Mrs Scorecards and I find ourselves on
grandparent duty in Toronto, Canada until the end of January, so all cricket
watching until then will be off screen. In the meantime, this piece resumes my
account of my time working as a reporter for CricInfo in the
early years of the twenty-first century.
Gisborne is a pleasant town on the east coast of New
Zealand’s North Island, the first in the country to welcome the sun each
morning. You don’t pass through Gisborne. You go there for a purpose. In
December 2001mine was to cover the first-class game between Northern Districts
(the home team) and Canterbury at the Harry Barker Reserve. (Scorecard).
It was the opening match in my second season as a paid
cricket writer. I had gone up the pecking order, being first choice for all
Northern Districts’ home games (except the one in Whangarei, north of Auckland),
with a couple of Central’s thrown in two. The package included England’s two
warm-up games against ND, of which more later.
Since the development of the Bay Oval in Mt Maunganui, ND
has two test match grounds on which to play its home games, plus an obligation
to appear at least once a season in Northland, so no longer use venues such as
Owen Delany Park in Taupo, Smallbone Park in Rotorua or the Harry Barker
Reserve. This is a pity as games at the outgrounds were big occasions for the
local cricket communities, with a buzz about the place throughout, not to
mention some first-rate catering for the fourth estate.
CricInfo was housed on the upper floor of the ground’s
large scoreboard, along with Radio Sport’s commentator Phil Stevens, whose east
coast patch included Gisborne. Phil was Napier manager of the Radio Network and
had been commentating cricket for at least 25 years when I came across him. He
told entertaining stories of being on air with Freddie Trueman during WSC’s
brief tour of New Zealand in 1978.
Phil was joined from time to time by Simon Doull, who had
lost his regular place in the ND XI (but who was to make a dramatic
reappearance in a new role later that season). These were, I think, Doull’s
first commentary stints, so an illustrious broadcasting career began with me,
literally, breathing down his neck in the claustrophobic upstairs space of the Harry
Barker scorebox. That the structure swayed and groaned in the wind added to the
rusticity of the occasion.
It was a match in which history was made, though we did not
fully realise that at the time. For it was here that Chris Martin, one of
cricket’s most renowned tailenders, made 25, a score to which he had not
aspired before (previous highest: 13), and that he would never approach again. My
reports on day 2 are therefore the fullest available account of an event that
deserves to be in the annals of the game.
Given this, CricInfo’s man might have been a little less
sniffy about the gifting and refusal of runs to get Harris off strike and
Martin on it, though this is something guaranteed to irk to this day. Chris Harris’s
unbeaten 155 was a fine one. He is remembered primarily as a one-day specialist,
but in this form could have made it in the longer form with more indulgence
from the selectors. As it was, he played 23 tests over ten years without his
role ever becoming clear.
Canterbury dominated the first two days, but ND fought back
on the third, finishing 29 behind with six wickets remaining after following
on. A curiosity was that ND’s second innings had begun with both openers,
Matthew Hart and James Marshall, having a runner.
A deluge wiped out the fourth day. I filled some of the
time by interviewing (applying the term very loosely) Shane Bond. A month
before, Bond had appeared to be transitioning out of the game. He had competed
his training as a police officer and was dividing his time between keeping the
peace and playing for Canterbury. Then he was a surprise choice to replace the
injured Dion Nash after the first test in Australia, something of a hunch by chief
selector Sir Richard Hadlee. Though his performances in the two remaining test
matches were not spectacular, his selection had a galvanising effect on Bond,
who returned home bowling noticeably faster, ND certainly noticed at Gisborne,
as their top order was blown away by Bond who finished with a then career best
of five for 37. When I talked to him he was still at the wide-eyed, can’t-quite-believe-it
stage. He returned to Australia in the new year and was the leading wicket taker—nine
ahead of second place—in the ODI tri-series that also included South Africa.
Bond is in my all-time New Zealand XI. Over the next six
years more than double the number of tests were won when he was in the side
than when he wasn’t, though he wasn’t there more often than he was. Bone china
was reinforced concrete by comparison.
A measure of how much things have changed in the
intervening quarter of a century is that my next assignment was a first-class
game in the week between Christmas and New Year, an unthinkable event now that the
Plunket Shield has, like the Sheffield Shield and the County Championship, been
banished to the season’s fringes.
ND v Auckland at Seddon Park (it had a sponsor’s name then,
but same place) was an entertaining game, despite, or perhaps because of,
frequent rain interruptions on the first two days. ND won with a couple of
overs to spare.
Speaking, as we were, of quick, injury-prone bowlers, Ian
Butler was pinging Auckland batsmen throughout the match and added three first-innings
wickets to the nine at a cost under 20 that he had taken in two previous games.
We were having fantasies about Bond and Butler roaming the globe terrorising
batsmen, the Lillee and Thomson of the twenty-first century, but Butler was no
more robust than Bond and it was not to be.
The 50-over competition, then the State Shield, occupied
January. I covered games at the outgrounds of Blake
Park
in Mt Maunganui (the Bay Oval is adjacent to the site of the old ground) and Smallbone
Park in Rotorua, which was only a mile or so away from where I
lived. Smallbone Park is a delightful little ground with a large bank running
down one side of the field. There was also a welcome opportunity to return to Pukekura
Park
in New Plymouth.
CricInfo was situated in Pukekura
Park’s functional but plain pavilion, the best viewing point in the ground in
the sense that it was the only place from which the pavilion itself did not
spoil the panorama. If ever a ground deserved a pavilion with a thatched roof
it is Pukekura Park.
The other problem with the location was that a sponsor’s
tent blocked our view of one end of the pitch. I flattered myself that being
able to see the game enhanced the accuracy of my reports. The match was covered
on TV (the commentators peering over the wall from a truck parked outside the
ground) but there was no set where we were, so we had to clarify what was going
on by messages on the CricInfo chatroom.
It was back to Seddon Park for the final two group-stage
home games, and abandonment
against Otago and a win
for ND over Auckland that sealed the home teams place in the
knockout phase. The latter contest was the first time that Seddon Park’s new
floodlights had been employed. It is difficult now to remember what a novelty
this was. Floodlit cricket had been common in Australia for twenty years, and had
spread into Asia for the 1996 World Cup, but was still quite new in the UK and
New Zealand. Apart from an absurd evening between Kent and Sussex at Gillingham
FC in the early 80s (KBS Jarvis opening the batting for Kent), my only
experience of cricket under lights had been a couple of games at Owen Delany
Park, Taupo, where the artificial illumination amounted to not much more than a
full moon might provide.
The lights at Seddon Park were in a different class
altogether, the best on any sports ground in New Zealand, or so it was said and
appeared. CricInfo’s man declined an opportunity to provide his readers with an
account of what it was like to climb one of the six towers and to look out
across the Waikato from its apex.
The semi-final was another
evening under lights at Seddon Park with ND contriving to lose to
a weakened Canterbury side who thus travelled to the Basin Reserve to lose to
Wellington in a final still remembered by the RA Vance Pessimists for Mayu Pasupati’s catch to
dismiss Aaron Redmond.
The biggest games that I wrote about in my CricInfo
years were the two 50-over contests between ND and England XIs at the start of England’s
tour early in 2002. The tourists arrived straight from India where they played
three tests (lost one-nil) and six (!) ODIs (drawn three-three). We were still a
year off the T20 revolution.
Itineraries were already shrinking under the weight of the
international timetable; the India leg had begun with two three-day first-class
games, but these two fixtures against ND were the only transition into New Zealand
conditions that this England squad had before going into five more ODIs (there
were then two three-day contests against Otago and Canterbury before the three
tests).
Around the world, non-international matches against touring
teams had been losing their lustre for a couple of decades, but in New Zealand
they were still big events. ND put out their strongest team, to the extent that
Scott Styris played in the second game hours after returning to New Zealand from
the international one-day squad in Australia. The novelty of the lights helped
too. The Waikato has steamy days at the height of summer, and is well suited to
floodlit cricket, unlike venues further south.
The first of the two matches was something of a classic.
The English made 288, to which 50 or so should be added to gauge its modern
equivalent in terms of the challenge of the chase. A run-a-ball century from
Nick Knight led the way, well-supported by Trescothick, Thorpe and Shah.
Simon Doull’s role in the ND squad had transformed into
that of pinch hitter as the season progressed and reached its zenith under
Hamilton’s lights. He hit (and this, rather than slogged, is the fairest
description) 80 from 47 balls before falling (“like a warrior” wrote CricInfo’s
over-excited reporter) in the fourteenth over with the score on 114.
Michael Parlane, Hamish Marshall and Grant Bradburn kept the
momentum provided by Doull going just
enough to give ND a win in the last over. It was a fine match and occasion. As
recorded in the match report, ND skipper Robbie Hart was brimming over with pride
after the game. The England XI’s stand-in skipper Marcus Trescothick was not
too disappointed, saying something along the lines of “we want strong
opposition in these matches and today we got it”.
There were extra requirements with (as far as I recall) a
separate piece besides the match wrap required for the daily newsletter. I know
that I finished writing in my motel room at about 1am, the sweat pouring off
me. I think that I wrote more than 6,000 words on the game, though, to the
relief of many, the live reports seem to have disappeared. I have rarely had
more fun.
The second match, a day game two days later, was a less
frenetic, more low-scoring affair that the English won thanks largely to Andrew
Flintoff, who followed up three for 20 with 45 from 25 balls. Here are the live
reports.
The experience of sharing a press box with the English
media was interesting. Individually they were pleasant enough but had an
unappealing collective disdain about them. Gareth the scorer and I riled them
by taking the side of ND contrary to English press box etiquette.
Christopher Martin-Jenkins was there as the cricket
correspondent of The Times. The story about him trying to make a mobile
phone call on the TV remote from his hotel room is one of a number concerning
his other worldiness. I was witness to another at the second of these two
games. CMJ became increasingly agitated that nobody at The Times was
answering the phone or emails in order to discuss the article that he had spent
a couple of hours writing for that day’s paper, and that the early editions
were going to press without them. It was a while before any of his colleagues pointed
out that it was Saturday night in the UK, and that the office would be empty, there
being no paper on Sunday.
Three first-class games at Seddon Park rounded off the season.
The
first, against Wellington, was a tense affair that resulted in a one-wicket
win for the visitors when the young Jeetan Patel hit the winning run in a
last-wicket partnership of 20 with James Franklin.
Wellington’s paceman Andrew Penn took seven wickets in the
first innings. I realise only now that he is the only bowler I have seen take
seven in both first-class and list A cricket, having been there when he routed
ND with seven for 28 at Blake Park a couple of years previously. Not even
Deadly Derek achieved this.
A couple of other oddities from this game. Opener James
Marshall was ninth out in ND’s second innings, as near as I have come to seeing
someone carry their bat in a first-class game. As things stand my headstone
will read “He never saw anybody carry their bat”.
In the first innings Michael Parlane made 146 of ND’s 227, 64%
of the total, not far short of Bannerman’s 67.3% in the inaugural test match in
1877 that remains test cricket’s oldest record. Michael Slater’s 66.8% in the
Sydney Ashes test of 1999 remains the highest that I have witnessed in person.
The next fixture, against Central Districts, was intended
to be historic, the inaugural first-class day-night match in New Zealand, and
one of the first anywhere, after experiments in Australia and India. The
critical difference here was that orange balls had been used on those
occasions. There was great confidence that under Seddon Park’s powerful new lights
the red ball would outshine all the other stars in the sky. Practice on the
evening before the scheduled start was largely encouraging in terms of the ball
being followed from the bowler’s hand to the bat. However, when it came time to
practise catches in the deep, it became clear that the red ball was as difficult
to track against the black sky as a stealth fighter plane and almost as
dangerous as it returned to Earth unmonitored. As CricInfo’s
newshound reported, the start was postponed until the next morning.
There was an odd related occurrence a few weeks later at
the third and final test against England at Eden Park. I was there as a
spectator until midway through the third day and watched the bizarre events unfold
late on the fourth at home. New Zealand were one-nil down so needed to win this
final test. They had a first-innings lead of 42, but, as sunset neared on an
early autumn evening, it looked as if they would have to set a generous target
if they were to leave enough time to bowl England out (this was Nasser Hussain’s
team in the days when not losing in this situation was the prime directive).
It was one of the first times that lights were permitted in
test matches, to supplement natural illumination at the margins. But there was
a loophole in the regulations as wide as the gap between Zac Crawley’s bat and
pad. The choice about going off for bad light was in the hands of the batters,
who turned down all opportunities to do so, even as night fell and the sky turned
black. Nathan Astle, in rich form after bashing the fastest double hundred in
test history at Christchurch, now made the second fastest New Zealand test
fifty, in 38 balls, having made only two from the first 15. With Craig
Macmillan, Astle put on 50 for the fifth wicket in 36 balls. Both realised that
if they could lift the ball into the black background of the heavens there was
a good chance that the first thing that any fielder in the path of its descent
would know about it would be what they were told as they were resuscitated in A
& E.
England were not in a position to complain, but did anyway;
they had made use of the same rules a year or so before to bat on in the dark to
beat Pakistan. In Auckland, New Zealand won by 78 runs with time to spare.
The delayed
ND v CD match was a good one, the difference between the teams being one
spell of five for ten by CD’s Michael Mason. On the last day ND put all their
chips on the weather, which allowed only ten minutes play in a six-hour period
from lunch to early evening. The home players stood aside as the CD squad, who
still had a chance of the title, assisted the groundstaff with rapid and
frequent covering and uncovering of the block. There was enough time for them
to register a seven-wicket win.
My final engagement of the 2001/02 season was for the
visit of Otago, who were having a bad season that got no better over these
few days. The centrepiece was an unbeaten 212 by Scott Styris. Astonishingly,
this was the highest first-class score ever made by an ND batsman. It should be
remembered that ND had only been playing first-class cricket since the 1950s
and that for much of that time a Plunket Shield season consisted of five
three-day games per association. The record for first-class hundreds in an ND
career was held by none other than Graeme Hick, who played in New Zealand
domestic competition for just two seasons, making ten centuries.
Otago went down to an innings defeat. A curiosity was that their
openers were Brendon McCullum, and Chris Gaffeney who is now one of the leading
international umpires.
So ended my second summer as a paid cricket writer. What
bliss, particularly as my patch covered much of the North Island south of Auckland
and north of Wellington, a beautiful part of the world to travel round. It
seemed that I had found the perfect way to spend the New Zealand summer for
decades to come.
But the pay for the last part of the season came in late.
Rumours circulated. NZ Cricket contributed to the cost of covering domestic
cricket, but there was sparse advertising on CricInfo and it was unclear
how money was being made. Maybe the dotcom boom wasn’t all it was cracked up to
be after all.
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