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 Cricketer: June 1972

 

The touring Australian batter Doug Walters appears on the cover of the June 72 edition of The Cricketer, right knee almost grounded, bat above his head on the follow through, ball presumably clattering over the boundary at Worcester even as Patrick Eager’s shutter clicked. It was a shot seen only on county grounds that summer; in the tests he scored just 57 in seven innings. On his four tours to Britain, Walters never made a test century, an astonishing omission for a man who averaged almost 50 in that form of the game.

Henry Blofeld reported from the Caribbean on the final test of New Zealand’s first tour to that part of the world. It was drawn, as were the previous four games in the series. It was only New Zealand’s third five-test series. With none in the half century since, we can safely say it was our last.

The West Indies were in transition between the great side of the early and mid-sixties and that of the mid-to-late seventies. In the featured game, at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, the bowling was opened by Vanburn Holder and Garry Sobers, now 35, who went for only 67 from 40 overs across the two innings.

The run rate for the match was well short of two-and-a-half an over. What a contrast to the turbo-charged series just completed fifty years on. Readers of these pieces over the years will be aware of my admiration for Brendon McCullum. We all have our XIs of favourite cricketers; McCullum is captain of mine.

But the most dedicated of his fans could not have anticipated the extent and speed of the change that he has brought to the England team, transforming them from the frightened, risk-and-esteem-free unit that we saw in Australia and the Caribbean into the warp-speed daredevils now before us. What he has done is make them forget that they are English.

At this rate, if he stays in post for the full four years he could change the entire fabric of British society. People will start talking to strangers on public transport. Beer will be drunk only if refrigerated. Café patrons will refuse to accept bad coffee.

For us in the South Pacific, it has all been a bit much. We feel a certain nostalgia for the days when you could block for a draw for five days, five times in a row.

Blofeld identifies four New Zealanders as “world-class”. Glenn Turner hit his peak and averaged 96. Like Turner, Bevan Congdon made two centuries in the series. The following year, Congdon was to score another pair of hundreds (both170s) in a losing cause; Daryl Mitchell has gone one better.

Another to reach a career peak in the sun was Bruce Taylor, whose fast-medium took 27 wickets at 17. More surprisingly, Blofeld’s quartet is completed by slow left-armer Hedley Howarth, whose contribution was “a much bigger one than his figures suggest”. You might hope so, given that those figures were 14 wickets at 50, At least Howarth was picked; Ajaz Patel has bowled all of two overs for the national team since he took all ten in Mumbai at the end of last year.

The most interesting piece in the June edition was Christopher Martin-Jenkins’ profile of Alan Knott. These days, it would be entirely unremarkable for a cricketer to speak of yoga (taught to him first by Bishen Bedi), training with a soccer team (Charlton FC) for better fitness, or pursuing perfection through continuous improvement. Knott, frequently mocked by away crowds for his stretching regime during play, was way ahead of his time.

CMJ reminds us that, earlier in 1972, a selection panel of Arlott, Cardus and Johnston had picked Knott ahead of Godfrey Evans as keeper in England’s greatest post-war XI for a computer Ashes test (featured nightly across a week on Radio 4 as I recall). It is gratifying to find that his genius was recognised by his contemporaries.

There is also a profile of Warwickshire skipper Alan Smith, better known as AC to differentiate him from MJK Smith, also of that parish. Those familiar with AC as a keeper-batsman good enough to play six tests will be surprised to see him pictured in mid bowl, deploying a Procter-like chest-on action. There is a piece to be written on keeper-bowlers. Something in the air at Edgbaston made custodians cast off the pads and grab the leather. Geoff Humpage was wont to have eight overs of a Sunday in the eighties.

With Deryck Murray now in the team, Smith was free to bowl more often, and did so with some effect in 1972, taking a five-for in both the Championship and the Sunday League. He was a frightening sight, ball in hand. His run up was that of a man charging a locked door, the teeth, bared in a clown’s smile, only accentuating the aggression. The ball emerged from a confusion of limbs, apparently an afterthought.

AC Smith later became one of English cricket’s leading administrators, famously (if Martin Johnson is to be believed) responding to a journalist’s enquiry with “no comment, but don’t quote me on that”.

Vintage Summer 2015

John Arlott’s Vintage Summer 1947 was one of the first cricket books I owned. Written 20 years after the event, it is the great commentator’s memoire of the second post-war season, his first as a full-time commentator and reporter. By the time he wrote the book Arlott was established as one of Britain’s best wine writers; “vintage” was his highest bestowment of approval.

Arlott had spent most of the Second World War as a policeman in Southampton, dodging the bombs and dealing with the detritus that war washes up on civilised shores. Two years after peace, he spent the summer watching cricket and counting it as work. His pleasure at this personal liberation suffuses the pages and there is a sense that the country as a whole was breathing out, at last.

Cricket grounds were packed: 14,500 wedged into the College Ground at Cheltenham for the Championship decider between Gloucestershire and Middlesex. A third of that today and the ground would be thought full. Forty-six thousand paid at the gate to join the members during the five days of Canterbury Week.

There was some wonderful cricket, much of it from the Middlesex pair of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, both of whom scored an unprecedented 3,000 runs, carefree, and dashing, and including six centuries between them in the tests against South Africa.

I went to a talk by Compton at the County Ground in Bristol in the early 90s, and saw boyhood adoration in the rheumy eyes of those who had seen him play, though some had the decency to be as appalled as I was at their hero’s shameful racism.

Which have been my vintage summers?

The sun-drenched salad days of the mid-seventies are certainly among them. In 1975 I saw hundreds for Clive Lloyd in the first World Cup Final, and Colin Cowdrey against the Australians in the same week.

In 1976 I was there for double and single hundreds, both of pure silk, by Zaheer Abbas in Canterbury Week; Holding’s demolition of England on an Oval featherbed; a Lord’s final win for Kent, all but denied by a one-legged D’Oliveira fifty; and a helicopter bringing the Sunday League trophy to Maidstone as rivals faltered in the last moments of the season. The early years of the new century are there too, when I was CricInfo's man in the North Island. Like John Arlott, I could barely believe that I was being paid to watch cricket and report on it.

But 2015 topped them all. It presented as pure a distillation of remarkable cricket as it would be possible to conceive or hope for; cricket that was better than any that I have seen before or, unless I am very lucky, will see again.

Here are some of the features that made it an unmatched vintage.

The summer of Sangakkara

The great Sri Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara said farewell to Wellington with a test double hundred and two one-day hundreds. The double century was a masterpiece of technique and restraint. The second half of the innings was made with the tail for company, but he farmed the strike as efficiently as a Dutch tulip farmer and still scored at four an over.  

At the Cake Tin during the pre-World Cup one day series, he peeled off a hundred with the nonchalance of a high roller taking a thousand dollars from his stash. Made at just over a run a ball, it set New Zealand a target that was too much on the day.

Best of all was his 70-ball century against England in the World Cup. Poor England. In their old-fashioned way, they thought that 309 offered maximum security, but it turned out to be an open prison out of which Sri Lanka could saunter at will. Sangakkara’s century was his fastest in ODIs, one of four consecutive hundreds he made in the World Cup, but he was no more than toying with the England attack. Victory came in the 48^th over, but it could have been ten overs earlier if he had felt like it.

To see one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket displaying his full brilliance would be enough to make any summer a vintage one.

Williamson and Watling’s world record

Kane Williamson’s batting in 2015 gave us an inkling of what watching Bradman must have been like.

Please understand that I am not being so foolish as to say that Williamson is the new Bradman. That would need a touch of the sun well beyond what is available here in Wellington. But the relentless rationality that Williamson brought to the crease in 2015 (it produced a test average of 90 or so for the year; Bradmanesque, some might say) must have been about the closest we have seen to the Don’s human algorithm for a long time: a run-scoring answer to almost every ball, but usually low-risk, rarely flashy and never extravagant (except when driving a six to win a game against Australia with one wicket to fall); timing and placement rather than power and effort. Of course, Bradman kept it up for twenty years, that’s the difference.

He began at the Basin during the test against Sri Lanka during the first week of the year. After a first-innings 69—it was a surprise when he was out, as it always is these days—in the second innings Williamson was established again, but with wickets falling around him. Soon, only five remained, the lead a mere 24.

Williamson addressed the situation by ignoring it. As the finest batsmen do, he responded to each ball by assessing its merit and acting accordingly. As commentators have noted, he does this no matter what form of the game he is playing. It sounds straightforward, but only a very good player bring it off.

Williamson and BJ Watling put on an unbroken 365 for the sixth wicket, a new test record. Remarkably, the existing record was created at the Basin less than a year before, by Brendon McCullum and Watling against India. So Watling joined Bradman, Hammond and Ames as the only players to break their own world partnership record (at least since the early days of test cricket when it must have happened more often).

The earlier stand had saved the game; this one won it, establishing BJ Watling as the lost Tracy brother in terms of rescuing impossible situations. In this era of batsmen-keepers, he is as good as anybody behind the stumps. Yet when the journalists and websites picked their end-of-year World XIs only the Australian writer Chloe Saltau (of those I have seen) picked Watling as wicketkeeper. He is the forgotten hero of New Zealand cricket.

In fifty years’ time people will look at the scorecard of the Basin Reserve test of 2015 and will say “A win from a deficit of 135 on first innings, a world record and double hundreds by two of the finest batsmen ever to play the game. Anybody who saw that game was pretty lucky”. So we were.

A great day at the Cake Tin (1)

The World Cup group match between New Zealand and England was among the best days I have spent at the cricket, and certainly the most astonishing. I have watched the highlights every few weeks since and it enthralls every time.

With England 107 for three batting first, the game had fewer than 20 overs to run, that’s how astonishing it was. This came about because of two extraordinary performances.

Tim Southee’s seven for 33 was the best one-day bowling I have seen. I have thought about this and looked through Wisden for alternatives. The Yorkshire slow left-armer Don Wilson’s six for 18 at Canterbury in the first year of the Sunday League was the previous best, statistically at least (it was one of the great Kent collapses: 70 for one becomes 105 all out). Joel Garner at the ’79 World Cup final? Derek Underwood most Sundays? Not as good as Southee at the Cake Tin this day.

The ball in Southee’s hands was an obedient shepherd’s dog. Four of the seven were bowled, each with the ball no more than grazing the off stump.

I’m not one for atmosphere at the cricket, generally speaking. I’d choose the quiet hum of the Mote or Pukekura Park a quarter full over a throbbing stadium almost any day, but it was great to be at the Cake Tin to hear Southee’s name sang out just as Richard Hadlee’s was thirty years ago.

Southee’s performance would have been enough to put that day on this list. What followed ranks it as a contender for the day, of all the days over the past fifty years, that I would most like to watch again.

Brendon McCullum went about the pursuit of the modest target of 124 as if it were a silent film heroine tied to the train tracks awaiting urgent rescue. For Anderson, Broad and Finn having an opening batsmen charging towards them like a pocket Trumper was utterly disconcerting. A run rate of 15 an over in a 50 over match. It was magnificent in its temerity.

A wonderful day.

A great day at the Cake Tin (2)

Martin Guptill caressed the first ball of the match to the straight boundary and the World Cup quarter-final between New Zealand and the West Indies was under way. In its way, Guptill’s innings was even more remarkable than McCullum’s, not just for its prolificacy.

It was paced quite beautifully and there was hardly a shot that the MCC coaching book wouldn’t be proud of. Guptill’s century came up in 111 balls with 12 fours but no sixes. Only then did he put the foot down, roaring out of sight leaving behind a dust cloud of extraordinary numbers: 137 in 52 balls with 12 more fours…and 11 sixes.

And all with lovely, pure cricket strokes. I have been trying to decide who Guptill reminded me of that day, without reaching a convincing answer. Cowdrey? Too much power. Not the brutality of Viv Richards. Not as rugged as Gooch. Then yesterday I read this:

…cricket of elegant classicism, of economy of movement, of touch and precision rather than brawn. But then I also remembered how he pervaded a crease rather than simply occupying it, and how he obtained such power from such a minuscule backlift, barely a flex of the wrists.

That’s it. Apart from the bit about the miniscule backlift, that could be a description of Martin Guptill in the World Cup quarter-final. In fact, it is Gideon Haigh on Martin Crowe, whose death has inspired some fine writing. There is no finer compliment for a New Zealand batsman than to say that he reminds the spectator of Crowe, especially Guptill, whose mentor Crowe was.

At the Basin test a couple of weeks ago I sat next to someone who dismissed Guptill’s innings as being made against poor bowling. Well, up to a point, but let us give Guptill some credit for making them bowl badly. It was a World Cup quarter final and there was immense pressure on the batsman to which he responded magnificently (the same man reckoned the McCullum’s triple hundred was made against bent bowling, so perhaps I am paying him too much attention).

More McCullum

Only once during that great day against England did I actually gasp at what was occurring out there. Not at a Southee wicket, a McCullum six or even Adam Milne’s brilliant boundary catch. It was when McCullum placed the sixth close catcher for Morgan.

Six close catchers in a 50-over game; something I have not seen before and am unlikely to see again, unless McCullum’s disregard for the conventions of captaincy becomes contagious. Who else would have bowled his lead bowler out as McCullum did that day? It won the game.

Nor would many captains have declared as early as he did at the Basin test, giving Sri Lanka, Sangakkara and all, a glimpse of victory, staking the series lead on a greater chance of winning the test.

McCullum’s compulsion to audaciousness was one of the defining features of 2015. Batting with resilience, style, panache, and charged with TNT. Bowling that was perfect. And leadership that sailed over the horizon to confound the flat Earth sceptics. A vintage summer indeed, the best in half a century.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, Third Day, 14 February 2016

Scorecard

If yesterday’s play was pedestrian, today’s was a pleasant saunter in the sun, fast enough to keep the scenery changing sufficiently to maintain interest. The Basin was perfect: blazing sun, the breeze no more than a rumour. There was even a bushfire on Mt Victoria to make the Australians feel at home.

Voges was last out, for 239, with Australia’s lead 379. Perhaps my judgement of Voges after the second day was a little severe. A test double century—a chanceless one too, the phantom no-ball aside—is always an achievement, even if (to borrow a phrase from Robertson-Glasgow’s Cricket Prints, purchased from the Basin bookstall) he overdid the tranquillity at times. He scored only 26 in the first hour, but once he passed 200—completed in the same way as his century, off a Craig full toss—he became more expansive and hit three sixes. Like Khawaja he could have a significant test career in the afternoon of his playing life. On the other hand, he could retire now with an average of 97 and have his name follow Bradman’s for eternity.

There were four caught-and-bowleds in the innings. I can’t establish whether this is a record, but am sure that I have not seen so many before. Anderson’s to dismiss Lyon was even better than Boult’s against Marsh yesterday. He had to change direction in mid-follow through, a move that necessitated the execution of a half somersault as he scooped up the ball fingers brushing the turf.

New Zealand had to face one over before lunch. Did they consider a lunch watchman? Of course not, but would such a thing be any less illogical than a night watchman? Steve Waugh got it right by banning this pessimistic and fearful notion during his captaincy.

After lunch, Martin Guptill hit three fours to the mid-wicket boundary off Siddle’s first over. As in the first innings, Guptill looked untroubled until he got out. Nathan Lyon gave an exhibition of how an off spinner should bowl on a flat pitch. He was accurate with variations of flight and pace. These induced false shots and running catches to dismiss both Guptill and Latham. The contrast with Craig’s performance was stark.

The fall of Latham brought in McCullum, for the last time at the Basin. We stood to applaud him all the way, the moisture in our eyes sufficient to quench the bushfire. There were a couple of chancy fours, then he was pinned on the back leg by Marsh. Umpire Kettleborough took a long time to raise the finger, apparently as keen as we were to find a loophole in the prosection’s case, but the review showed it to be a sound decision. So we rose again and McCullum acknowledged the ovation. Then he was gone.

The company on the back row of the lower tier of the RA Vance Stand was excellent. If you ever come to the Basin for a test, that’s the place to head for. I particularly enjoyed meeting two Australian visitors. There was Michelle from Sydney; the Basin and Hagley Park are her 36^th and 37^th test venues as a spectator. When I made reference to Jason Gillespie’s famous double hundred at Chittagong, she said “yes, I was there for that one”.

And there was Max from Wagga Wagga, who recently spent Aus$16,000 of his redundancy money on a copy of the rare 1916 edition of Wisden. He pretty well cleaned out the bookstall at tea time, and I was pleased to give him a lift into town at the end of the day rather than see him risk injury staggering down Kent Terrace with his haul. I was only sorry that my Khandallah correspondent was not present to gain an appreciation that I am really at the lower end of the cricket book collectors’ spectrum.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, Second Day, 13 February 2016

Scorecard

We’ve been here before. At the Basin Reserve tests of both the last two years, in fact. New Zealand skittled on a green pitch on the first day; the opposition runs up a good lead on the second. So what happens next? According to precedent, BJ Watling breaks the world sixth wicket partnership record. This he did against India in 2014 with Brendon McCullum, and against Sri Lanka last year with Kane Williamson. If the laws of probability intervene to prevent this, New Zealand are in a heap of trouble, as you tend to be if you finish the second day with the opposition 280 ahead with four wickets standing.

The day was a little pedestrian. In the seventies we would have been thrilled with 316 runs in a day’s play, but only three wickets fell, so it is churlish to think that Australia should have motored on a bit more?

Usman Khawaja’s century was the best cricket of the day. He reached three figures off a Craig long hop, though the Basin scoreboard had a bulb missing as usual, so some spectators thought he was moving from 95 to 99. Khawaja went on to make 140 with an ease and repertoire of shot that makes him a delight to watch. He has had a stuttered start to his international career, but four hundreds in 13 tests speaks for itself. Almost 30, he looks set to emulate Mike Hussey in having a late start to a notable career.

Adam Voges’ figures are similar, and he batted all day to finish unbeaten on 176. This is worthy of high praise of course. And yet… Of course, the fact that he was bowled off an erroneously called no ball in the last over yesterday may colour the judgement of his innings. Perhaps the runs he scored today should be properly credited to the career record of umpire Richard Illingworth, which would more than double his nine-test batting aggregate.

Voges scored only 33 in the morning session, and took 203 balls to reach three figures; against a tiring attack on a flat track. By way of variation, Craig offered up a full toss to help him across the line.

Voges did speed up later in the day, with some strong cuts and drives, but there were plenty of edges too. It wasn’t fluent. This innings  reminded me of Keith Fletcher of Essex and England, not in its style, but in its anonymity. Fletcher scored seven test hundreds, but hands up who can remember any of them. Thought not.

But Voges has put his side in a winning position, which was why he was picked.

Two of the three wickets to fall today went in the same Boult over. Khawaja was leg before playing back to the new ball. It looked a bit high and it was surprising that he didn’t call for a review. New Zealand did take this option next ball for a leg before against Mitch Marsh. We might balance the deserved tsunami of praise for Brendon McCullum with this thought: he is a shocking DRS decision maker. This one got the trifecta: pitched outside leg, inside edge and missing.

Marsh lasted only one more ball. Boult took a glorious return catch, flinging himself to his right in his follow through, and holding on with his fingertips. He has a history of making corking catches in Basin tests: Rahane and Ramdin were other victims in recent years.

Marsh, Phillips, Healy, Gilchrist, Haddin. A line of keepers noted for their attacking, joyful batting. It seems that the chain has been broken with Peter Nevill, who made a stodgy 32 from 94 balls.

The New Zealand attack persevered, but was largely unthreatening. Off spinner Mark Craig keeps taking wickets at this level but does not exert pressure. To put it another way, he does not take wickets at the other end as a good spinner should do. Neither was Corey Anderson’s reputation enhanced. There was bluster, but no bite and there were four runs or more an over for the taking.

So it was the same old story in trans-Tasman sport (apart from the rugby, obviously): hope with disappointment in its wake. But it was a fine day with a sold out signs up, so not bad at all.

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, First Day, 12 February 2016

Scorecard

The contest for sport’s most unoriginally named prize begins. Australia and New Zealand will contest the Trans-Tasman Trophy over two matches this week and next. Where’s the history, the romance, the inspiration? It should be the Clarrie Grimmett Trophy, after the Dunedin-born, Wellington-schooled leg spinner who bowled thousands of overs on the Basin before crossing the Tasman to play 37 tests for Australia, finishing with a world-record 216 wickets.

There has been much conjecture about the pitch ahead of the game, and at the start of the day it did indeed have about it a sufficiently verdant hue to suggest that it would provide a moderately hungry sheep with a decent lunch. In New Zealand we have fixed on the idea that the Australians are flat-track bullies. By way of reinforcing this notion Wellington’s Dominion Post this morning featured a large-type scorecard of Australia’s first innings at Trent Bridge last August, in which they were bowled out for 60.

Alas, Brendon McCullum lost the toss, so it was the home side who were the laboratory beagles testing how toxic the pitch was.

Fifty-one for five by drinks. It wasn’t one of those sessions where the ball was constantly beating or finding the edge. Most of the batsmen—Guptill and Williamson in particular—looked comfortable until they got out. The run rate was more than six an over for the first six overs. But once the bowlers found their line and length the ball did just enough.

Peter Siddle was outstanding. It is difficult to believe that a vegan can bowl such bustling aggression, but today he put the ball on the right spot time and again. Hazlewood bowled better when he had Siddle’s example to follow. Jackson Bird did not have such a good day, bowling an Australian length on a New Zealand pitch.

Anderson and Watling managed a partial recovery with a partnership that took New Zealand through to lunch. Watling and Bracewell were out soon after lunch, but Anderson batted for almost two-and-a-half hours for his 38. Yet it was not an innings that increased confidence in Anderson as a test No 6. It included six fours, which goes to show how difficult he found it to score singles and rotate the strike. At this point Mitchell Santner (absent with a foot injury here) looks a better fit in this position.

Anderson struck Nathan Lyon over mid on for four when the off spinner returned mid-afternoon, but was succoured by a slight change of pace into chipping the next ball tamely to mid off. Tim Southee attempted to get off the mark by slogging over long on and was caught at backward point, giving Lyon his second wicket in two overs at bargain basement cost.

Why Southee bats above Trent Boult is a mystery to everybody who was at the Basin today. That New Zealand finished with as many as 183 was due to Boult, who hit three sixes—stroked would be a better word, such was the refinement of the shots—and put on 46 for the tenth wicket with Mark Craig.

There was early promise for New Zealand, with Southee dismissing both openers in his first two overs. Smith was dropped by Craig at second slip, and Watling missed a tough stumping chance off Craig when Khawaja advanced down the pitch, but there was an ease about the batting of both men that had been absent from New Zealand’s innings. I was a surprise when Smith hit a low return catch to Craig to be dismissed for 71.

New Zealand’s difficult day was compounded in the final over of the day when Bracewell bowled Voges only to have Richard Illingworth call no ball. Replays showed a heel clearly behind the line.

I remember Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth test, at Edgbaston against Australia in 1968. It seemed an extraordinary feat, and some doubted that it would ever be equalled. Today, Brendon McCullum became the 64^th to achieve the feat, but he is the first to do so with consecutive appearances, something that we may very well not see again. Cowdrey scored a hundred way back when, but McCullum made a duck today, a Bradmanesque response, perhaps, to a standing ovation.

At the end of the day I was waiting for my Khandallah correspondent to pick me up outside the ground when one of a passing group of young fellows pointed at me and said “look, it’s Tony Greig” (I wear a white hat similar to that sported habitually by the late commentator, and am tall, though not as tall as him). Fortunately, I keep at my disposal a Tony Greig impersonation that suffices on such occasions. Doffing the hat, I said “good awfternoon gentlemen, let’s have a look at the pitch here at the Basin, where it will go like a tracer bullet”. I think that I made their day.

Today's the Day

February 2001. Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, the most beautiful cricket ground in the world. Grassy recreations of Inca temples on three sides, ocean views on the fourth. I am there because I am paid to watch and write about cricket. The best of times.

The match is the third of a series of four-day games between the under-19 representatives of New Zealand and South Africa. I am looking forward to my first chance to watch the New Zealand captain, who has scored centuries in both preceding games. His name is Brendon McCullum.

He comes in at No 6, when the 16-year-old Ross Taylor is out. Soon, New Zealand are 93 for five. McCullum’s response? Attack. His third hundred in three matches comes up in 121 balls. As soon as he reached his century he was caught behind, playing loosely.

He returns to the pavilion furious with himself for giving it away. For most 19-year-olds, three centuries in three games would be enough. Not Brendon McCullum. There was a double there and he wanted it.

Don’t think that getting to the final will be enough for Brendon McCullum.

Report.

***********

September 1967. Herne Bay, Kent, 5.30 am. I am eight. I am catching a bus to go to Lord’s for the first time. Kent will get the glory years under way by beating Somerset in the Gillette Cup final.

There have been countless fine days in the sun since, but I have always assumed that nothing in later life could match the excitement of an eight-year-old’s anticipation of a big game.

Turns out I was wrong.

***********

June 1975. Back at Lord’s for the first World Cup final. Australia are all Chappells, fast bowlers and Aussie self-belief. But the West Indies have some exciting young players, an inspiring captain who leads the way with a century, a former captain who has been around for 18 years to steady things and they field like banshees.

They also have a point to prove.

They win.

***********

For New Zealand, this World Cup has been excitement and surprise from the start. England’s capitulation, Williamson’s six, Guptill’s double hundred, Vettori’s catch, every moment of the semi-final, McCullum’s nuclear batting, McCullum’s brain whirring away.

New Zealand has been consumed with cricket this week, if anything more than it was with the rugby world cup final in 2011, bold though that claim may seem. The nation will stop at 4 30 this afternoon.

Can’t wait.

 

New Zealand v West Indies, World Cup Quarter-final, Cake Tin, 21 March 2015

Scorecard

We’re a cautious lot, we New Zealand fans. If our interest was the theatre, we would have gone to the Cake Tin yesterday hoping for a decent performance of something worthy. Ibsen, say, or Pinter. The provincial reviews had been good, but this was the West End, the knock-out stage. All we wanted was for the Brendon McCullum Players to remember enough lines to get us to the semi-final. Instead we got the most lavish Broadway show imaginable, full orchestra song and dance from start to end. Martin Guptill: the Musical.

What I love about cricket is its capacity for surprise, its ability to exceed expectation. After, yes, half a century watching the game you think you know what the parameters are. You assume, for example, that you will never see someone, particularly a New Zealander, score 237 not out in a World Cup knock-out game.

It was glorious. This New Zealand summer has conjured up cricket that stands with the best of the past fifty years. Williamson and Watling at the Basin, Southee at the Cake Tin, Sangakkara anywhere, McCullum everywhere. This innings of Guptill’s was the best of the lot. It has to be judged against Cowdrey at Canterbury in 1975, Richards at Lord’s in 1979, Slater at Sydney in 1999, to name but three, as the best I have seen.

It was the shots he didn’t play, as much as those he did, that measured its quality. No reverse laps, ramps or premeditated movements. Pure cricket, from the Rolex timing of the push drive that sent the first ball of the innings to the straight boundary to the pull that put the ball on the roof in the final over. Watch a recording of the innings and see how straight is the backlift, even for cross-bat shots. As well as being spectacular and surprising it was aesthetically pleasing, which the best batting always is.

Incidentally, it is not true, as has been reported, that Craig McMillan is the only batsman to hit the ball onto the roof of the Cake Tin. Guptill has done it once before, off Lonwabo Tsotsobe of South Africa in a T20 in 2012, a hit estimated at 125 metres, 15 metres longer than yesterday’s. His two-fingered gesture to McMillan after the hit was not, as Simon Doull said on commentary, to say “two of us have done it” but “I’ve done it twice”. Michael Lumb of England also did it, in a T20 in 2013.

Guptill’s innings changed in tempo. At times early on runs were hard to come by. His century came up in 111 balls, which is hardly laggardly. At that point it was already a classy, memorable innings. He got there in the 35^th over, just before the start of the powerplay. With only two wickets down, the foot could be pressed firmly to the floor.

Cricket is a game of numbers, and those for this match stretch credulity. Guptill’s second century came in just 41 balls. All eleven of his sixes came after the century mark. 207 came for New Zealand from the final 15 overs, 85 from the final five. It was wonderful.

From the third ball of the first over, Marlon Samuels became Dick Rowe for a day. Rowe was the Decca Records executive who, in 1962, refused to sign the Beatles on the grounds that guitar groups were on the way out. Samuels had the opportunity to send Guptill back to the rooms, but put down a sharp but catchable low chance at square leg. That was the only one Guptill offered. Just as Rowe would have spent the following years avoiding news of the Fab Four’s record sales, so Samuels spent the next 49 overs looking in any direction but that of the scoreboards as they audited the ever-increasing scale of his error.

A word in praise of Ross Taylor, who has been a worry for New Zealand supporters during the World Cup. He is hard to get out, but has got stuck in situations that he has hit himself out of in the past. Yesterday, he began slowly, with 23 off 43 balls, but he scored a run a ball thereafter and supported Guptill superbly in a partnership of 143, an excellent platform for the ensuing carnage.

Guptill is very fast between the wickets but is sometimes more cagey about his intentions than his partner would find ideal. We had already had one episode in which he and Taylor headed intently for the same end, so it was no surprise when Taylor was run out.

Earlier, Williamson had looked in as good touch as Guptill and it was a surprise when he got out to a soft shot. Later, Anderson, Elliott, Ronchi and Vettori all added to the mayhem.

My heart was filled with joy at New Zealand’s display. Yet it was also a little broken. I have written often enough about how early exposure to the West Indians fed my love of cricket. One of them was at the Cake Tin yesterday: the great Clive Lloyd of Guyana, Lancashire and the West Indies, the captain who brought together Jamaicans, Bajans, Trinidadians et al and made them a great West Indian team.

For Clive Lloyd, watching the shambles that the West Indies became in the final fifteen overs of the New Zealand innings must have been awful. How can the team of Richards, Sobers, Marshall, Greenidge, Holding and the rest have come to this?

To see England humiliated was comedy. To see the degradation of the West Indies was tragedy. The writer Dileep Premachandran recently tweeted “each time West Indies do well, the inner 10-year-old pumps his fist”. Today, the boy wept.

Jason Holder, the 23-year-old fast bowler who has been lumbered with the captaincy, looked bereft towards the end, and placed himself at long on, symbolically near the exit to the dressing rooms. It is always a bad sign when the skipper fields on the boundary. A little later, Darren Sammy, one of many recent captains, was seen in heated debate with the bench.

The fielding lacked commitment. Where were the dives, where were the support fielders? How the crowd roared later when all three of New Zealand’s slip fielders chased a ball to the boundary. What a difference.

So it was good that the West Indies took an adventurous approach to their futile task of chasing 394 for victory. They achieved more than was expected in maintaining a rate of eight an over for the 31 overs that they lasted.

But, in the words of a young member of the catering staff who took a seat behind us when they ran out of chips, West Indies were doing well “apart from the wickets thing”. Indeed. In cricket, it’s the wickets thing that gets you in the end. The wickets fell regularly and they never stood a chance of getting near. New Zealand knew how much protection they had and did not panic.

There were two noteworthy aspects to the innings. First Daniel Vettori’s catch at third man to dismiss Samuels. Vettori has always been highly competent in the field, but has never presented the world with an athletic persona. So, when, at the age of 36, he executed a perfectly timed, improbably high standing jump to pluck the ball from the night, it was as surprising as Maggie Smith rapping.

My Blean correspondent and myself have long been connoisseurs of one-legged innings, those made by batsmen under physical duress. The benchmark has always been Basil D’Oliveira’s half-century in the Benson and Hedges final in ’76. Despite his elderly hamstring having pinged earlier, D’Oliveira almost turned the game.

There was Basharat Hassan’s century at Canterbury the following year. Also Terry (though it might have been Michael) Parlane’s hundred at the Basin four or five years ago.

Chris Gayle’s 61 from 33 balls, with eight sixes, may have beaten them all. He has a bad back and could only hobble singles when there would normally have been a safe two. All of us who thought that Gayle’s non-appearance against the UAE was simply because he couldn’t be arsed, owe him an apology. Yet his hitting was devastating, if Sisyphean.

New Zealand’s two World Cup games at the Cake Tin have been two of the best days I have ever spent at the cricket. Years hence I shall remember them if I can’t recall my own name. The nation has become consumed with cricket. You hear people talking about it as you walk down the street. I have always wanted to live in such a place.

Tuesday, South Africa, Eden Park.