Trophies and Tribulations – Forty Years of Kent Cricket by Clive Ellis and Mark Pennell

We were like the young men of Europe in the high summer of 1914, going home after a day in the sun, oblivious to the misery about to spread itself across the decades to come.

It was 9 September 1979, around 7 pm. We Kent supporters were making our way from the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury. The team had lost the final Sunday League game of the season, to Middlesex. Somerset beat Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, so it was Brian Rose of Somerset rather than our own Alan Ealham who received the trophy.

We were disappointed, but not downcast. There had been ten trophies in the seventies, and there was no reason to think that the eighties would be any less rewarding. The odd loss like today’s merely sharpened expectation of the next, inevitable, triumph. Not one of those people walking down the Old Dover Road that evening believed that the day would be long delayed.

What fools we were.

It was 16 years until a Kent captain raised a trophy aloft once more, and the 33 years that have passed by since that September evening have reaped the paltry harvest of two Sunday Leagues and a T20. The big prizes – a Lord’s final win and the Championship – have been entirely elusive.

For many years I thought that there should be a book that explained all this, and in 2010 it came along: Trophies and Tribulations – Forty Years of Kent Cricket by Clive Ellis and Mark Pennell. Ellis was a supporter through the glory years before joining the Daily Telegraph sports staff. Mark Pennell covered almost every game that Kent played between 1993 and 2008 for the Kent Messenger and now heads a sports reporting agency that performs heroic work in keeping county cricket in the public eye.

After a perfunctory survey of the first century or so of the club’s history, the authors adopt a season-by-season format starting in 1967, the year Gillette Cup became the first prize won since the First World War. Ellis deals with the first 26 seasons; Pennell takes up the narrative from 1993 to 2009. The quality of the writing deteriorates with the handover; Pennell’s first paragraph would be a worth a punt in a cliché-writing contest:

The Garden of England was transformed into a cricketing hot-bed [sic] when Kent’s team of the ‘glory years’ reaped 11 titles in 12 golden summers.

He might have checked the precise meaning of “hotbed” before embarking on the gardening metaphor too. The word would more appropriately apply to more recent periods in the county’s history, dependent on significant quantities of manure as hotbeds are. And wrapping a cliché in single quotes merely draws attention to it.

The book’s great contribution to Kent’s history is the information that emerges from interviews with surviving players and officials. The candour that comes with passing of time illuminates several murky corners, and takes us a considerable way towards answering the big question that could be the book’s alternative title: what went wrong? The chronological structure of the book means that the authors do not always organise the evidence they present into themes that cross the years, but it is laid out clearly, allowing readers to join the dots easily enough.

The retirement of Les Ames from full-time administration in 1974 was a crucial turning point. As secretary-manager, Ames had led the club from mediocrity to the top of the county game. One of Kent and England’s great players, Ames’ reputation, strength of character and good judgment enabled him, the ex-professional, to protect the county to a good extent from the meddling of the elected amateurs on the committee.

With Ames gone there was no counterbalance. The grey men were able to mess things up. It should surprise few that Ellis and Pennell point to the committee room as the source of strife, but interesting that the Band of Brothers – the wandering club side to which many of the county’s establishment belong – emerges as the Opus Dei of Kent cricket, emerging from the murk every few years to finish off another captain.

Chief villain is EW (Jim) Swanton, who retired in 1975 as cricket correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, from which position he had become the Cardinal Richelieu of English cricket. At his funeral the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie said “Jim was not a man plagued by self-doubt”. Swanton devoted the last two decades of his life to interfering in Kent’s affairs, to an extent, according to Ellis and Pennell, that was breathtaking. In 1996, as Matt Walker was about to overtake Frank Woolley’s St Lawrence record score of 270, Swanton is said to have stormed into the dressing room demanding a declaration so that his hero’s landmark would remain intact.

Of course, the membership has to take the blame for electing Swanton and the rest of the committee in the first place. Edmund Burke – MP for Bristol, so a wise man – might have had Kent County Cricket Club in mind when he wrote:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

For some time, asterisks appeared on the ballot paper next to the names of the candidates for election to the committee that the committee itself favoured. A clearer admission of corruption it is hard to imagine, but there are flocks of sheep that are free-thinking iconoclasts in comparison with the Kent membership of the eighties, of whom few followed my practice of voting only for those not supported by the self-perpetuating elite.

The first sign of how devastating the impact of Ames’ departure was to be came in 1976 with the sacking as captain of Mike Denness. At the time this was incomprehensible to most supporters. After all, there were two trophies in the cabinet at the end of that season, and Denness left for Essex, making it clear that it was a sacking, not a resignation. Denness says here that the whole affair would have been managed much better had Ames still been in charge.

Despite his great success in terms of winning trophies, Denness had always had mixed reviews as captain, inside the dressing room and in the stands. Bob Woolmer, for example, wrote in his autobiography Pirate and Rebel (or rather, his ghost wrote) that Denness was the best one-day captain that he played under, but that Denness’s communication let him down in the first-class game. It was in that knowledge of views such as these were held by some of the team that Denness himself raised the possibility of his standing down in favour of Graham Johnson for the 1977 season. This idea soon gained a life of its own, and a few weeks later Denness was invited to take the revolver into the library and do the decent thing.

Asif Iqbal, not Johnson, took over, led the side to a share of the Championship and was sacked because of his involvement with World Series Cricket. Bizarre as this now seems, in the context of the apoplectic reaction of the English game to Kerry Packer and his plans, it was to be expected. The real surprise was that Alan Ealham was chosen to succeed him.

There were several candidates who appeared more likely. Woolmer had also signed with the Great Satan, so was not considered. As vice-captain, Johnson might have been expected preferment. Here, he says that he was seen as being a bit bolshie, based on not much more than having been a student at the London School of Economics when it was the centre of sixties radicalism. Ealham fairly points out that Johnson had not played well in 1977. There are people reading this blog who hold to this day the belief that the loveliness of Johnson’s eyes were grounds enough for giving him whatever he wanted.[1]

John Shepherd also believed that he should have got the job. Like Johnson, he would have done it very well. “I don’t know whether Kent were ready for a black captain” Ellis quotes him as saying. I believe that members of the committee were capable of holding just about any prejudice going in late-seventies Britain (several of them will have been rotating steadily in their graves when Shep became President of the club last year), but I think that the more influential stereotype in operation here may have been that bowlers do not make good captains. There may have also been the feeling that Shepherd and Johnson were both their own men to an extent that the committee would have been uncomfortable with, while Ealham had more old-fashioned loyalty about him, so would be more pliable.

As it was the Championship was won in 1978, and 1979 was not such a bad year (though we might have spotted the all-out-for-60 rout at Taunton in the Gillette Cup quarter-final as a sign of the coming apocalypse), so none of us were thinking about ditching the skipper as we walked disconsolately down the Old Dover Road that September Sunday evening. But 1980 was horrendous, quite as bad as any recent season, and at its end Ealham was gone. In the circumstances, this was an understandable decision; it was the shabby treatment of the ex-captain the following year that revealed those in charge to be clueless about how to value people. Despite still having plenty to offer as a player, Ealham was hardly picked at all in 1981.

Bob Woolmer would have been the right choice, but instead they went back to Asif Iqbal, much more popular with the supporters, but then reaching the end of a distinguished Kent career. Asif is quoted here as believing that he should have retired at the end of the 1980 season. The speculation about his successor began at once. Much of the 1982 season became an extended trial between the two contenders, Chris Cowdrey and Chris Tavaré who were joint vice-captains (which Cowdrey calls “a strange decision, and a bad one”).

The account of the damaging way in which this situation was handled is related here much as we perceived it at the time. For genetic reasons Cowdrey was the man the committee room and the Band of Brothers marquee favoured, but his form was not good enough to guarantee him a place in the side, so they gave the job to Tavaré.

The first two years of what we hoped would be the Tavaré era were trophyless, but promising, with two Gillette Cup final defeats and improved performances in the championship. Had one more Glamorgan wicket be taken in the final game of the season, Kent would have finished third. What is more, despite his studious demeanour Tavaré had the dressing room behind him (there were stories of the players willingly crawling round ancient pavilions in search of insects for their captain – an Oxford zoology graduate with a speciality in entomology – to identify and dissect) and was popular with the supporters.

So they sacked him, obviously.

The most commonly offered explanation was that Tavaré had paid for mishandling Derek Underwood in both the Lord’s final defeats. As far as 1983 goes, the accusation is groundless. Cowdrey, brought on for an over or two, did well and was kept on, finishing with two for 29 from ten overs. If anything, this was a sign of alert, flexible captaincy. It was the batting that lost that game, not the bowling.

In 1984, Underwood was taken off with three overs left to bowl at a time when Middlesex were struggling to stay in the game. I felt at the time that this was a mistake, and indeed when Underwood returned to the attack he was not so effective. But that was one error in two very positive seasons.

My theory was that Tavaré’s fate was sealed at Lord’s a week before the Gillette final. Against a weak Sri Lankan Test attack he laboured painfully from lunch to tea on Saturday for just 14. David Gower, the England captain, was moved to apologise at the close of play for the stultifying nature of the cricket. Before that, it had been expected that Tavaré would be Gower’s deputy in India that winter; after it, he was not picked at all. I felt at the time that Kent would not have had the nerve to have sacked the England vice-captain. But according to Ellis, the decision had been taken some weeks before, so neither Lord’s Saturday made a difference. It was a decision taken without consultation with the manager, Brian Luckhurst, or senior players such as Derek Underwood and Alan Knott. The Kent committee room was the only place in the cricketing world that would not have regarded these two great players as being worth listening to.

So Chris Cowdrey was Kent captain and the stripy-tie brigade congratulated themselves on restoring the natural order. But it was a palace, not a popular, revolution, and the manner of the succession meant that Cowdrey was never fully accepted by some supporters (including myself and my wise friend Allen Hunt), and not by some of the team. One of the many fascinating revelations in the book is Cowdrey’s account of his first team meeting as skipper. “Possibly the most senior player in the dressing room”, which has to be either Underwood or Knott, neither of whom was ever a member of the awkward squad, “…told me he didn’t want to come in” because of the way in which Tavaré had been treated.

We sceptics were never persuaded from our view that the committee had replaced General Montgomery with Field-Marshall Haig. Terry Alderman agreed with us. I know this because I was part of a group talking to him in the Hammond Room bar at Bristol in 1988, while he was having a season with Gloucestershire. Alderman had been asked by a committee man during his second season with Kent in 1986 where the county was going wrong. “Simple”, he had replied, “you’ve got the wrong captain”. Cowdrey now agrees.

It’s hard to say they made the wrong decision to appoint me as captain, but I think they did.

The book does not make quite enough of the quantity of talent lost by Kent in these years. Laurie Potter, who had managed to captain both England and Australia at under-19 level, was seen more as a slow bowler than the fine batsman he might have become, and left for Leicestershire. Derek Aslett, leading scorer in both seasons under Tavaré, faded quickly under Cowdrey and, on Cowdrey’s call, was released in 1987. Oddest of the lot was the decision to release Eldine Baptiste as overseas player in 1987. Baptiste had performed handily since making his debut in 1981, averaging 30 with the bat and slightly less with the ball; a true all-rounder. He performed with obvious enthusiasm and commitment throughout. This was said to be part of a damn-fool move to build a squad consisting entirely of Kent-born or educated players. This at a time when even Yorkshire was close to abandoning its nineteenth-century stance on the origin of its players. In the event, he was replaced by Roy Pienaar, a classy batsman and trundling bowler, Hartley Alleyne, one of the worst-performing overseas players the county has had, and later by Tony Merrick, who was leading wicket-taker in 1991, but no batsman and a reasonable impersonator of a medium-sized shed in the outfield.

Since Cowdrey’s resignation in 1990, the county has shown much more wisdom in its choice of captain, and has usually picked the right (or at least most obvious) man at the right time, and given them the time to improve in post, though Matthew Fleming has an interesting take on his two immediate predecessors.

If we could have found a captain who was a combination of Benson and Marsh, it could have been a great side. But Benny was too quiet and though Marshy was aggressive and pugnacious there was always an element to him.

The club is fortunate to have had Rob Key as captain during the last few, difficult years. He could easily have gone elsewhere and is unlucky to have played in the only era in English cricket in which a degree of portliness was not considered a virtue in a Test player.

At the end of the book both authors pick their best side from the four decades or so in question, and irritate this reader no end in doing so. For a start, they get the selection criteria wrong. Martin van Jaarsveld is deemed to be England-qualified (only one overseas player is allowed), but John Shepherd is not. Yet Shepherd was certainly England-qualified in his final few years in Kent; he went to Gloucestershire on that basis. At least Ellis picks Shepherd. Pennell’s incomprehensible choice as overseas player, and (you’ll need to sit down at this point) captain is Steve Waugh. Yes, the Steve Waugh who played all of four games for Kent, not one of them as captain (though Waugh did become the first Canterbury-born player to be capped by Kent, though the Canterbury in question is a suburb of Sydney). Surely any compilation Kent team must be picked solely on the basis of performances for the county. If not, I nominate WG Grace in my all-time Kent team. Grace played once as a guest for Kent in 1877, scoring 50 in his single innings. This gave him the highest career average of any Kent batsman until Aravinda de Silva came along 118 years later.

And who does Pennell reckon a better middle-order batsman than Colin Cowdrey, Mike Denness or Chris Tavaré? Why, Trevor Ward of course. I enjoyed Ward’s batting too, but that he never got close to an England cap at a time when mediocrity was not a barrier to selection says it all.

Both authors pick Key and van Jaarsveld, which, having seen too little of either batsman, I won’t quibble with. Mike Denness was very good though, and remember to add ten to the averages of batsmen who played mostly on uncovered pitches.

But enough carping. Trophies and Tribulations is an invaluable resource for Kent historians and answers a good many questions that have troubled some of us for too long. It is well-produced too, even if the picture of the fallen lime tree on page 253 is back to front. Ellis and Pennell are to be congratulated and thanked.

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[1] A question beyond the scope of this discussion is how did Johnson never play for England when Geoff “Thriller” Miller did so on 34 occasions?

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2012, edited by Lawrence Booth

The 2012 Wisden has arrived, its yellow cover for us in New Zealand representing autumn leaves rather than spring flowers.

Each almanack records a cricketing year, but when you have 45 yellow jackets on your shelves, as I do (46 if you count the 1964 edition that I picked up from the second-hand-book stall at the Basin Test a couple of years ago) you find that each Wisden represents another notch on the stick of your own mortality.  I mention this because the 2012 edition is the first to be edited by Lawrence Booth.

37-year-old Lawrence Booth.

That is to say, Wisden is now in the charge of a man who has no recall of the first two World Cup finals, the Test match career of David Steele or Headingley ’81, and who never watched cricket in black-and-white. Booth is the first of the Good Book’s sixteen editors to have made his name, in part at least, through his on-line writing, for The Guardian’s over-by-over coverage of Tests and its email newsletter The Spin (an email newsletter – how quaint). That seems to be the way in these days. Talented young sports writers such as the Daily Telegraph’s Jonathan Liew and The Guardian’s Barney Ronay serve apprenticeships in front of television screens in newspaper offices in the dead of night before being allowed out to file from a proper press box.

Lawrence Booth’s appointment is a response to the question “What is Wisden for?” Throughout the twentieth century the answer was so obvious that the question was not worth asking. Wisden was the game’s record, unrivalled in its breadth, depth and completeness. Then the internet arrived and Wisden suddenly found itself as contemporary and useful as a powdered wig. Like most cricket followers, I turn first to CricInfo and Cricket Archive for statistics (which are up-to-date to the second) and scorecards, and when I get around to owning a smart phone it will probably be with a view to having all this information at hand when I am spectating at the Basin.

Wisden was, in fact, an early adapter to the digital age, or tried to be. It had a website going early in the new century, and experimented with a paywall for access to its archive, but that did not work so it bought CricInfo, saving it from financial oblivion (and allowing a few of us in distant corners of the world to be paid when we had almost given up hope). A few years later CricInfo was sold to ESPN and Wisden appeared to be left on the platform waving a handkerchief as the age of electronic publishing sped towards the horizon.

Lawrence Booth’s brief is to ensure that Wisden catches up and remains as indispensable in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth. Not that the Almanack is in commercial decline. On the contrary, sales have held up well, and it remains one of the British publishing’s most bankable titles. But it cannot remain immune to the effects of changing times, which will see any number of familiar titles ceasing to appear in printed form over the next few years.

So the 2012 Almanack is the first to be available as an ebook. Booth has also initiated Wisden Extra, an online pamphlet full of good writing, but which can only be easily read if printed out, which seems to rather miss the point. The content of the Almanack is also increasingly influenced by on-line competition, though some of these changes pre-date Lawrence Booth’s accession to the editor’s chair by several years. The records section has migrated to the back of the book, reflecting the loss of its status as the main reason to buy the Almanack. The Wisden website will henceforth update records in real time, but it would be a mistake to put much effort into duplicating what is available elsewhere.

Almost all scorecards of English domestic one-day and T20 cricket appear in potted form. All hell was let loose when the Sunday League scores for 1976 appeared in this form in the 1977 Almanack, as this removed the only collected source of these records. Now the omitted scores are freely available on-line, so nobody cares. But brief reports, not necessarily easily available with the full cards, are retained, which is sensible.

And there we have the reason why Wisden remains relevant, essential indeed, in digital times. It’s not the numbers, it’s the words.

The biggest change in Wisden in the period represented on my shelves is the quality of the writing, for so long pedestrian, now often outstanding. I reached for the 1972 edition for comparison. The features give the impression of having been written in a particularly dusty corner of the Carlton Club for a readership in another part of the room. The editor’s notes have the dull air of the bowls club AGM about them. Norman Preston, editing his 22nd edition, is sniffy about the success of Ray Illingworth’s Ashes-winning side because of “unsavoury” incidents that occurred during the series.

Though not yet aspiring to the heights of pontifical infallibility achieved by Matthew Engel, Lawrence Booth’s notes are intelligent and pleasingly written. They lead a consolidated comment section of more than 200 pages, a book in its own right and more than double the ration of forty years ago.

The overall standard is so high that it is almost invidious to nominate a favourite. Mike Brearley’s insightful piece on depression among cricketers contends. So does Gideon Haigh’s account of the development of the International Cricket Council from the time 20 years ago when it was housed in a converted canteen at Lord’s to its present location in luxurious premises in Dubai. Haigh nails it by the second paragraph in which he notes the appropriateness of the proximity of the animal so often described as a horse designed by a committee.

Michael Henderson writes an uncharacteristically cheerful, almost romantic, piece inspired by the moment at Taunton when

Croft of Blackpool hit the runs that threw a hoop around almost eight decades of history

and won Lancashire the Championship.

For those who moved away long ago, and will never go back, Lancashire – and Lancashire cricket – still grips us, for it is part of that personal mythology without which no human being can feel entirely fulfilled.

So true, just substitute the name of your county or team. Will Kent win another Championship in my lifetime?

Colin Schindler, another Lancashire man, marks the fifty seasons that have passed since amateurism was abolished in English first-class cricket with a few stories that suggest the move was overdue, such as that of Peter Murray-Willis, captain of Northamptonshire in 1946, who once stopped chasing a ball to the boundary because his cap fell off.

But it is PJK Gibbs – yes, Alan Gibson’s bête noire again – who tops the rest with his account of a day in 1964 that he spent in the company of SF Barnes, perhaps the greatest bowler ever to play the game. It is like somebody still living describing a day spent chopping down trees at Hawarden with Gladstone. Gibbs, a junior player in the Staffordshire team playing in the Minor Counties Championship against Bedfordshire at Walsall, was assigned the task of looking after 91-year-old Barnes, a short straw given the great man’s reputation for irascibility. Barnes was a century ahead of his time when he followed the money to the leagues when Lancashire would not pay him enough. He would play for England only if “the money was right” and would have approved enthusiastically of Chris Gayle and the like, seasonally migrating from T20 team to another across the globe.

Despite his great age Barnes’s mind and prejudices were steel-tipped.

“Batsman?” he said after a pause. “Yes”. “Oxford?” “Yes”. “Blue?” His voice had a dark, accusing tone.

His opinions on the modern game and its players were acute.

“Frank Worrell, fine player, fine man. Laker? Those pitches in ’56 were a travesty. Money for old rope. What did he do in Australia?”

Barnes took 77 Test wickets in Australia, in just 13 Tests. On that day in 1964 Gibbs got a pair.

And then there are the obituaries, the anticipation of which has kept my Blean correspondent and myself reason to live through many a cold English winter. Year by year, the number who I saw play edges up. Abberley, Bailey, Carew, Dilley, d’Oliveira, Pataudi, Reifer, Roebuck, Saxena, Titmus, only a wicketkeeper short of a team. All the notices are unsigned, so I don’t know who to praise for the outstanding piece on Peter Roebuck, which gets the blend of dark and light just right (though I’d guess Gideon Haigh). Those on Graham Dilley and Basil d’Oliveira manage to say something fresh despite the thousands of words written about both men in the days after their deaths.

But the real attraction of the obituaries is the stories told of minor figures, some of whom are included only because there is a good story to be told, not necessarily related to cricket. So the notice for Martin Searby, the Yorkshire journalist who was something of legend on the county circuit, records an exchange that took place in a cruise ship swimming pool. “Are you Martin Searby?” asked a woman he did not recognise. “Who wants to know?” “I was your first wife” came the reply. I met Searby once. “A good bloke before nine in the evening” was what I had been told about him. As he entered the Vittoria on the Whiteladies Road in Bristol – the last call of an all-day drinking session in the company of David Green of Lancashire, Gloucestershire, and the Daily Telegraph – I looked at my watch. It was ten to ten. The next hour was a long one.

Sir Roger Jowell is included on two grounds. In 1965 he was protesting at Lord’s against the team representing white South Africa, but was so taken with a shot by Graeme Pollock that he put down his placard to applaud; and “one of the Americans he succeeded in converting to the game” (this conjures up a marvellous image of him going from door to door in the mid-West, Wisden in hand) was Bill Clinton’s campaign chief of staff.

Richard Douglas-Boyd’s claim for inclusion is slim: his company published a few cricket books. But had he been omitted we would not have known that he severed his big toe with a lawnmower, or that his spaniel ate the toe before it could be recovered.

So callow youth as Lawrence Booth may be, the first Wisden in his charge matches the high standards set by his recent predecessors. The 2013 edition will be the 150th

Adult Book by Malcolm Knox

The cricket novel is in fashion, a genre, almost. There is Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, in which the game is a symbol of calm in post 9/11 New York. Today’s Guardian carries a favourable review of Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka. The recent history of Sri Lanka is contemplated through the story of a journalist making a documentary about a disappeared spin bowler.

Then there is 28 for 3 by “Jennie Walker” – a pen name for a writer called Charles Boyle (what if cricketers had game names?; another time, perhaps) – in which an eternal triangle is played out to the background of an England v India Test.

And I learn from the 2012 Wisden – received a couple of days ago – that Alan Gibson’s nemesis PJK Gibbs has a cricket novel, Settling the Score, on the way. Gibbs’ dogged approach to opening the batting for Derbyshire regularly prompted Gibson to scorn:

When Gibbs…was out for 40 scored in 223 minutes, he walked back to the pavilion in a silence which was eloquent and not, in the circumstances, churlish. 7 June 1968

After giving up the unequal struggle against the new ball Peter Gibbs became a successful writer, for stage, screen and radio, including more than 50 episodes of Heartbeat and several dramas with cricket themes or connections. Like several cricket players turned journalists (I mean you, Mark Nicholas), it is to be hoped that he is more entertaining to read than watch.

Any of these works might have been included in The Wisden Cricketer’s list of the top 50 cricket books had they been published a few years earlier. As it is, Adult Book by Malcolm Knox is the only fiction represented. Knox is in the tradition of Alan Ross as a writer whose work can be found in both the sport and literary sections of the paper. He was cricket correspondent, then deputy literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and still writes about the game, most recently as Greg Chappell’s ghost.

The story moves between two timelines, one before and one after a Sydney New Year early this century. The central characters are the Brand family. Dr John Brand, the father, is alive in the first timeline, dead in the second. His wife Margaret, and their three sons are the other major characters. Davis, the eldest has followed his father into medicine. Hammett, the youngest – estranged from the family as the story begins – is a significant figure behind the scenes in Sydney’s pornography industry (hence the title). The middle son, Chris, is the lynchpin of the Australian middle order. He is 34 and has played 91 Tests and 201 ODIs. To describe him as hard-bitten is an understatement. In comparison Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh are happy-go-lucky chancers.

The later timeline takes us through the New Year Test against South Africa at the SCG. As it begins Chris Brand is dealing with his father’s death and is fighting to save his career: his last six innings have accrued 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 and 1.

And there’s the thing. We would understand that the player was struggling to hold his place if a couple of low double-figure scores had been thrown in to that sequence, or the ducks halved in number. But Knox carries a heavy bat and wants to clear the ropes, when delicate shots played with a lighter blade would be more satisfying to the discriminating spectator. Throughout the book such points are underscored too heavily. For example, we have already got that John Brand is a porn-obsessed old man by the time Knox has him leave a family gathering to slather over more of the hard stuff on the internet.

The best parts of the book are the descriptions of the cricket, particularly Chris Brand’s redemptive innings. After –predictably – being dropped at third slip early on, he survives through to lunch, rediscovering form and confidence in the process.

…Chris’s mind is drained. There is no longer a need for solutions. There is only a ball, and his bat…His bat and the ball start arriving at the same place at the same time. The scratchiness, the hesitation, the undecided shotmaking of recent weeks seem to have fallen away like a snake’s skin, a decayed product of his last form cycle.

By close of play he has a century, and by tea the next day has a double, though only after being caught (you’ll never guess) off a no-ball. At the close he is 331 not out, three short of Bradman and Taylor’s joint landmark, and with Hayden’s 380 in sight (publication preceded Lara’s 400), but his despised skipper Tom Pritchard (not obviously based on any recent Aussie leader) declares overnight.

As it happened, I read Adult Book during this year’s Sydney Test, when Michael Clarke passed RE Foster’s 287, the individual record score at the SCG for 108 years, a few years after Chris Brand had done so in fiction. For a time as I read and watched they matched each other, run for run. Clarke declared when he was 329 not out, two short of Brand’s mark.

Off the field, Knox’s portrayal of life around the Australian Test team is less convincing. It must, of course, be acknowledged that any author’s obligation to present the world as it really is extends only as far as they themselves determine it should. Knox has spent plenty of time in the world of international cricket, but it would be disappointing if the reality closely resembled Chris Brand’s world, summed up thus:

No matter how individually talented, no matter how great they all think they are…the glue that holds them together is the lowest common denominator. They’re boys.

The glue is spread very thin. None of the Australian players appear to like or respect any of the others. Off the field their main form of entertainment is solitary surfing for internet porn, punctuated by trawling for groupies, wives and girlfriends kept away. Only a fool would imagine that there is not a strong element of truth about this, the Australian team consisting of rich, successful twenty-something males as it does. But few of them will be quite this one-dimensional and the majority will be more interesting and nicer people than their fictional counterparts.

Mind you, none of the spheres of life represented in Adult Book would be delighted with their portrayal in it, particularly the medical profession. It is not a book that makes it easy to sympathise with any of its characters. Like a ground-out 40 on a seaming pitch it is to be admired for its technical proficiency, but it is a relief to be able to turn to the newspaper for diversion while it proceeds. O’Neill’s Netherland is more deserving of fiction’s token place on in the top 50, even though the cricket is more tangential to its story.

New Zealand v South Africa, Basin Reserve, Wellington, 3rd Test, 3rd day (25 March 2012)

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/345/345883/345883_bbb.html

The New Zealand season is over, just three days before the first-class season in England begins. The South Africans have gone home having impressed us greatly. That they took the Test series only one-nil was down to weather interference in the first and third matches. Given England’s ineptitude when faced with the turning ball, South Africa are the best team in the world. I was at the Basin for the third day of the final Test.  

Our Lord Lucan of a summer was finally apprehended today and there were blue skies at the Basin. This was a welcome contrast to the unremitting grey of the first two days, during which only 79 overs were bowled. South Africa began on 246 for two, achieved against an insipid New Zealand attack on a flat pitch.

The two wickets that fell were both down to third umpire Billy Doctrove’s eccentric interpretations of the DRS evidence. Graeme Smith had to go despite neither hotspot nor super slow motion supporting the view that his bat had made contact with the ball on its way through to the wicketkeeper. Hashim Amla was not reprieved after being caught from a top-edged hook even though the replay showed that Mark Gillespie’s heel had cut the return crease, in contravention of the no-ball rule.

Amla will take no further part in the match having sustained (and my eyes water as I type these words) blunt trauma to his groin region, which required surgery overnight. Unfortunately, Jacques Kallis is also missing, with a neck injury, a double blow for those of us who go to Test matches to see the best players first and our team do well second.

Alviro Petersen reached his hundred in the second over of the day, and went on to 156, the biggest of his three Test centuries. He deserves a break having served last year as captain of Glamorgan, a sentence that I was unaware a South African court could impose.

Petersen and  JP Duminy (in for Kallis and playing his first Test in a couple of years) attacked from the off, which was pleasing. For a long time after their return to international cricket the South Africans tended to bat with a fifties-style grimness, as if news of the acceleration that one-day cricket had brought to Test cricket had not reached the Cape. Of all the Tests I have attended, the session I would least care to re-live (and I do not exclude those throughout which it rained) is that between lunch and tea of the second day at Eden Park in 1999, during which South Africa – 352 for three at the resumption – prodded 64 from 35 overs for the loss of a single wicket. It was good now to see them going about things with an urgency that suggested that a win was still the primary goal.

New Zealand’s bowling in this first session was unimpressive, and Ross Taylor appeared flummoxed as to how to deploy the scarce resources at his disposal. It was surprising that Chris Martin took the new ball with the wind behind him, rather than Mark Gillespie, who is the fastest member of this attack, and in prime form. The state of Taylor’s mind was betrayed by his decision to seek a review of an lbw appeal against Petersen that was at the conspiracy-theory end of the continuum, being both too high and hitting the pad outside off. The reappearance of Vettori in the attack after just 11 overs with the new ball suggested that the strategy of picking an extra batsman was not a raging success.

JP Duminy cover drove three fours in one Doug Bracewell over. The Hero of Hobart’s fine first international season is tailing off, but he has earned a trip to the Caribbean in a couple of months. Duminy slowed down as he neared three figures, but reached the mark with a push to leg off Gillespie (who was switched to the northern end just as the breeze died down). The 200 partnership came up, but Duminy fell shortly thereafter, edging Gillespie to Taylor at slip. He has given the South African selectors the best of problems: more in-form batsmen than there are places available.

The first session was South Africa’s: 115 runs for the loss of Duminy.

As Chris Martin took up the attack after lunch I noted that this would probably be his last home Test. But I wrote to that effect last season, and the one before that, only to be proved wrong. Sure enough in the first over of the spell he dismissed Petersen lbw, playing across a straight one. It was disappointing that few joined me in standing as Petersen returned to the rooms, as an attractive 156 surely deserves such a courtesy.

Reinforcing his reputation as cricket’s Ol’ Man River, Martin followed with the wicket of de Villiers, who played on as he tried to work the ball to the leg side. On the radio Iain O’Brien (who has taken John Morrison’s summariser’s seat, so some prayers are answered) made the point that Martin still gets good batsmen out, which is true, even if they have scored 150 first.

Kruger van Wyk had the least impressive day of his short Test career behind the stumps. He conceded four byes when he failed to follow a turning ball down the leg side from Williamson, then bodged a run out when Taylor quickly flicked the ball back as Jacques Rudolph was stranded a couple of metres down the pitch, only for the keeper to dislodge the bails with his foot as he collected the ball.

Van Wyk made amends by collecting a low catch from the first ball of Gillespie’s new spell to dismiss Rudolph. Eyebrows were raised at the selection of Gillespie for the second Test, but a few days before I had seen him deliver as hostile a spell of fast bowling as I have seen for some time in domestic cricket, for Wellington against Northern Districts.

John Buchanan, the former Aussie coach who is now our Director of Cricket, appointed Kim Littlejohn as selection manager. Even by Buchanan’s unconventional standards, this is not so much left field as from a paddock in the next county, as Littlejohn’s previous post was as high performance manager for Australian bowls (the point should be made that coach John Wright has the final say in selection matters). They have not got everything right – the mysterious replacement of Boult by Arnel in Hamilton springs to mind – but they have brought in players at the peak of their form, the selection of Daniel Flynn here being another example.

Gillespie bowled with intelligence and determination and worked his way through the middle and lower order to finish with his best Test figures, six for 113. South Africa did declare, but with only one wicket remaining, and were not able to kick on in the middle session as they might have wished.

Daniel Vettori was a strong influence in this respect. For the first time since he made his debut fifteen years ago, there has been debate about whether Vettori should retain his place. I have strong reservations about his ability as an attacking spinner in the second innings, but criticism of his performance here fails to understand that his role in South Africa’s first innings was entirely defensive.

In bowling 42 overs for 98 runs (including a spell of ten overs for 11 runs in the morning when Petersen and Duminy were scoring for fun from the other end) he did precisely the job that Ross Taylor asked of him. Gillespie could never have taken six wickets without that control from the other end. Though he has not batted well in this series, Vettori’s record over the past four or five years means that New Zealand should be loath to dispense with him in that capacity either.
New Zealand faced 25 overs before the close, and it was wonderfully gripping, Test cricket at its best. Guptill and Flynn (in cracking form, but not an opener), saw it out to the end of the day against the best pace attack in the world, putting on the highest opening partnership of the series along the way.

They got the approach dead right by concentrating and defence, leaving alone what they could, but taking runs when available at low risk. At one point there were 21 consecutive scoreless deliveries, but they did not waiver. Vernon Philander’s opening spell was the first such in his short but devastating Test career in which he has not taken a wicket. There was one, hard, chance when Flynn inside-edged off Morkel, but the diving Boucher could not hold on.

I retain the view that Guptill would be better allowed to develop naturally in the middle order, but New Zealand do not have the resources to allow this. Again here he showed that he has the determination and concentration of a good Test batsman.

Martin Guptill, hurried up by Morne Morkel

Flynn’s innings was his first in Tests since 2009, and all the more impressive for being against type; he has been scoring at around a run a ball in domestic cricket.
It should not be thought that the South Africans bowled poorly; on another day they could have taken four or five wickets in this period of play with the same quality of bowling. But not today. The introduction of Duminy’s affable off spin near the end of the day was a moral victory for the home side, though with two days left and the weather forecast good, nobody the draw remained a port far distant.

The Basin was perfect today, pleasantly full, but not crowded, and the sun shining from first to last. There is no better venue for Test cricket anywhere. You get an educated crowd here too. According to CricInfo, the Wellington Grammar Police, in which I serve as a special constable, were present. Apparently, there was a sign at one end saying “when bowling from this end remain seated”, causing someone to shout to Gillespie as he ran in that he should be sitting down.

England are here next year, so we have something to look forward to over the southern winter.

New Zealand v South Africa, ODI, the Cake Tin, Wellington, 25 February 2012

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/345/345878/345878_bbb.html

The optimism of New Zealand cricket fans of which I wrote in the previous post evaporated like a puddle in the desert over the following week. It may have been a mirage all the time.

Things started to go bottom-up at Hamilton in the second T20 when Richard Levi, unjustly mocked in these columns after the first T20, hit a world-record 13 sixes on his way to a century and a total that the home team could not get close to.

Three days later New Zealand contrived to lose when a win appeared as inevitable as Hamlet’s death. Needing 17 from four overs with six wickets left, they finished three short, despite being gifted a free hit off the last ball.

The first of three ODIs, played at the Cake Tin, was all about key moments and seizing the opportunities they offered. South Africa controlled the turning points and won the game by six wickets with more than four overs to spare, though it was not quite as straightforward as that might suggest.

The great attraction of the day for me was the first chance in eight years to watch Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis, and the first-ever to see the game’s leading fast bowler, Dale Steyn.

Smith has handed the one-day captaincy on to AB de Villiers and spent most of the game as a boundary fielder, an art of which he is not the most athletic of practitioners.

Kallis is, at last, recognised as a great player. Despite having been in most people’s World XIs for a decade or more, his unspectacular methods have left spotlight on others. Kallis is not as silky as Tendulkar, as punishing as Ponting, or as dominating as Sangakarra, but he has a higher Test batting average (57.02 currently) than any of those three, or than anybody else since Garfield Sobers, come to that. There is also the matter of the 274 Test wickets he has taken.

Steyn left the new ball to Morne Morkel and Landabo Tsotsobe, both of whom exploited the extra bounce in the pitch early on, and kept the batsmen on the back foot. When Steyn came on he began with a cracker, a full length ball that swung away from Nicol late. There were several more like that, but there were scoring opportunities too, and twice in Steyn’s first over Nicol drove him to the boundary.  He was a bit rusty after a month off, but did more than enough to support the view that he will run through New Zealand at some time during the tour, probably more than once.

I have no idea who Brendon McCullum prays to, but the deity concerned was putting in overtime on the New Zealand captain’s behalf today. His former Otago teammate Chris Gaffney gave him out first ball, padding up to Tsotsobe. McCullum immediately called for a review, which seemed bold given that one failed review and that would be that for the innings. But he is captain, and KiwiEye (or whatever the local variant is called) vindicated him, showing the ball (just) passing over the stumps.

McCullum drove hard at the next ball, which went low to cover, where it was dropped. Three overs later he resorted to the review system for a second time and was reprieved from a caught behind decision, this time by Richard Illingworth, the former Worcestershire slow left-armer. On 11, a third review went his way, this one wasted by South Africa, a clear inside edge negating the lbw decision that they sought.

McCullum reached 56 from 67 balls, including two sixes, and put on 79 for the third wicket with Williamson, before being out to a magnificent catch on the square cover boundary by Peterson. But he never looked at his best. CricInfo’s statistics editor S Rajesh recently analysed McCullum’s record at the top of the order in ODIs, and the results are not flattering. He finds that McCullum has the worst average, and, more surprisingly, the worst strike rate of any of the regular openers of the top eight teams over the past three years.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/555013.html

This makes it worth asking again where McCullum should bat in ODIs. I stick to the view that he would be best as a finisher, batting at six or seven and guiding the innings home. If it was good enough for Michael Bevan and Michael Hussey (though Hussey bats higher now), then it should be good enough for McCullum. With Vettori gone from the lower middle order the need for somebody in that role has become more pressing.

Jesse Ryder got a good reception despite copping much of the blame for the T20 loss at Eden Park. He had made only six when he top-edged a catch to deep square leg.

Williamson reached his fifty from 59 balls, faster than McCullum without appearing to be so. With James Franklin he navigated New Zealand unscathed through the rapids of the batting powerplay between the 36^th and 40^th overs.

Since the discretionary powerplays were introduced in 2005, batting sides have rarely opted to use theirs before the last seven or eight overs of the innings. Now, in order to spice things up in the supposedly dull middle period of the innings, the ICC has ruled that the batting and bowling powerplays must be used between the 15^th and 40^th overs. It is as if the hosts of a party decide to ask guests to arrive at five rather than eight, in the belief that this will lead to three hours’ more fun. As we all know, what actually happens is that everybody goes home at half past seven, leaving the rest of the evening an anti-climax.

Such is the effect of the change on the shape of one-day innings. In quite a number of domestic one-day games the loss of two or three wickets in the powerplay has meant that the closing phase of innings were spent with the lower order scratching around for runs, rather than with big shots being played by the leading batsmen.

So the approach adopted by Williamson and Franklin was wise. They got runs where they could by playing orthodox shots, but made not getting out their priority. The risks to wickets that aggression during the powerplay involves means that captains might consider taking the batting powerplay immediately after the bowling powerplay, to get it out of the way.

Unfortunately, the advantage was lost when Williamson was caught behind of Tsotsobe in the over following the powerplay, and the momentum was hard to maintain against Steyn and Morne Morkel in the closing overs. Only 54 came from the last eight, leaving South Africa with 254 to win, which appeared at least 25 short of a testing target.

There was early encouragement when both Amla and Smith went early. This brought in Kallis, who immediately looked comfortable. But I had just made a note about how good he was at manufacturing legside shots to short balls despite having almost no room when he was out in exactly that fashion, caught at square leg off Bracewell.

At 35 for three the match was New Zealand’s to win, but coming out to bat was AB de Villiers, who in the recent home series against Sri Lanka averaged 110. Supported first by JP Duminy, and then by Faf du Plessis (whose absence from the Test squad measures the depth available to South Africa) de Villiers took South Africa home in the 46^th over, scoring an unbeaten 106 from as many balls. He batted with the ease of somebody solving The Times crossword during a tea break without a dictionary.

The uncomfortable truth that South Africa are a much better side than New Zealand is just dawning on home supporters. This is no disgrace as South Africa are better than pretty well everybody at the moment, England included if the recent debacle in the Gulf against Pakistan is anything to go by. They return to Wellington for the third Test.

New Zealand v South Africa, T20, the Cake Tin, Wellington, Friday 17 February 2012

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/345/345875.html

After six years in Wellington, at last! An evening sufficiently warm and windless for it to be a pleasure to watch cricket under floodlights past 10 pm. The game was worthy of the weather, with some quality play evading the format’s attempts to suppress it. It was the first international contest of a tour that features three matches in each version of the game.

In six weeks’ time we will know if the unusually upbeat attitude of local supporters is warranted. This optimism has its origins largely in a pulsating couple of hours at Hobart in December, when productivity in this country slumped as people gathered round televisions to watch the New Zealand attack knock over the Australian middle order only for Warner and Lyon to edge within eight runs of victory before Doug Bracewell sealed New Zealand’s first Test win over the West Islanders in two decades.

Also, the triumph of the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup has breached the levees of pessimism that habitually protect the Kiwi sports fan from the disappointment borne by unreasonable expectations. National sporting self-belief is at record levels. Nevertheless, the smashing of the Zimbabweans in all forms has been discounted; we don’t like to lose, but neither do we enjoy winning too easily. The South Africans will tell us whether Guptill, Williamson, Bracewell and the rest are genuine diamonds, or merely paste.

Brendon McCullum, captain in the absence of the injured Ross Taylor, won the toss and put South Africa in. Opening the batting were Richard Levi and Hashim Amla. I first saw Amla when I covered some of the South African under-19 tour here for CricInfo in 2001. He was gangly, bespectacled, beardless and bursting with class as a batsman. Amla was picked for the Test team when only 21. The South African selectors persevered with him despite a return of only one century and one fifty in the first couple of years. As with all non-white cricketers picked for South Africa who do not perform to the upper limit of expectations all the time, the accusation was made that he owed his place to racial quotas. In fact, the selectors were making a long-term investment in talent, just as England did with Ian Bell. The statistics show the wisdom of this. Amla’s Test average is 46 and he is No 1 in the ODI batting rankings.

Tonight, he cover drove Mills for six in the fourth over, but was run out in an unusual way next ball. Mills stopped a straight drive, but continued following through, leaving the ball stationary in the bowling crease. Amla set off for a single, but had underestimated Guptill who slid in from mid off to collect the ball, the stumps and the batsman in that order. They won’t underestimate Guptill again, not after today.

The McCullums combined to dismiss Ingram for a duck. Nathan turned one sharply past the advancing outside edge and the younger brother collected the ball at the second attempt and whipped the bails off. The off spinner bowled the first four overs from the Southern End, three in the powerplay, and went for only 16.

Tim Southee came on at the other end and immediately tested Levi’s patience, not to mention his IQ, by pushing mid on back to the fence. The batsman failed on both counts, slogging the first ball after the change straight to the relocated fielder. In the belief that if he’d fall for that, he’d fall for anything, I attempted to find Levi after the game to offer to sell him the Beehive for $500.  

Southee is bowling, at least when the spirit moves him, at over 140 kph, 10 kph faster than a year ago. If he can still swing it at that speed it will take him to the next level as an international bowler. Today, he finished with 3 for 28.

De Villiers scratched around to little effect before driving Roneel Hira hard to cover where Guptill claimed a low catch. The South African captain waited for the TV replay to offer clarification. Of course, it did nothing of the sort. It never does for low catches. We will have to wait for 3D TV to become established before technology can help in this area. De Villiers went anyway, and it seemed the right decision.

New Zealand had something of a strangle on at this point. Kane Williamson conceded only two from his first over and after 13 overs South Africa were only 72 for 4 on a pitch where a par score would be 160-plus. Justin Ontong – a controversial selection ahead of Graeme Smith – addressed the situation in Williamson’s next over by hitting four sixes from successive balls (all to the mid-wicket/wide long-on area), something I had not seen in 47 years of spectating. John Shepherd hit four sixes in one over off Hallam Moseley of Somerset in a Sunday League game at Canterbury in 1973, but they were not off successive deliveries.

Ontong fell to the next ball he faced, Southee pulling off a caught and bowled almost as spectacular as Shane Bond’s to dismiss Cameron White at this ground in 2007. This was representative of a brilliant fielding display. Not a chance was dropped, not a run given away. The difference between the two sides in the field was about 20 runs, the difference between defeat and victory. Another example was provided by Kyle Mills, who dived in from long leg to catch top scorer JP Duminy for 41.

South Africa finished on 147 for six, better than looked likely half an hour before, but not enough to stretch New Zealand, particularly if Martin Guptill could continue his recent form.

Guptill had hit five fifties in as many innings against Zimbabwe; could he continue the run against stronger opposition? A hint came quickly enough with a pulled six off Albie Morkel in the third over. Three overs later the question was answered, first with a six that went into the upper reaches of the stand at mid-wicket. Then came a quite extraordinary repeat, which hit the roof of this sizeable stadium, a feat I would not have believed possible had I not been there to see it. TV estimated the distance as 127 metres. Essex supporters will be pleased to note that the unfortunate bowler was Lonwabo Tsotsobe, sacked by the county for poor effort and attitude last season.

I have often compared Guptill with the great CJ Tavaré, on the basis that he concentrates on defence in Tests, but unleashes hell in shorter forms. Even I have to admit that the roof would have been beyond Tav’s range (though I was there when he put Vic Marks in the Tone at Taunton one sunny day in 1982).

If you don’t like Guptill enough already, consider this: he has turned down the chance of an IPL contract to improve his game in county cricket. For Derbyshire! Cricket’s Albert Schweitzer.

Guptill was 78 not out at the end, well supported by Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson, but it was by no means a straightforward progress. Indeed, with 30 required from four overs, the situation was uncomfortably redolent of the last sporting fixture I saw at this venue, the Rugby World Cup quarter-final between Australia and South Africa. For much of the game nothing seemed more certain than that the Springboks would romp away at some point, but the Wallabies held on for an unlikely win.

You could tell it was getting exciting because at least half the crowd abandoned alternative forms of entertainment, such as drinking, starting Mexican waves, mesmerising each other with shiny objects, shouting and drinking, and started watching the cricket. In the event, the South Africans blinked, just as their meatier compatriots had done, and the game was secured when Jimmy Franklin cover drove a boundary with four balls to spare.

It is foolish to draw any conclusions from a single T20 match, particularly when the South Africans have Kallis, Smith, Steyn and Philander in reserve for the proper stuff. But New Zealand’s performance today makes the prospect of what is to come all the more relishable.

Cricket grounds in winter: St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury

Unlike my visits to Bath and Bristol, this was not a return after a long absence. I have had a wander around the St Lawrence Ground on almost every occasion on which I have been back to the UK, and have watched cricket there several times, most recently in April 2010:

http://mylifeincricketscorecards.blogspot.com/2010/04/kent-v-loughborough-university-st.html

This time, I was looking forward, not back. My purpose was to inspect the redevelopment, which, after some delay, has got under way in the 18 months since I was last here. We are promised that it is Kent's financial salvation, but at what other cost? On a glorious November afternoon, quite nice enough for there to be play, I went to find out.

Continuity is what I was looking for. That it would remain recognisably the same ground as that on which I first watched cricket on in the sixties, or that on which Les Ames and Frank Woolley batted and Tich Freeman bowled, come to that. It is pleasing to report that, so far at least, impressions are favourable.

The old practice area, an attractive part of the ground backed by a converted oast house, has disappeared under housing. Alec Stewart will be pleased. In a recent edition of The Cricketer, he blamed the St Lawrence practice pitches for England's early exit from the 1999 World Cup. It was not clear where they have been relocated. Nor did I work out how the new owners get to and from their homes. Will they have to pay admission on matchdays?

There is more building going on off the main driveway, consisting of a new administration block and other facilities including, it was announced this week, a small Sainsbury's. This is very good, though they had better lay in extra supplies of Scotch eggs next time I'm there. Every ground should have a supermarket close by. Folkestone had one right outside, one of the reasons why it was such a great place to watch cricket. Here in New Zealand, Seddon Park in Hamilton has a shopping centre just across the road. I once had a haircut and a sit-down lunch and was still back in my seat by the time the first ball of the afternoon session was bowled. More building, including a hotel on the Old Dover Road side of the ground, is to follow.

Five floodlight towers have been installed (all telescopic so as not offend to the sensibilities of the residents in this well-heeled part of town): next to the Leslie Ames Stand, beside the indoor school, next to the Frank Woolley Stand, behind where the white scoreboard used to be and near the site of the old lime tree. I disapprove of course, but not on aesthetic grounds. Floodlights, lit or not, add a certain grandeur to sports grounds. It is simply that conditions in England are not suited to floodlit cricket. I have long thought that English cricket should make more use of long summer evenings with matches in June and July starting later and finishing at 8 or 8.30 pm. It would be perfectly possible to begin T20 games at 6 pm, or even 6.30 pm in the north. Outside the height of summer, conditions are rarely conducive to after-dark viewing, spectacular though it can be.

The good news is this: far from being ruined as some of us feared, the stands that define the playing arena have been entrenched and enhanced. I worried that they might do away with the wooden stand, or pavilion annexe as it was officially known. But it has been given a proper name at last, and what a good one: the Underwood and Knott Stand. The very place from which I used to watch the two great heroes of my youth now named after them. Splendid.

Best of all, the regretable late-sixties brick dressing rooms have been extended and transformed so as to fit in perfectly with the wooden, red-tiled buildings on either side. They look as though they might have been there since 1906, when the Underwood and Knott Stand was built.

The shop was open and I was sufficiently relieved and impressed by what I had seen to buy a club polo shirt, so the white horse will be seen at the Basin this summer. The redevelopment seems to be having the desired financial benefits too; the club has just announced a six-figure profit for the past year. Too late to keep Joe Denly on the premises, but a sign that things will soon be on the up, we hope.

Wellington v Northern Districts, T20, Basin Reserve, 11 January 2012

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-domestic-2011/engine/current/match/526638.html

The pohutukawas are out so the Basin is wrapped in cardinal's scarlet, even if more fitting attire for today's match – a bottom-of-the-table affair with neither side having a realistic chance of qualifying for the final – might be the rough-hewn vestments of a country priest.

The shorter format has the cricket world in its grip as the year begins. Two games from the West Indies T20 competition were on offer on the telly earlier in the day. The first was Sussex v the Netherlands in Antigua. Only a decade ago such a contest in such a place would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Later, there was a game from the Big Bash competition. Who knew that the Australians could do onomatopoeia?

Before the game began the teams lined up for a minute's silence in memory of the eleven victims of the ballooning accident that took place last weekend 40 miles or so from Wellington. The home players wore black armbands. With our small population, tragedies of this kind are more deeply felt in New Zealand than they are in more populous countries. But these memorial moments at sports fixtures now happen so often that they are in danger of becoming mere tokenism (“who is it today then?” I have heard people say as we rise to make solemn observance). The Australians, it sometimes appears, rarely take the field these days without their armbands. It cannot be long before the marketing people bring their characteristic soullessness to this, mark my words: “Granny dead?The Woolongong Wombats have a space on their armband for her and, in return for a large sum, will stand around looking non-specifically sad for several seconds before play (unless it rains in which case Duckworth-Lewis applies)”.

Northern Districts won the toss and chose to bat. Kane Williamson opened and anchored the innings with 53 from 41 balls. He continues to look a class above almost everybody else at this level. When he was out the innings lost momentum. Scott Styris scored 23 without looking convincing. He was dropped off a towering top edge, wicket keeper Brendon Taylor waiting under it for an age before the Wellington wind made a fool of him, as it will. He barely touched it. Andy McKay was outstanding with one for 16.

The last over started with Northern Districts on 138. Wellington appeared to have every chance of restricting the total to below 150, which would leave the home team in the box seat. Vettori (hirsuiteness update: short hair, big beard, a look of the ayatollah about him) took a single from the first ball leaving Peter McGlashan to face Mark Gillespie. My mind went back to a 50-over game three years ago when the same combination faced each other at the climax. McGlashan then needed nine from the last two balls for a one-wicket win. He dealt with the matter straightforwardly by twice hitting Gillespie past the scoreboard and out of the ground for wind-assisted sixes. Today it seemed that McGlashan had remembered those events while Gillespie had forgotten. The second ball of the over was lifted onto the roof of the JR Reid Gate, the third clearing the boundary squarer. A third successive six enabled McGlashan to demonstrate that he is New Zealand's most proficient reverse hitter, as he pulled the ball over the cover boundary. A four in the same manner with a single to finish took Northern Districts to a formidable 162.

Three wickets fell in the first four overs of the reply, and that was more or less it. One of T20's main weaknesses is that there is no coming back from a bad start. Rory Hamilton-Brown, the Surrey captain brought in for the second half of the T20 competition in the manner of a pilot coming on board the Titanic just as it hits the iceberg, hung around for seven overs as opener, but scored only seven runs, a Boycottian rate of progress in this context.

The whole Northern Districts attack was proficient, with Vettori applying a mid-innings strangle as Derek Underwood used to do of a Sunday afternoon, and Tim Southee outstanding. The wonder is how a side so full of talent could find itself superior to Wellington only on run rate at the start of the game. Another of T20's issues is that it is too great a leveller.

It will be a month before I can watch more live cricket, but then it will be the South Africans, in town in all three forms, so it will be worth the wait.