March 5, 2008
Embracing the atmosphere
Posted by Andrew Miller on 03/05/2008 in England in New Zealand 2007-08
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It wasn't a massive crowd but a content one on the opening day in Seddon Park
© Andrew Miller
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There was something of an outcry when the Test venues were announced for England's tour of New Zealand. The two biggest population centres of the North and South Island are Auckland and Christchurch respectively, and they have the two biggest stadiums to boot, but neither city was awarded a match. Instead New Zealand cricket farmed its big games out to the "boutique venues" of Hamilton, Wellington's Basin Reserve and Napier. To judge by the crowd on the first day of the series, it was the most sensible decision they've made in years.
It wasn't that it was a massive crowd, but it was a content one. In this era of quick-fix cricket, a five-day Test is a hefty commitment for all parties but perhaps most significantly the fans. With the plethora of TV angles and multi-media coverage available these days, most aspects of a match can actually be better appreciated in one's armchair - especially if, for one reason or another, the fan concerned is too busy to commit to eight hours in a stadium.
The only thing that remains sacrosanct is the atmosphere. There's still no feeling quite like the "I was there" variety, but increasingly in Test matches around the world, no-one's been there. "It's been a long time since we had a decent crowd for a Test match," remarked Daniel Vettori on the eve of this match, and he wasn't playing to the gallery. England bucks the global trend because of its deep-rooted affection for the traditional form of the game, and thanks to the strength of the pound and their willingness to travel with it, the Barmy Army is welcomed with open arms wherever it roams. But for Test cricket, home audiences are thin on the ground no matter where you look.
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March 4, 2008
Wandering around Waikato
Posted by Andrew Miller on 03/04/2008 in England in New Zealand 2007-08
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Rowers on the Waikato river
© Andrew Miller
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| It's amazing what a difference 500 miles makes. For the first time on this tour I've been able to ditch the thermals and don the short sleeves, as we bid farewell to the icy environs of Dunedin, and prepare to bask in the relative heat and humidity of Hamilton. To get from the southern end of the South Island to the northern end of the North takes two hop-like plane rides - a quick bounce on the tarmac at Wellington and then back up into the embrace of the long white cloud itself.
Presumably life will get livelier once the cricket gets underway, but for the time being Hamilton remains as determinedly downbeat as its southerly cousin. I find first impressions are generally fairly accurate, so when it transpired that the airport is a taxi-free zone, the nature of New Zealand's seventh-largest city became that tiny bit clearer. It took half-an-hour of loitering and three phone calls before anyone turned up to take us to town. Fortunately nobody has yet been in a hurry on this trip.
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March 1, 2008
The furthest extremity of cricket's universe
Posted by Andrew Miller on 03/01/2008 in England in New Zealand 2007-08
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Gloomy scenes in Dunedin
© Cricinfo Ltd.
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There is a famous Billy Connolly sketch that might have been written with Dunedin in mind. During Britain's days of Empire, it was Connolly's fellow Scots who led the way in colonising the world, but in his opinion, they wouldn't have bothered to go further than the Mediterranean had they found somewhere cold enough and wet enough to remind them of home. "Further south!" was the cry every time they made landfall, but eventually, having rumbled through Africa, Asia and the Antipodes, they could go no further. And so they stopped.
And lo, they created Dunedin, the Scottish capital of the southern hemisphere. They couldn't have chosen a more appropriate resting place if they'd tried. When it's as cold and drizzly as it was for the final sessions of England's warm-up at the University Oval, Dunedin really does feel like the last place on earth. The closing overs were played out in front of a spartan crowd of thermal-hugging hardies, who wouldn't have looked out of place at The Grange in Edinburgh. It was nice weather for albatrosses, as they might say at the nearby Otago Peninsular.
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February 28, 2008
Where time becomes a loop
Posted by Andrew Miller on 02/28/2008 in England in New Zealand 2007-08
I feel as though I have been in stasis for the past 72 hours. Time has been suspended, inverted, stretched and compressed, with mere snapshots remaining of a ludicrously protracted journey. It all began before daybreak on Monday morning, on the Piccadilly Line in London, onto which I shuffled at six o'clock in the morning, bound for Heathrow Airport. It continued through 13 hours of in-flight poker and serial ipod abuse en route to Singapore, a jewel of a city-state that I have now visited three times, but never for longer than an hour and a half.
Next stop, Auckland. The City of Sails by day; the city of room service and snatched winks of sleep by night. Seven hours in an airport motel were enlivened by a non-functioning room key that refused to let me into my room in the first instance, then refused to allow me to leave thereafter. Then it was down to Dunedin, so far south on the South Island of New Zealand that the next stop would appear to be Antarctica. And then, as I touched down, I realised. The further you travel, the more things stay the same.
It was raining when I landed, but not the sort of rain I've previously associated with the Southern Hemisphere. This was a dank, drizzly type of rain - the type that turns hillsides a lush green and leaves sheep feeling waterlogged and morose. In other words, it was rain that might have been imported direct from the United Kingdom.
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