I’ve been lucky enough to be in New Zealand for the last
month. (Yeah, it was amazing, thanks. You should SO go. You’d love it.)
When the trip was first mooted, over a year ago, India had a
three Test tour of NZ scheduled for February, and it looked like I’d get to the
Basin Reserve. I’ve always wanted to go there. It’s a proper old school Test
ground, with those grassy banks purpose built for indolent lounging.
But by the end of last summer The ODI junkies at the BCCI had
swapped the third Test for a few more one-dayers, and the new schedule meant we’d
be down in the South Island by the time the Test got to ‘Welly’.
So India’s insatiable ODI habit denied me my foreign Test
fix before I’d set foot in NZ.
I’m not bitter, but the Wellington Test the BCCI made me
miss was one of the greats of the modern age, breaking record after record and
churning out an endless stream of stats. ‘The highest sixth wicket partnership
in Test history’ is probably the pick of the records, and my favourite of the
stats is Ishant Sharma recording his career best figures of 6-51 and his worst
of 0-164 in the same match.
And, like all great matches, even as the geeks salivated
over the stats, they all agreed they did not tell the whole story. Because the
story was Brendan McCullum.
McCullum is a likeable cricketer. An unorthodox, attacking
captain, his media persona is excessively polite and softly spoken, but he
looks like a tattooed working class hardman whose pint you would go out of your
way not to spill. He usually bats with the casual backstreet brutality his
looks suggest, but not this time. This time he batted with the measured,
thoughtful determination his voice suggests.
I was 500 miles south of Wellington in a café in Te Anau
when, visibly exhausted but still running threes, with an injured back, knee
and shoulder, after two days and ten minutes at the crease, he became the 24th
player – and the very first Kiwi – to bring up a Test triple century. There was
an extended Indian family watching it on the TV in the café, shaking their
heads with the wearied resignation of England fans watching Amla.
He had come in to bat with his side three down and 200 behind.
Now they were 400 ahead, and offering a defiantly raised mid-digit to the
misguided notion of a two-tiered Test system.
Cricket in New Zealand plays a distant second fiddle to the
national obsession of rugby, (even the Basin Reserve is on Rugby Street) much
as it does to football in England. So it was great to see McCullum and his team
dominating both front and back pages of the NZ press for all the right reasons the
following day, under chest-thumping headlines like CAPTAIN FANTASTIC.
As it so often does from such epic draws, cricket emerged
victorious.
- ends 496 words -
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