John Morrison is now a city councillor in Wellington © Getty Images

John “Mystery” Morrison aka the Mouth. Or “Mystery and the Mouth”. A former Test player who is now a city councillor in Wellington. The best man to talk to when rain and spirits are coming down. Not for nothing did he get those nicknames.

First an explanation for the names. “When I first got picked for Wellington, Don Neely, who is now the president of New Zealand Cricket, reckoned that my bowling was hopeless,” Mystery says. “And he couldn’t work out why I was getting so many wickets in local tournaments. And I bowled slow left-armers, and he reckoned they did nothing. I said they do a lot more. Just that you can’t work it out, and neither can any other batsman.

“I once said, ‘Well if you are going to argue about who’s the best bowler and that I can’t bowl, everybody put 10 dollars in the kitty, and whoever gets the best figures in Saturday’s club cricket wins the poll.’ You wouldn’t believe it, I actually bowled four overs, four maidens, and took four wickets. Never happened before, never happened since. Two of them were caught at the boundary. And Don was in despair at this point. ‘How can you possibly get wickets? You don’t do anything,’ he said.”

“‘Well you know it’s the mystery of the whole thing,’ I said. They had a sports post that used to be printed here, and the headline was ‘Mystery bowler cleans up Karori’. One of those in-house nicknames that stuck.” And he managed just two wickets in 17 Tests.

If it is not clear by now why he is also called the Mouth, read on. “Maybe I am [the Mouth]. Maybe I talk too much. I did have a radio programme called ‘Mystery and the Mouth’. An English fellow called Miles Davis, and he certainly had a mouth, came up with it. I suggested ‘Mystery and the Mayor’ because I worked very closely with the mayor.

“But it’s fun, it’s rather strange, you can imagine how many times I have been the mystery speaker at dinners and what have you. People call me and ask me, ‘Will you be the mystery speaker?’ as if no one else has thought of it. So it’s strange. Look it’s more fun than being called John.”

But there was a time when the Mouth struggled for words. When the Mouth met his match. When he was doing commentary during the 1992 World Cup, off TV because TVNZ didn’t want to send commentators over to Australia. The Mouth’s match then was Henry Blofeld.

“Henry Blofeld was a guest commentator. And Henry is not afraid of a drink, he is particularly partial to red wine. And a day-night game in Australia - not only does it not start till 2pm, here because of time difference it starts at 4pm. So Henry had had a pretty big lunch, and a very big quota of red wine. And he came in to the room, and with all due respects to Henry he didn’t know which way he was pointing.

“The funny thing was, I think Pakistan were playing Sri Lanka, and Henry for half an hour didn’t mention any player at all. ‘Oh my dear old thing,’ he went. ‘How delightful … Isn’t this absolutely wonderful … Don’t they look wonderful in coloured shirts … Gee isn’t the game wonderful … These Sri Lankans are so exciting, and Pakistanis are so exciting … Mystery, my dear old fellow, pass the glass over, would you?’ He went on like that for half an hour. Never mentioned a ball bowled.

“And I am sitting there saying 'Henry, we are trying to commentate a World Cup match for heaven’s sakes'. ‘Oh my dear old thing, don’t worry about that,’ Henry went. ‘No it’s a lovely day, look everybody is happy. Don’t they look super out there on the field. I am sure they are going to bat well and bowl well.’ And never mentioned a player.”

There are many more funny stories that the Mouth tells, but they will remain a Mystery because of time constraints. “If you need anything, give me a yell,” says John before leaving after the rain has brought an early end to the Basin Reserve Test. A city councillor saying that is a good note to end the tour on.

	Don Neely and his 'monster' © Cricinfo Ltd.

One would be surprised if the book in the picture were not the biggest ever written on cricket, in terms of height and weight. The ‘monster’ weighs “21-and-half kilos” and needs a separate table for itself. When it was presented at Lord’s, John Arlott called it a “pocket battleship of a fleet”.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knew more about New Zealand cricket than the man holding the book, or much more in volume about cricket in general. Don Neely wrote Men In White, a comprehensive history of New Zealand cricket, played first-class cricket for Wellington and Auckland, led Wellington to the Plunkett Shield in his first year as captain without the services of John Reid, Bob Blair and Bruce Morrison, became a national selector, and is now the NZC president.

It took Don five years to write this book, juggling his business tours with writing, which involved research from world over. He doesn’t know how many words he wrote – and literally wrote, for he didn’t use a typewriter.

But he does remember the book has 1600 photographs, each of which is a story in itself. There are about 50 words to each caption, adding up to some 80,000 words just in photo descriptions. Within two weeks 1200 copies of the limited edition had been sold.

Don is the most prominent historian in the country. But he will be given a tough fight, when it comes to history, by his wife Paddianne, who is herself an archivist and has worked hard with him on many of his 30 books. Between them, Don and Paddianne are an encyclopedia of cricket history, delightful anecdotes, and refreshingly a present-day perspective.

Ask them about Eric Tindill, the oldest surviving Test cricketer, and they will tell you how Tindill – at 98 years and 109 days - is a few months short – 215 days to be precice – of becoming the longest lived Test cricketer. Don also remembers that the last two or three oldest surviving cricketers have been from New Zealand. The last was Don Cleverly. “There must be something in our water,” he says. But it’s not just numbers that matter to the Neelies.

Paddianne remembers a call she got from a lady enquiring about the whereabouts of Sid Ward, who is now 102. They tracked him down and discovered he had played with Tindill. A special reunion was arranged.

These two men had played their cricket and rugby (Tindill played both cricket and rugby Tests, and also umpired in both) together in the 1930s, and met again after an average lifespan gone by. The correspondent on the phone, by the way, was Ward’s niece.

Paddianne and Don’s meeting also had something to do with cricket. Don used to play with Dave Crowe, who was Paddianne’s cousin. And Dave was Martin and Jeff’s father and Russell Crowe’s uncle. When the Neelies’ son was getting married, Crowe senior tried to scare the bride. “You need to have cricketing blood to get into this family. We have the Crowes, the Neelies. What do you have?”

Not realising that this was a joke, she went to her father and told him of the predicament. The father told her to ask Crowe if WG Grace would do. And this was no joke, because her great grandmother was a first cousin of WG’s and she didn’t even know of it. The marriage went on, and the Neelies’ granddaughter is named – well – Grace. Now that’s a cricketing family.

	The scoreboard after New Zealand's first Test win © Cricinfo Ltd

Even as New Zealand discontinues daylight-saving on Sunday, and moves all its clocks and watches behind by one hour, time will continue to stand still at the Basin Reserve. It is an old-world venue, situated bang in the centre of modern and hectic Wellington, almost oblivious to the mad traffic outside. There has been talk a few times of bringing it down to facilitate smoother flow of traffic towards the airport, the eastern suburbs and the south shore, but the Basin, protected by the Act of Parliament, has defied modernity.

If any more proof of this is needed, just step inside the New Zealand Cricket Museum in the Old Grandstand. From the triumphant to the funny, from the tragic to the quirky, from the brave to the under-hand, from the Addington bat (the third-oldest bat ever, used in 1743 and bought for 1600 pounds in 1987) to the aluminium bat (one of the few Dennis Lillee got made, he may or may not have used this dented piece of furniture), it’s all here.

And then there is David Mealing, the curator of the museum, whose beard rivals WG Grace’s. David tells every tale depicted in the museum so delightfully as if he has just come to know of it.

The Museum tour starts with the quote, “Cricket is a game for the low and for the great”, from The Jovial Cricketers, along with other various other definitions of cricket, for the uninitiated. They have the “substitute ball” that the Australian and New Zealand war prisoners in Italy used. The ball's core is made of corks from champagne bottles that their officers gave them, and the outer cover comes from twine (something between a thread and a string) from the Red Cross parcels they used to get. The shape is a perfect sphere. Talking of balls they have the one that Noel McGregor caught to take New Zealand to their first-ever Test victory, in 1956 against West Indies.

The rare DVD footage at the museum is the real gem. There’s Bert Sutcliffe talking about the legendary last-wicket partnership between him and Bob Blair at Ellis Park against South Africa in 1953-54. “Seven sixes later they [the crowd] were still going wild,” Sutcliffe says. “One of those lovely stupid things.” He talks of the “eerie hush” that surrounded the ground when the crowd saw Blair come out to bat. It is a story, as Dick Brittenden mentions in The Finest Years, that “every New Zealand boy should learn at his mother's knee”. But Sutcliffe, in a moist voice, says, “It was a day that never should have been.”

There is Peter Petherick talking about his hat-trick on debut, and it was three fine batsmen he picked: Javed Miandad, Wasim Raja and Intikhab Alam. Ian Smith, the interviewer here, talks like a wicketkeeper should. “It is rare footage [as on the big screen Intikhab Alam walks to a bat-pad appeal] to see a Pakistani walk.” Petherick remembers looking at the umpire in despair, and then at Intikhab in pleasant surprise. “It was really good of Intikhab to walk. I would have been surprised if I had got him lbw.”

Talking of umpires, they have Fred Goodall’s boots too, and also the footage of Colin Croft shoving him out of his way as he went close to the stumps to deliver. Goodall stood his ground there, but the stumps that Michael Holding kicked didn’t.

The teams of the 80s, New Zealand’s most successful, is given a different section. John Wright remembers his debut, when a charitable decision by the umpire let him off, and he played a part in New Zealand’s first Test win over England. “I went on to thrill the Basin crowd, with 55 in a day [at a strike-rate of 22.54].”

Another section tells the story of how Clarrie Grimmett was “brought home”, when the museum bought every memorabilia put on auction. Grimmett’s Bodyline blazer now hangs proudly there.

The most interesting and amusing wall of the museum is the one covering the New Zealand players’ experiences on tour, outside cricket. The base of a case has the tiger skin that the Maharajah of Vizianagram gifted to John Reid on the 1995-56 tour to India. There is a ticket to the Foolish Kings by the Crazy Gang in Victoria Palace from an England tour.

	Bert Sutcliffe finds a place in New Zealand's all-time XI © Cricinfo Ltd

The players talk of how the New Zealand administrators didn’t know anything about India’s culture or weather when they sent the team out, in woollen pants. Harry Cave, the captain, was a keen diarist, and his hand-written diary extracts are there. Some of the players remember wearing the towels as nappies and playing, one remembers putting in too much effort in the delivery and s***ing his pants, and running straight through to the pavilion. The longest follow-through ever.

Don Neely, former first-class cricketer, historian and now the NZC president, Frank Cameron and Gavin Larsen have selected an all-time New Zealand XI, whose pictures and stats take one section of the museum. In batting order, according the New Zealand Cricket Museum, the best-ever New Zealand XI is: Glenn Turner, Stewie Dempster, Bert Sutcliffe, Martin Crowe, John Reid, Martin Donnelly, Chris Cairns, Richard Hadlee, Ian Smith, Daniel Vettori and John Cowie.

There’s a theatre inside where “Great Moments of India Cricket” is playing, to cater to the Indian audience that the Test attracts. The theatre’s seating is like it would be in a dressing room of the old, wooden benches lined up opposite each other. The theatre is where the groundsman’s seed room at the old Basin Reserve would be. The rest of the museum was the change room, the lunch room, etc. until the ground was reformed in 1981. Don tells the interesting story of how the museum came about.

“[After the reform] So now we got an empty room over there. Local umpires used to meet there once a fortnight. It wasn’t until another benefactor of Wellington cricket, John Oakley, went over there one wet day, and saw the umpires had decided they’d get some ties from different parts of the world and stick them on the table, some old books. It rained. If it rains, people have got to get some shelter, so people went in there, and thought it was a museum. Hopefully looking for shelter, and maybe going into a museum. And at the same time John Oakley walked over, and thought this could be turned into a museum. He was a businessman, and he spoke to a handful of other businessmen, and we started working and finding bits and pieces and we have added to it.” That was in 1987.

For 16 years, the museum was run by volunteers, and in 2003 Don found David Mealing. David had worked previously in a museum, was a cricket nut, and his beard made him an automatic choice. “When I hired him, I said to him, ‘There’s one thing David. You cut off your beard and you are fired.’” The beard is still there, quite happy to take visitors around, telling every tale as delightfully as if he has just come to know of it.

	A bit of Gavaskar in Wellington © Sidharth Monga

Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev didn’t exactly get along famously during their playing days, but far away in the Southern Hemisphere, in one of the plushest residential areas of Wellington, the two icons of Indian cricket stand next to each other. About a 15-minute drive from the city centre, streets named after them stand 50 meters apart and overlook the capital from a high ground on one side, and green higher hills on the other. The view is breathtaking.

The houses look luxurious, with classy wooden doors, rich gardens and big cars. Not many venture out of their houses, at least during the 15 minutes spent there. A walker-by doesn’t really know when the streets were named, or who came up with the idea. The city council is not of much help, or perhaps they have got more important things to do. But they do suggest Wellington Museum could be of some help. The Museum directs one to the Wellington City Archives, where the only thing that can be established is, the streets were named before 1992: the earliest mention of the names in the archives is in 1992, and it is not about their naming.

There is an interesting pattern to the signboards of the street names. Gavaskar Place is written only on one side of the board, and Kapil Grove on both. Could it have anything to do with Gavaskar being a just a batsman and Kapil being an allrounder? The streets of the Khandallah area, where these streets are, are winding as opposed to the straight bat of Gavaskar.

	Kapil Grove overlooks the city © Sidharth Monga

Khandallah is situated near a hill that was once called Mount Misery. Just as well that they changed the name. All the streets in Khandallah get their names from India: Andaman, Simla Crescent, Satara, Ramphal, Delhi, Madras, Poona, Amritsar, Benares, Gaya, Vasanta, Amapur, Baroda, Agra, Lucknow Terrace, Mysore, Bombay, all in a concentrated area. Unlike other names like Bombay and Coramandel in the outskirts of Auckland, which were given by British rulers who also lived in New Zealand and really liked those Indian places, these names could have been given by Indian soldiers who worked for the British Army in the pre-independence days. More fact-finding will be done during the next week in Wellington.

Khandallah apart, the most significant presence of India in Wellington is the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside the Wellington Railway Station. There is no ambiguity to the origin of that statue being here in New Zealand.

	Mark Greatbatch's cameo never saw the light of day © Getty Images

Who says cricket attracts only Bollywood stars? Cricket in New Zealand gets its fair share of “local” movie stars too. Russell Crowe, for one, but that interest could have been because of his cousins and former New Zealand captains, Martin and Jeff Crowe. Matches in Napier attract a movie star whose interest in cricket comes from inside, he doesn’t need his cousins to bring him to the cricket.

Well if not a star in the real sense of the word, Mark Greatbatch did play a cameo in the movie version of The End of The Golden Weather, a book from the seventies, and one of the most enduring theatre in New Zealand - the story of a New Zealand summer in the thirties. One of the characters in the book is a dreamer. In one of his many dreams, he is bowling, and in one instance, to WG Grace at Lord’s. Grace hits almightily into the air, the kid runs all the way, and dives and catches it.

That’s where Greatbatch comes in, because the film producer needed a real cricketer who resembled the good doctor. Greatbatch was the closest bet. He still had to put a pillow under his shirt, and obviously the beard. Then there was another problem: Greatbatch bats left-handed, Grace batted right. The shots were flipped to make Greatbatch look right-handed, and the shooting went fine.

But there was a heartbreak to follow. “They told me it was great, they were really happy with it,” says Greatbatch. “And the producer rang me three months later, when they started editing. He said there were two things to say. One good and one bad. ‘You were wonderful in the movie. Brilliant. Unfortunately, we have got to shorten the movie by eight to 10 minutes.' And I got the boot. So that’s what happened to my movie mate.” The end of the golden weather.

There are perks of living in a motel next to the Waikato Stadium, but not when the Chiefs v Blues rugby game is scheduled one-and-a-half hours after India win their first Test in New Zealand in more than 33 years. One wants to watch the match between the teams from Hamilton and neighbours Auckland, but there is stuff to be filed for the cricket.

Seddon Park and the Waikato Stadium are not far from each other. It’s just a seven-minute walk, enough to tempt one into the rugby match, too. The rugby fans are different from those at the cricket ground. They won’t be taking portable chairs, crosswords and tea thermoses. They have beers and whistles and other noise-making instruments. The atmosphere they promise is not bad for a change.

Stadium Motel, home for the last week, is one drop kick – not to be confused with the wrestling move - away from where all the action is headed. The road leading to Willoughby Street – where the stadium and the motel are – looks different today. There are police officers managing the traffic and pedestrians. One of the policemen was also seen at the cricket ground. Going to both cricket and rugby isn’t a luxury others can afford.

There is a crane, about 40-foot high, placed just outside the stadium, a man atop it is using a chainsaw to create noises similar to the bikes in the Well of Death. During the game, the crowd’s volume rises in a crescendo with every move by the Chiefs. And there are quite a few of them in the Chiefs' 63-34 win. It’s impossible to keep sitting inside and write on a game that is long over. One has to go out to catch a glimpse of what is happening. Twice in five minutes the ball lands in the front yard, as the crowd goes delirious with the scoring.

A young man tries to run away with the ball, but the policeman is alert. One also notices that in the first floor of the motel, a TV is playing the rugby match. Why would one watch the match on TV when it is actually being played next doors? One suspects it is Jonathan Millmow, former New Zealand fast bowler, who now writes on cricket for the Dominion Post. Jonathan is staying in the same motel. But one doesn’t want to go up and disturb, tomorrow is a good time to find out.

On this day, 132 years ago, Test cricket was born but it was just another day at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Auckland. But the poignancy of one moment couldn’t be missed. As Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, Rohit Sharma, and other ODI specialists left for the airport, to fly back to India, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid posed for photographs with fans, in the foyer. It was also odd, that such vastly experienced champions were replacing relative upstarts. A sort of reverse changing of the guard.

For the last 25 days or so, facing the camera has been the job of Raina, Rohit, Praveen and such likes. Twenty-five days that have included two defeats for them to start off with, a comeback in the ODIs, introduction to the extreme beauty of New Zealand, sky-walks, harbour climbing, deep-sea fishing, cold days, warm days, rainy days, dry days, and a historical series win.

Over the last 25 days, Raina realised the horror stories from the last tour were just an aberration, and Praveen realised the pitches here needed about as much work as in India. Maybe Tests will be different. But then they will watch the action on the telly. They might choose not to, but the action will go on.

Dion Nash was not the man for too much water in his playing days. But he sells it all right. And he calls it 420. He puts a bottle on the table in the suave conference room of his office, and calls it “his baby”. There are many reasons for that name.

First, the water is packaged by 42Below, a major vodka manufacturer. So you just add a “0”, and get the name. They use the same 420 water in their vodka.

The second is a pretty cool reason. What’s the chemical formula for water? H-2-O. Hence 4-2-0.

Okay, so the water is a hit. They pour 420ml into bottles and it sells in "UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, America, Asia".

“It is actually funny there are two other products in the market that are 420ml,” Dion says. And then he drops the line that you are after: “It’s called four-twenty, which means different things around the world.”

Four-twenty also refers to consuming cannabis and identifying with the culture. So the story goes: a group of teenagers in San Rafael, California, presumably students, used to meet after school, at 4.20pm, to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur Statue. There was nothing particular about the time, it was just after the school ended. The term became part of their group's salute, "four-twenty Louis", and the fans of the band Grateful Dead popularised it. It became so popular that four-twenty celebrations would happen on April 20 (4/20, see).

Anyway, not digressing from the topic, you tell Dion what 420 means in India. Under the Indian Penal Code, the article 420 looks into matters of frauds, forgeries, con jobs, and such like. So a fraudulent, dishonest person, a con man, is affectionately called "420".

“We are bottling water and selling, so the name is appropriate. You can always get it from the tap,” he says. What a bloody marketing genius.

Take Stone Cold Steve Austin’s rasp voice, add the Australian accent, and subtract the swear words. And you are talking to Brad Thorn, a New Zealander who played most of his rugby in Australia, but is now an All Black and plays for Canterbury Crusaders in the Super 14s. Not knowing much about rugby, you can't wait to get him started on the cricket v rugby banter, the old brain v brawn game.

But Brad follows cricket enough to enjoy a drawn Test match more than the one-dayers. Still, being a rugby player, risking injuries with every step he takes on the field, doesn’t he think cricket is a bit of a wimps’ game? “Maybe when you see the Ranatunga fellow,” he says. Good old Arjuna. What’s with him and the Australians?

“But seriously speaking, if you have faced pace bowling, you have a lot of respect for cricketers. One time, me and a few rugby players at high school had a session with the bowling machine. And we put the scales to 160kph. And we didn’t want to go near it. So we have a lot of respect like the timing a batsman has got. The few seconds they get to react. It is just amazing. I think everyone appreciates and respects that. It’s like you really appreciate Tiger Woods and what he can do.”

Through his long rugby career, he has seen it all, the sudden stardom at the age of 17, drinking problems, a move from Australia back to New Zealand (“I’m a Kiwi at heart, but there’s a bit of an Australian in me”), a ride back to goodness, except for too many injuries.

Which is why, at 34, he is still an important lock in any team he plays, four years older than the second-oldest man in the Crusaders team, and way past the playing span of a rugby player.

“I have been very lucky I haven’t got injured,” he says. Well you do consider yourself lucky if you have seen career-ending injuries all around you - knee reconstructions, broken joints in shoulders and ankles, replaced hips, broken jaws and noses. Their assistant coach, sitting in the stands at Rugby Park, where they train, had to cut his career short because of a neck injury.

This is where cricketers are lucky. At least players of this day and age, with all the protective equipment. With rugby you have no assurances. One bad tackle and your career could be over.

It is a light training session for the Crusaders today, and you can see Richie McCaw, the Crusaders and All Blacks captain, his knee heavily strapped, trying to take the first steps out of an injury absence. Another player sits on the bench behind him, holding a crutch, watching his team-mates raise some mild hell. You want to watch them train at full pelt the next day, but you also have a flight to catch and a cricket training session to watch, where batsmen will be wearing the helmet, the chest guard, the thigh pad, the elbow guard, the box.

But hey, they face the leather ball at – not 160 – sometimes close to 150kph.

	Ian Butler juggles being in charge of the New Zealand team's transport with his fast bowling duties © Getty Images

Ian Butler looks after the transport. He makes sure all the vans are ready in time for the team to leave.

Grant Elliott makes sure that when the team is done with the dressing rooms, with the nets, with the practice grounds, that they leave behind a clean place.

Jesse Ryder decides what music will be played; nobody can take the music player away from him.

Martin Guptill makes sure he carries the New Zealand flag with him, to dressing rooms, to team meetings. He makes sure the flag is up when the New Zealand team meets, and is folded and taken back when the meeting is over.

Jacob Oram allocates the complimentary tickets among the players.

Some of these odd jobs can be mundane (Ross Taylor wrote of how he kept forgetting the New Zealand flag in his room in England), exciting (the music), a privilege (the ticket allocation), and highly responsible (like managing tour allowances; O’Brien remembers 1.25 million takas lying on his bed when in Bangladesh). But the New Zealand team spread these tasks among the players, and a player is allocated different job over different series. Taylor wrote of how Peter Fulton’s music sense didn’t go down well with the team in England; they seem quite happy with Ryder now.

This is an interesting team-building exercise, not an event but a continuous process. It creates a sense of responsibility, and makes things easier for everyone around. So who allocates these duties? As of now, Dave Currie, who has worked with New Zealand teams for the Olympics in 2004 and 2008, and the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and 2006. He was in Delhi to inspect the preparations for the 2010 Commonwealth Games when he was made the manager of the cricket team. “They weren’t aware that I had been appointed the cricket manager. The evening they [Commonwealth Games organisers] came to know, all they wanted to talk about was cricket,” Currie says. “They didn’t want to talk about the Commonwealth Games at all. The [Indian] team was leaving for New Zealand in two days.”

Currie never played cricket at “any great level”, but brings a vast sporting experience to the team. He doesn’t see a great difference between managing other sports teams and a cricket team. “Everything is different on one hand, on the other everything is same,” he says. “Elite sportspeople are elite sportspeople; they want to be the best in the world. They have clear vision, clear goals, and clear plans, and work hard. Those principles are the same. And a cricket structure is not different from a hockey team.”

“Only difference is they have a very difficult touring programme. They spend time away from home. Also there’s a broader range of personalities than any other team.

There’s one more difference. “The captain, vice-captain and the coach don’t do any odd duties. They are focused on beating India.”

	Bryan Young transformed himself from a struggling keeper-batsman to an opener, but he is remembered more for his unique "pocketing" ritual after taking a catch © Getty Images

In the nineties, a man took “pocketing a catch” a bit too literally. While playing for New Zealand, Bryan Young would take a slip catch, put the ball in his pocket, and run towards the successful bowler to shake hands. Cricket is a game for various aspects of various characters, and this one stood out for Young. He is actually remembered for that, and not for a more incredible achievement. But that’s for later.

That celebration came about as a fluke, Young says. “We were playing Pakistan in a Test at Eden Park. It was the first Test of the series. In that game I happened to take six catches in the field. In those days you didn’t really have to give the ball to the umpire. I took the first one - and I didn’t even think about it - and put it in my pocket, went up and congratulated the bowler.

“Five or ten minutes later I took another catch and did the same thing, and I didn’t even think about it. At lunch time the manager told me the TV guys were making a bit of talking about it. And they said, you better keep doing it. I just sort of laughed it off, and the catches kept coming my way, and because so many catches came to me in those two days, all of a sudden it became a following.”

The other cool thing Young did was not a fluke at all.

Aged 29, after nine years of keeping wicket and batting in the lower order, he transformed himself into an opener. From a flashy keeper-batsman to an opener so stoic, he used to bore people. He frustrated the best of them into giving him some verbals. Wasim Akram once asked him if he was carrying his club bat or Test bat. Curtly Ambrose, whom he – surprise, surprise – drove, told Young that if he wanted to repeat the shot, he would need a stapler.

“I had lost the passion really for keeping,” says Young, “and my body wasn’t handling it really well. I was having a problem with my knee. And I think I also recognised I was struggling to make the national team as a wicketkeeper. So I made a decision that I’d retire the gloves and concentrate on my batting. Thankfully it worked out well for me; it was a risk.”

It couldn’t have been easy work? “The transition was a hard one,” he says. “I locked myself in an indoor centre with a batting coach and transformed my game at age 29, which was pretty hard work. I worked very hard for four, five, six months actually. And then I got my chance and I was able to take it. I guess I had two careers.

“In my hometown we had an indoor centre. I worked hard with Robert Anderson. I asked him for some help, and he very kindly helped me. It was all about restricting my game. I was a wicketkeeper who played 360 degrees; I played all the shots. Ended up being an opener batsman who played a very few shots. That was very hard because my natural game was to attack and to play with flair. I changed an awful lot for Test cricket. It was not my natural game when I was opening in Tests.”

Not playing his natural game, Young played 35 Tests, scoring two centuries – one actually a fluent double against Muttiah Muralitharan and co. The other one was a seven-hour 120 in a successful chase of 324 against Akram and Waqar Younis. But he now talks like a typical opener, making a passing acknowledgement on these innings, and choosing a score of 29 as his best Test knock.

“There are some other innings that’s not a big score, but you actually look back and say technically you played really well.” Sounds like a very cool thing for an opener to say. But Young is serious too. “My 29 against Pakistan in that same series, I felt that the best two hours for me in Test cricket. I think back on that and actually that was – seaming all over the lace and moving around - quite satisfying.”

An average of 31 and a strike-rate of 38 in a belated Test career might fit a journeyman cricketer. But because he rediscovered himself at such a late stage, and because he developed a celebration style that was cool yet dignified, Young is not one.

	"Paaji don't bowl inswingers!" © Cricinfo Ltd.

Over the last few days in New Zealand, one man has been talked about all over – the Master. One has heard stories of how people take a step back for Sachin Tendulkar when he passes. This would be next to impossible in India, what with the overbearing security never letting that theory be put to test. In New Zealand, though, Tendulkar has moved around freely during training, nets and what not, with only two security guards looking after the whole team.

The Indian team has attracted not only Indian expats, but New Zealanders too. Lots of students from the Lincoln University, whose cricket facility has been India's base camp so far, have been around to watch them train. The other day two youngsters walked across to see why there was a crowd around the nets. Just as they were about to turn, one of them said, "Hey wait the Master is batting." And they waited. Good old-fashioned Tendulkar.

On the field Tendulkar entertains the crowds with his masterful batting, but off it, he chooses to entertain himself, sometimes at the expense of his ‘less skillful’ team-mates. During India’s net session at the indoor facility of the New Zealand High Performance Academy on Monday, he managed to coax Harbhajan Singh into batting against the bowling machine, which he decided to operate himself. While regular batsmen tackle the machine with ease, the others aren’t as comfortable. The feet shuffle and often, while waiting for the ball to pop out, they lose their balance and then run for cover.

Harbhajan stood there, looking like a child resisting his parent's push to get into the swimming pool. "Paaji nahi ho raha… [I can't do this]," he said after a few unsuccessful attempts. "You just look at the light, the ball will come out five seconds after it goes on," said Tendulkar.

So Harbhajan tried again. The feet trembled and the ball still didn't hit the sweet spot. Fearing injury, Harbhajan was reluctant to face the inswinger. "Paaji don't bowl inswingers," he pleaded. And paaji bowled an inswinger. "Paaji aap to maje le rahe ho [You are having fun at my expense.]" And then Harbhajan mistimed and got bowled. He went to pick up the plastic stumps again, his back covered, and sure enough another delivery came while he adjusted the stumps – safely swinging away from the stumps. And paaji laughed loudly. He was entertained. So were those around. And when Tendulkar is happy, usually so is the rest of India.

	Jeet Raval made his first-class debut for Auckland against the touring West Indians © Cricinfo Ltd.

India have been mobbed by the expat community in Christchurch, but there was a known face for Ravindra Jadeja and Ishant Sharma. Jeet Raval had played against them when he represented the Gujarat Under-15 team, but he had to leave cricket – momentarily – when his parents decided to move to New Zealand when he was 16. After three years of waiting, he has qualified for selection to the New Zealand team, having made his first-class debut for Auckland against the touring West Indians.

When he met Jadeja and Ishant, he was representing the Emerging New Zealand Players who were taking on the England Lions in the ground next to where the Indians were practising.

Raval was also Parthiv Patel's opening partner when he played for Vidyanagar School in Ahmedabad and remembers playing with Mohnish Parmar and Bhavik Thaker as well. All three of his mates were big performers this Ranji season.

The path however, was different for Raval. "It was a difficult decision [to leave India]. I was always into cricket, and I didn't know if I would be able to carry on with it in New Zealand," Raval says. But it was a big moment in his father's career, and so he moved along.

The Ravals came to Auckland, with a son educated in Gujarati-medium school and with cricketing ambitions. But there was little to worry – not only did he pick up the language fast, he did not feel like an outsider on the cricket field. He had his inspiration in New Zealand spinner Deepak Patel, who went on to become his mentor.

In three year’s time, Raval made it to the New Zealand Under-19 team, playing against the likes of Dhawal Kulkarni, Ajinkya Rahane and Piyush Chawla - big names on the Indian domestic circuit as well.

Raval had left one country, moved to another, and was accepted in the new nation – based on his talent as a left-hand middle-order batsman - in that three-year period. Even he fails to make the cut for the New Zealand team, in his mind he is sure that his talent will get its due. Like the diving catch he took today to dismiss Robert Key got, with Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan running their laps in the background.

	Iron Maiden are scheduled to perform in Christchurch © Getty Images

"Go straight down Colombo, take a left from Madras and you will reach Barbadoes." To paraphrase a line usually spoken about India, it happens only in Christchurch. They are names of streets located close to each other. Other such specimens are Bengal Drive, Lucknow Palace, Worcester Street, Gloucester Street, Antigua Street and Durham Street. It helps that the “street” is dropped from the names in casual conversation. The origin of the names indeed lies in the names of famous places around the world. The spelling of Barbadoes is the same in the original plan of Christchurch drawn up by Edward Jollie.

There is a certain lack of imagination in the street names. And the city itself, named by John Robert Godley, the founder of Canterbury. Why Christchurch? Well, Godley studied at Christ Church, Oxford. The Avon river that flows through the city gets its name from the more famous one in Scotland.

All the names come from the Commonwealth. There is no exhaustive explanation for each name – one can try visiting the libraries sometime during the tour, but people suggest the names came from people who had been to other parts of the Commonwealth. For example, a very hypothetical one albeit, if some Viceroy or a person with some such fancy designation had lived in, and liked, Madras and had come back to find an unnamed street, he could have named it Madras.

Inside those streets, though, coffee shops, restaurants and pubs with the most creative and cryptic names for can be found. Spotted in the city centre: Six Chairs Missing, Last Train to India, Left Click, Bicycle Thief, Two Fat Indians, The Ruptured Duck …

There is an interesting story on how the name Ruptured Duck came about. Legend has it that a fisherman from the Sumner area was on his way to repaint his boat when he ran over a duck. He renamed his boat "The Ruptured Duck" while he painted it. Many years later, when another man came across a wrecked fishing boat named The Ruptured Duck, he had found a name for the restaurant he had bought by the name of Cornerstone.

	Local Indian fans enjoy the day out watching the nets session © Cricinfo Ltd

It was an ideal winter morning. Hot coffee under a canopy at a street café near the Cathedral Square. A drizzle's pitter-patter overhead. Nice music on the radio as people went about their jobs happily. And then the radio said, "The rockstars of cricket are here." And so said a hoarding outside the AMI Stadium, which was closed on the weekend. The "rockstars" campaign has been devised to advertise India's tour of New Zealand. Elsewhere New Zealand Herald profiled some of the key Indian players under the headline, "The happy-slog millionaires". *** Lincoln University is about a half-an-hour's bus ride from the town. And it's some ride – through the green meadows, being watched by the hills, crossing the idyllic Prebbleton village. The Indian team took that ride for their first practice session of the tour, at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval, which in itself is what a painter would produce after reading Cardus and the likes on countryside cricket. No wonder the players were all in a cheerful mood when they arrived. For somebody new to the city, it was difficult to believe a team would go so far out of the city for the nets session. Getting directions to it were hard enough since not many had heard of it before.

But before India reached, England Lions, here to face New Zealand Emerging Players, were training there. Local Indian expats began to arrive half an hour before the team did. India maybe used to the attention wherever they go in the world, but even they wouldn’t have expected such an enthusiastic turnout at a ground half of Christchurch didn’t know of.

The England Lions, including Luke Wright, Samit Patel and Sajid Mahmood, went on about their business like university students would do on a routine day. Not a single journalist to watch, a fan was a far cry. The ground staff golf-carted their way around the ground as they would on any other day. But at around 2.30pm, cars started pulling up. From nowhere a crowd of about 35 gathered even before the players arrived, one of them a courier driver and a school mate of Irfan Pathan's. John Wright was surprised at seeing the crowd and realised what they were there for only after the Indian team arrived. "Sachin, Sachin," he chanted, not too loud lest the man himself heard.

This was no routine practice session. The groundstaff had to get to work immediately to keep people out of the nets area. The word spread, and in no time the crowd almost doubled. A few Indian students in the university, along with their New Zealand friends, were among those who stayed the longest. Out came the bean bags, sofa and an easy chair, from what looked like a hostel building near the Oval. And then the beer. The rest made use of the grass banks around the ground. Every good shot, every good extraordinary delivery, every special catch was cheered.

The Indian team, even if not consciously, played along, with banter loud enough for them to enjoy. Virender Sehwag, beaten by a Sachin Tendulkar delivery, said, "Main aapko kaise maar sakta hoon [How can I hit you, it won't look good]." Gautam Gambhir complained he didn't have anything to do in the nets after his batting was over. "Even in Sri Lanka, when all and sundry bowled, the captain didn't let me bowl." Loud enough for Mahendra Singh Dhoni to hear.

The crowd spoke in their respective native languages when their state compatriots came in earshot. Two of them started talking in Kannada to catch Venkatesh Prasad's attention, when he came to gather the ball. The Gujaratis, who dominated the composition of the crowd, tried the same trick when any of Yusuf Pathan, Irfan, Zaheer Khan or Ravindra Jadeja approached.

Loud laughter emanated both from inside the nets, and outside. A lack of overbearing securitymen, as in India, helped. Despite the funs and games, it was an intense first session, focusing on all three disciplines, after which all the players obliged with autographs – on bats, papers, and bodies - and photographs. A quaint university had come to life for three hours. The locals acknowledged not many would turn up if New Zealand were training. It will be put to test on Monday, when the hosts assemble after finishing their domestic Twenty20s.

	© Getty Images

Some random thoughts while on the way to New Zealand - seven different airports, various hotel transfers and immigration checks, and far too many flights.

1. 2.30am. That's when one wakes up in India to watch a Test in New Zealand. Not to mention the numerous fights with other inmates of the family house that come along with it.

2. Rain. A reality that comes with New Zealand. England's wet summer is over-rated.

3. 2.30am and rain. Lethal combination. Almost always happens if one wakes up on time.

4. Hotel rooms and smoky bars/ Cigarettes and lost key cards… The homesick blues John Wright wrote about towards the end of his term as India coach. One is not homesick, just that it's impossible to think New Zealand without thinking Wright. Especially if one has read Wright's endearing memoirs, Indian Summers.

5. Soiled cricket boots. Who can forget them? Harbhajan Singh, for your information, has landed safely and hasn't paid any fine this time.

6. Radio Tarana. Auckland-based radio station that plays the most obscure of Bollywood songs. Reminiscent of Aakashvani.

7. The bowler is Holding, the stumps are flying. Unfortunately one of the more abiding images of cricket in New Zealand. A little less abiding is Colin Croft shoulder-barging umpire Fred Goodall.

8. Maniacal double-centuries. Refer to Nathan Astle and, to a lesser extent, Graham Thorpe.

9. Rectangular grounds and drop-in pitches.

10. Dibbly-dobblies. Self-explanatory.

11. Beige jerseys and fake moustaches.

12. Grassy banks and watching cricket in blankets.

13. Daylight till 9pm. On a dank first day in Christchurch, the light stayed good till 8pm.

14. Rain (again). Was there to welcome India in both Auckland and Christchurch.