The final
part of the series on my four years as a reporter for CricInfo in New Zealand:
2002/03.
CricInfo was
a fine example of the potential of the internet and of the wild overestimates
of its ability to turn tech into profit. Founded in 1993 by cricket enthusiast
Simon King at the University of Minnesota as a safe place for cricket nerds, it
rode the crest of the dotcom boom wave, valued (according to Wikipedia) at
US$150 million in 2000. There was no limit to its ambition, which happily
included the setting up of the New Zealand operation.
This was based
in Christchurch, in a modest suite of offices, proficiently managed by Lynn McConnell,
who brought with him the tested disciplines of a distinguished career in
newspaper journalism. If the New Zealand model had been applied worldwide things
might have gone better. But the UK operation for one, based in a converted manor
house in the Wiltshire countryside, was more profligate. A visitor from the New
Zealand team observed that he would not have thought it possible that so many
people could produce so little in the course of a working day.
The
editorship of the daily CricInfo newsletter was passed around the world so
that an off-season office was in charge. McConnell took this role for three
months or so, never missing a deadline or a story, seven days a week. He then
passed it on to the UK office, which announced that the newsletter would now
only be published from Monday to Friday as they didn’t care to work at the
weekends.
The 2001/02
season had ended uncertainly. The final pay for the season was delayed and it
became clear that the “dotcom boom” was actually the sound of it exploding into
tiny fragments. Even those of us without a business brain began to work out
that a site that carried almost no advertising had to be in some sort of
trouble.
So the news
that live coverage of domestic cricket was to be pared back to just the 50-over
competition came as no surprise (this was before T20 burst upon us in the
English season of 2003). I was assigned Northern Districts’ five round-robin
games.
I still had
my media pass for all cricket that season and used it to gain free admission to
the second test of two against India at Seddon Park (then WestPac Park). The
first day had been washed out. I was at work in Rotorua until midday on Friday,
but still made it to Hamilton before the delayed first ball was bowled at 4 30pm.
I did not expect to have seen an entire test match by the time I returned to
work on Monday morning, but that is what happened.
When the
pitch was unveiled it was the bottle-green colour only a few shades deeper than
what was usual at the ground, which had an excellent reputation at that time
and did not usually offer bowlers more help than was reasonable at the start of
a first-class game. The difference here
was that it was wet close to the surface, which assisted the bowlers in
cricketing terms as much as paying off their mortgages and buying them all a
Ferrari might have done in their lives generally.
By the close
India were 98 for eight, adding only more for the last two wickets the
following morning. VVS Laxman was highest scorer with 23, Harbhajan Singh’s 20,
consisting of five fours, the only other in double figures. Lynn McConnell
reported that “the off-spinner unveiled an array of shots which were probably
best suited to other sports”. Four wickets each for Bond and Tuffey.
Yet it was
enough for a first-innings lead. Stephen Fleming’s 21 was the highest score in a
total of 94. The notes on CricInfo’s scorecard say that it was the first time
that neither side had reached 100 in a completed first innings of a test match.
That India got
as many as 156 was due to two 30s by great batsmen: Rahul Dravid and Sachin
Tendulkar. Dravid’s 39 (the highest score of the match) was painstaking, from
100 balls. Tendulkar’s was more rapid: 32 with five fours from 48. Both have
scored any number of centuries that drew less on their skill.
New Zealand needed
160 to win and took 57 overs to get them, losing wickets often enough to keep
us tense. It was old-fashioned cricket, cautiously prodding the ground ahead
for mines rather than charging at the guns. Appropriately, Robbie Hart, ND’s
captain, hit the running win. I was pleased to see this as I had interviewed Robbie
before the start of the season for an ND promotional brochure. A
version appeared on CricInfo.
My reporting
that season started at one of my favourite venues, Owen Delany Park in Taupo. Canterbury
were the visitors. The most striking thing about the live
report is that the performance of several players in this and other games
at this time would influence the selection of the New Zealand squad at the
upcoming World Cup. Domestic form as a selectorial aid is a notion that has
become quaint in some parts of the cricketing world, most notably England
(though Australia, to its credit, still holds the Sheffield Shield in high
regard). I write having just watched television coverage of New Zealand team with
second-string bowling attack driving our first ODI series win in India. Speaking
at the end of the match, 31-year-old debutant Jayden Lennox emphasised that it
was the strength of domestic cricket that enabled him and his internationally
inexperienced colleagues to survive in the deep end at this level.
At Taupo,
Craig McMillan illustrated this point in reverse. The Canterbury batter was
having a poor run in the series of seven (!) ODIs against India. He had failed
again the previous day at Napier, so somebody had the bright idea of sending
him over the hill to Owen Delany Park where it was hoped his form could be
found by knocking the ND attack about. In fact, he scratched about for two from
16 balls, the ND bowlers sensing prey that was lame.
I don’t say
much about the pitch in the live report, but it seems that there was a sporting
balance between bat and ball. For much of the reply it appeared that Canterbury’s
modest looking 196 would be enough. ND did not make scoring look easy and
subsided to 107 for six. A partnership of 76 between Scott Styris and Robbie
Hart kept ND in the game, but they were left with 14 to win on the last over, a
colossal prospect in the pre-T20 era, but one that Styris addressed by hitting
the first two deliveries from Stephen Cunis for straight sixes. He took a
single from the next, leaving Graeme Aldridge three balls to hit the winning
run (ND had lost one more wicket than Canterbury, who would take the points in
a tie). The fast bowler could only block the fourth ball. The fifth he hit
straight to Paul Wiseman at mid off, expecting to be run out but giving Styris
the strike for the final ball of the match. The fielder, perhaps flustered by
this kamikaze approach, let the ball
through his legs and ND had won by two wickets (not the three wickets
misreported by CricInfo).
Next, it was
back home to Smallbone
Park, Rotorua, where ND crashed and burned against Otago, going down by 79
runs. Otago’s star player was Marcel McKenzie, with a career-best score 90, a
catch and a run out. I have no memory of him even though I clearly interviewed
him at the close of play. I doubt that he remembers me either.
The star
attraction for spectators was an Otago all-rounder playing his first cricket
for more than a decade: Jeff Wilson, scorer of 44 tries in 60 internationals
for the All Blacks. Wilson rejected what had become an All Black pension plan
of a lucrative contract with a club in Europe, though he had many offers.
Instead he went back to the distinctly unstarry world of New Zealand domestic
cricket with the aim of returning to the international team, for which he had
made four ODI appearances in 1993.
At Smallbone
Park, Wilson conceded just eight runs in five overs. The following year he made
two further appearances in ODIs as well as the inaugural T20 international, won
by Australia, who took it altogether more seriously than New Zealand, who wore
the retro beige kit and, in Hamish Marshall’s case, matching bouffant afro
hairstyle.
ND’s three
other home games were all at Seddon Park in Hamilton. The first two, against Wellington
and Central
Districts respectively, were notable for the return of Daniel Vettori to
the ND line-up. Vettori was plucked out of domestic cricket at 18 so made few
appearances for the province thereafter (in total 19 first-class and 33 List A).
I’m pretty sure that this was his first appearance in a game that I reported in
the three years I covered ND, though he would quite often turn up at games if
he was at home in Hamilton off-duty.
Learning in
the international arena benefitted Vettori’s bowling but held back his batting.
So he made the most of the opportunity to open in these two games, top-scoring in
both with 89 and 57 respectively. His combined figures for 20 overs were three
for 52. Vettori’s performance was decisive in the 43-run defeat of Wellington,
but could not avert the 100-run loss to CD. ND’s score against Wellington was enhanced
by 55 extras including 31 wides.
There was
another defeat in the final home round-robin game, against
Auckland. ND had a fair excuse: the rain. Their innings was interrupted
four times and the Aucks lost six wickets in pursuit of their reduced
Duckworth-Lewis target.
I am
surprised to find that, despite three home losses out of five, ND not only
qualified for the knockout stage of the competition, but went on to win it. A
low-scoring semi was won at the Basin Reserve. A partnership of 107 between the
Marshall brothers was key in the final win at the North Harbour Stadium in
Auckland (and I would have taken five or six guesses to have identified the
venue).
And as far
as my professional career as a cricket writer went, that was that. There was
hope in the sale of CricInfo to the Wisden organisation, then owned
by J Paul Getty, who had a delightful combination of a love of cricket and stacks
of money. But a couple of months into the winter we had to return our laptops
to Christchurch “for maintenance”. This was soon followed by the news that the
New Zealand operation was shutting down. In the near quarter-century since, CricInfo
reporters have been present at New Zealand grounds rarely, mostly for visits
from the big three international teams and not always then.
It was an
immensely enjoyable privilege to be paid to travel around the North Island to
write about the cricket. I missed it when it was gone. For the next three years
I watched very little cricket in person. This was partly because I was busy
during the working week, and lived over an hour’s drive away from the nearest
venues, but it was also because I found the experience of sitting out on the
bank without a notebook in hand (and having to provide my own lunch) to be
rather empty. It was not until I moved to Wellington in 2006 that the proximity
of the Basin Reserve eased me into the resumption of regular attendance.
The missing
pleasure of writing about the game was a gap filled by the creation of
Scorecards in 2009. If you are at the Basin and come across someone making
notes for no apparent reason, do say hello.
