It wasn't a massive crowd but a content one on the opening day in Seddon Park © Andrew Miller

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.

New Zealand Cricket may well have hit upon the answer to the malaise. There were probably no more than 3000 fans scattered around Seddon Park for the first day's play, but it felt more like 30,000. There was an engagement with the game that has been miserably absent from too many contests at too many venues around the world. The fans were able to spread out as they pleased on the grassy banks at the city end, or wander round the boundary's edge past the tea and burger stalls. They were welcomed onto the pitch during intervals, and allowed to play French cricket on the concourse, and generally invited to make the place their own while the contest burbled on behind them.

Imagine if those same 3000 fans had been watching in the Jade Stadium in Christchurch, or any similar multi-sports structure around the world. They'd have been scattered among tiers of empty seating, their voices and interest lost to the four winds. They would have been forbidden access to unspecified areas, hassled by armies of security guards and generally made to feel like trespassers. That's not necessarily the fault of the stadiums concerned, more an aspect of Test cricket's unique nature. A degree of boredom is inevitable over an eight-hour day. The best antidote is a venue that recognises this fact.

There's a reason why Lord's and Trent Bridge are the two best cricket-watching venues on the English Test circuit - they are the two most attractive grounds, and the most conducive to roaming. There is a reason why the Gabba in Brisbane was so loathed by the English fans during the last Ashes. The days of the dog track are long gone - it is a super-stadium these days, better suited to a quick burst of Aussie rules than cricket, where everyone has a designated seat and where the fun police patrol to ensure that no-one strays out of line. Adelaide was the supporter's stand-out ground, not least on that incredible final day when every office-block in town poured out onto the hill to witness Australia's coup.

And there is a reason why Test matches in Pakistan are virtually ignored, even when India come to visit. They are soulless and dusty concrete bowls, where the sun beats down on the bleachers to drain even the hardiest fan of their will to sit it out. On England's last tour the PCB threw open the gates and invited everyone in for free. It worked to a certain degree in the provincial town of Multan, the scene of the first Test, but by the last game in Lahore the numbers had dwindled to a handful. A far more pleasurable solution, and surely more profitable in the long run, would have been to host the Test match at the beautiful Bagh-e-Jinnah in the centre of Lahore's foremost park. If the pitch was good enough for a first-class warm-up, it could cope with a full five days.

Sadly the trend in most countries is in the opposite direction. The West Indies have wiped out most of their ancient and atmospheric venues, replacing them with excessive concrete structures such as the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua - tastefully built maybe, but entirely out of keeping with the local preference. And in Sri Lanka, the wonderful Asgiriya Stadium in Kandy, where Muttiah Muralitharan recently broke the world record to the delight of his local supporters, will soon make way for a purpose-built out-of-town structure.

But for the time being, Hamilton is the home for England's cricketers, fans and media, and a very appealing home it is proving to be. The only slight issue, one that is common to all such grounds, is the catering for the glut of media who've piled in to watch the match. During the recent one-day international, Ian Botham famously refused to commentate from the top of the stack of Portacabins that had been erected to house the spillover - and it has to be said, there is a perceptible wobble whenever the winds get up. But all told, it's a small price to pay for the aesthetics we've been granted in this game.

	Rowers on the Waikato river © Andrew Miller

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.

It's a peculiar world, particularly for the print journalist fraternity, whose copy sits and gathers dust for a full 36 hours before seeing the light of day, which lends a certain futility to the traditional pre-match rituals. A similar lag is experienced in the other direction. Faraway tales of derring-do, be it Manchester United's tracking of Arsenal in the Premier League or Prince Harry's Afghan escapades, seep into the country under cover of darkness, to be commented upon or ignored as you please, but never shoved down your throat as they are in the feeding frenzy of Britain's media-driven society.

The denizens of Hamilton are happily unencumbered by such a thirst for information. They have more visceral pleasures to keep them happy, such as the great Waitako river, New Zealand's longest, which carves the city in half in the most elegant manner possible. A deep tree-lined gorge separates east from west, which reverberates all day long to the hum of crickets as you walk along the footpaths beneath the city's two main bridges. It's the sort of natural attraction that encourages passers-by say hello to you as you cross - and not many cities can boast that kind of karmic influence.

Aside from the packs of ducks rioting over bread rolls, there's only one disturbance to the peace at river level, and even that's a very mild one - the regular swell of rowing boats surging past, pursued by their dinghys and loudhailers. Presumably this happens all year round, but right now, the sound of swishing blades is very much in vogue. There is a contest taking place down on the nearby Lake Karapiro that has captured the public imagination (such as it is), and tomorrow's culmination might even overshadow the cricket.

The event is Rob Waddell versus Mahe Drysdale in the battle of the Olympic Single Sculls. Both men are Kiwis, both men are hot favourites for medals at Beijing this year, but only one man can represent his country at the big event. In a best-of-three shoot-out, Drysdale took the first race only for Waddell to claw his way back by half a length. The final reckoning was meant to take place this morning, but choppy waters caused a postponement. Instead it will take place at dawn tomorrow, in front of a teeming throng of early birds. If Hamilton's grass banks are emptier than anticipated come the start of the Test, then rest assured, it's not entirely apathy-generated.

	Gloomy scenes in Dunedin © Cricinfo Ltd.

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.

The city is not without its attractions. There is the cultural centre of the Octagon with its statue of Robbie Burns in the middle, flanked by St Paul's Anglican cathedral and the baroque-interiored Regent Theatre. New Zealand's only castle lies just down the road, and the city even boasts the world's most southern motorway, the ten-kilometre stretch of State Highway One that heads out towards the airport, as well as the world's steepest street, Baldwin Street, which runs near vertically up the hills at the northern end of town.

There's only one culture that counts, however. And that's to be found down at Carisbrook, the self-styled House of Pain, which is home to the local rugby giants, the Otago Highlanders. The Scottish theme is ramped up to the max on match days, from the sponsored plastic broadswords with which the youth of the town chase each other around the concourse, to the team's mascot, a kilted hairy muscleman who looks as though he's leapt straight off the front of a pack of Scott's Porage Oats. The stadium is even situated on Murrayfield Street, which can hardly be a coincidence.

The New South Wales Waratahs were in town on Saturday night for the latest round of the Super 14, the Southern Hemisphere's premier club tournament, and they were treated to some of the filthiest weather their hosts could muster. It hardly dampened the spirits of the majority of the crowd, however. Some 3000 students on orientation week at Otago University were packed into the uncovered Eastern terrace, incongruously decked out in yellow-and-blue boiler suits and hard hats.

They were treated to a game of recklessly open rugby - the Super 14 frowns on such old-fashioned concepts as forward play, even when the weather is too wet to hold onto a pass. Possession was turned over with alarming frequency, but only 27 points were scored all told, as the Waratahs came from behind to win 15-12. As an exhibition, it was entertaining but strangely unnourishing - a warped hybrid of Rugby League's fast pace and Aussie Rules's reliance on kicking for position. On this flimsy evidence, it's easier to understand how both Australia and New Zealand came croppers so early in the World Cup.

The scars of that quarter-final defeat are still raw, incidentally. For all that the local sports shops still proclaim the All Blacks to be the "Champions of the World ®", navel-gazing is New Zealand's new national sport. On Saturday, Otago's Daily Times ran a full-page report into the state of the Highlanders finances. "If Otago rugby is a microcosm of New Zealand rugby," it declared, "then these are indeed trying times." The club is $6 million and rising in debt, and Carisbrook - Otago's home for 100 years - is under threat from the developers.

Which brings us back to the cricket. There is something quaint and wholesome about Dunedin's University Oval, with its solitary under-stated grandstand and appealing tree-lined vista. But it's impossible to escape the feeling that England and its entourage have stepped into another dimension on this trip. If rugby, the bedrock of New Zealand society, is feeling the pinch of financial reality, then God help the cricketers, most of whom barely raise an eyebrow among the general public. The distant din of the IPL, and all the money associated with it, is sure to be heard more loudly as this series wears on. Even in the furthest extremities of cricket's universe.

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.

The scenery might have been imported as well. Were it not for the suspiciously Antipodean touches en route from the airport to town, I might have believed I was driving through the Peak District or the lowlands of Scotland. Rolling hills and golf courses on either side of the road, with each new landmark being pointed out by Tony, my comically lugubrious taxi driver. It was the bright yellow gumboot on the hard shoulder that did it for me. Apparently, my guide informed me, it had been lying there unclaimed for all of two days.

The pace of life out here, I surmised from that comment, is pretty relaxed. "We're going to hit rush hour head-on," added Tony. "It shouldn't worry you too much." Sure enough, we chugged through town with scarcely a break for a traffic light, past the sprawling Carisbrooke Stadium where the Otago Highlanders are due to take on the Waratahs on Saturday night, and on into the centre of town. Dunedin is the fifth-largest city in the country, and second only to Christchurch on the South Island. But with a population of 120,000, it is barely a quarter of the size of Edinburgh, the city from which it derived its name.

Dunedin's Scottish influence is abundantly clear, and not just from the weather and scenery. Propped up in the window of the first bookshop I passed was a copy of the 2008 Broons annual, a comic-book I rarely imagined I'd find so far south of the border. Or have I journeyed so far south I've ended up in the world's northern-most reaches? Right now, it's a little hard to tell.