  Park. It was good to be watching men’s ODI cricket once more, even if there was a feel of a repertory company doing a final tour with the stars already left for Hollywood. 

Sutherland Triumphs in the Southerly

 New Zealand v Australia, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 21 & 23 December 2024

21 December

23 December

The intention was to laud the world champions. This was New Zealand’s first appearance at home since their surprise victory in the World T20 in Dubai in October, and it was appropriate for it to be at the Basin, home ground of the captain, Sophie Devine and player of the tournament Melie Kerr. And laud the world champions we did, but it was the 50-over title holders Australia  that attracted the praise as they confirmed their vast superiority in the longer form of the game. 

This was no surprise. Before the three-match series began, the RA Vance Pessimists agreed that the best chance of home success rested in the Wellington weather, always a capricious presence. As we saw it, there was next-to-no chance of New Zealand winning two matches against the green-and-gold juggernaut, but if the capital’s resident tempest were to wash away two of the games, there would be a chance that they could abscond with the other, particularly if the southerly could roar in and impose temperatures that the Australians had experienced only in the walk-in beer fridges that feature in some Australasian supermarkets. 

It was a strategy that had promise when the first game was abandoned at an early stage. Indeed, had the rain come ten overs earlier it would have accounted for the second too, but when it arrived it was like a boxing referee intervening to declare that the contest was over through being too one-sided. 

Australia were put in by Sophie Devine. For the greater part of the innings it appeared to be a good decision. Though all the top seven attained double figures, wickets kept falling. At 211 for six after 41 overs it seemed possible that the target might be a tough-but-gettable 250-260. 

But Annabel Sutherland was still there. At that point she had 47 from 52 deliveries, and continued to be measured but untroubled for a further five overs, at which point she had 63 from 64. New Zealand could have thought that they were in the race only then to discover that they were in a Corolla while Sutherland was at the wheel of a Ferrari, the throttle of which she now depressed smoothly, becoming a dot in the distance before the bowlers realised what had happened. In the last four overs of Australia’s innings she scored 42 runs in 17 balls, including six fours and two sixes. 

In the past couple of weeks we have seen fine centuries by Harry Brook and Joe Root at the Basin. Sutherland’s unbeaten 105 was as impressive in many ways, including judgement, planning and execution, and its repertoire of classical shots. She accelerated but never hurried. At 23-years-old she is proof that the quality of the Australian team will perpetuate beyond the Healy/Lanning/Perry generation. 

Australia does not have all the talented 23-year-old cricketers. Auckland’s Molly Penfold dismissed Healy, Perry, Mooney and McGrath on her way to four for 42, as impressive a display of disciplined medium-fast bowling as I can recall from the White Ferns. Penfold and the other bowlers received disappointing support from the fielders, with at least half-a-dozen chances going down, the women emulating the standards of the men in the first test against England.

It was one of those afternoons when the informed spectator held the rain radar in one hand and the DLS charts in the other. The near certainty of an early finish should have worked in New Zealand’s favour, but the ocean of quality between the teams was a journey too far. When the rain reached us, in the 31st over, they were already 65 behind the adjusted target. There were two many dot balls off an attack that was doing its best Scrooge impression in the spirit of the season.

The third match was the first of the series to proceed without the intervention of the weather. It was warm and many of the pohutukawas were flowering, a crimson pelmet to the grass bank along the eastern side of the Basin. A perfect day to be at the cricket. Australia batted first, this time of their own choosing. After 31 overs they were 190 for four, apparently heading for a total somewhere in the 350-plus stratosphere. But the wickets kept falling, with Sophie Devine dismissing Sutherland, and the usually hard-hitting McGrath who did not find the boundary in 33 balls today. Kerr, wicketless two days before, took four, including top scorer Ash Gardner (74). 

Australia were all out in 49 overs for just a run fewer than they made in the second game, but reached by a contrasting route, one that left New Zealand feeling much more positive. Hope, rather than being expunged by a late charge, was revived as the expected target diminished in the last hour of the innings. 

In reply, Suzie Bates top scored with 53, but a more substantial contribution was needed from the top order if New Zealand were to get anywhere close. The RA Vance Pessimists declared it over when Sophie Devine’s misjudgement caused Melie Kerr to be run out. We were impressed by the debut performance of Otago’s Bella James, who got the innings off to a brisk start in both games.

It is fitting that the new honours board at the Basin, recording the results of all international games played there, includes women’s matches, but disappointing that no space has been left for additions to the test match list. South Africa are now playing tests regularly and the cricket community here in New Zealand are downcast that the national body does not want to emulate them. Suzie Bates and Sophie Devine both deserve a test debut in the autumn of their careers. 

The Currency of Centuries: Days 2 & 3 of the Second Test

 Scorecard

McCullum makes 302 to save a game that looked like it would be over in three days…Bangladesh lose after making 595 batting first…Sri Lanka lose after leading by 135 on first innings…New Zealand win by one run after following on. All these things have happened at the Basin Reserve in the last decade. It might be thought that we Basin regulars would have come to expect the unexpected, to retain hope to the last that the home team would find a hero who would find a white horse stabled in the RA Vance Stand and ride to the rescue. 

Yet, once Gus Atkinson had finished off the New Zealand first innings with his hat trick it never seemed that the last two days of the match were more than an administrative exercise, devoid of expectation or emotion. 

New Zealand soon gave up making serious attempts to get England’s batters out, leaving it up to Ben Stokes to choose how many New Zealand would be set. This figure turned out to be 583, and even before the second innings subsided to 59 for four there was not a person in the Basin who thought this remotely achievable. 

There were two nineties and two centuries during the phoney wars of the second innings. Hundreds are the gold standard of batting statistics, the accepted measure of true class. Witness the latest round of comparison of Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson, which has focused more than anything on the number and frequency of three-figure scores. What transpired here questions the integrity of this currency. Are some centuries no more than a crypto scam in terms of what they tell us about the quality of the batting?

Joe Root scored 106, the third international century he has made in Wellington. The first was a run-a-ball 121 against Sri Lanka in the 2015 World Cup at the Cake Tin; the second a sublime unbeaten 153 in the Greatest Test of All at the Basin in 2023. Both were innings of immense quality, of a kind that are a warm, satisfied glow in the memory and leave a feeling of privilege at having been there to see them. 

This one,106 in 130 balls with 11 fours, did not have that status, and will not occupy much space in the memory, even in Root’s. A hundred devalued. Yet in its context it was perfect. It kept the score moving along at five an over, as much by exquisitely placed twos and threes as boundaries. It was not Root’s fault that the bowling was insipid. [As an aside, how we miss Neil Wagner, a man incapable of bowling in any situation without the intention of having ambassadors recalled.] Worth noting too that Root’s century here was the only one of the three to contribute to a win, which must have some sort of impact on the rate of exchange.

Tom Blundell has had a rough time of it lately. In India he broke double figures only once in five innings, and in Christchurch made 17 and nought followed by a scratchy 16 in the first innings here. The quality of his keeping has indicated a lowering of his confidence in general. I would have given one of the in-form keepers in domestic cricket a go here: Chu of Otago, Hay of Canterbury or Cleaver of Central Districts. 

In the second innings he made a hundred and reacted ecstatically to the achievement, as if it was paid out in gold doubloons. Were they the real thing? His 115 came from just 102 deliveries, with 13 fours and five sixes, four of which came off Shoaib Bashir, and with the help of a stiff northerly at Blundell’s back. Would Bashir have continued to bowl if the target had been for 250 fewer than it was? Almost certainly not. This was a work experience opportunity for him.

This century was similar to the one that he made on test debut against a dispirited West Indian attack. He was proud enough of that one to walk home in his batting gear, and so he should have been, just as his reaction to this one was right: it was a hundred in a test match. It secured his place in the team for the final test in Hamilton and quite probably beyond that. Is the money paid by this innings sufficient to buy that much? Or is it counterfeit?

The point should also be made that Blundell’s other three test centuries were made in the toughest of circumstances, at the MCG in the Boxing Day test; in England as New Zealand were being steamrolled by the novelty of Bazball; and last year at Mt Maunganui, one of countless rescue operations he has mounted to save a beleaguered batting performance. 

There were also two second-innings nineties, by Duckett and Bethall. I was glad that Bethall did not get to three figures. This sounds mean, but the intention is the opposite. It was predicted by many that the young Brummie-Bajan would be embarrassed by being pitched in at No 3 on debut. He was anything but, looking assured and proficient both technically and mentally. There will surely be centuries by the sackload to come, and he deserves the first to be glorious, made under the golden sun against top class bowling, not when kicking against a door blown open in a Wellington gale.