The Pink Report - Margot Butcher's Blog
Margot Butcher has been covering the ups and downs of New Zealand cricket since 1988, when she was an international correspondent covering tours for the national Independent Radio Sport network - catching the end of the glory days when Sir Richard Hadlee and a stellar supporting cast seemed to scythe through top international opponents at will. A freelance writer, she’s since collected many awards for sports, current affairs and environmental jourmalism. In 2004 she was the first woman to win New Zealand’s supreme Sports Journalist of the Year award, and is the only person to have twice been named New Zealand’s cricket writer of the year. Margot’s also believed to have been the first woman world-wide to have been appointed editor of a national cricket magazine. Well known for her cricket features in North & South magazine and Air New Zealand’s Kia Ora, in between she’s penned sports books, including the biographies of New Zealand cricketers Danny Morrison and Chris Pringle, and more recently a celebration of New Zealand’s six Olympic gold medallists entitled Golden Girls. Born an Aucklander and raised in Central Districts territory, she’s since seen the light and now lives in the Northern Districts heartland, from which she’s able to keep a close eye on our favourite team. Margot has since won the Sports Journalist of the Year award again in 2011 for The Pink Report as well as a profile on Kane Willamson.
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Gisborne Gains
There was tension. There was drama. But in the end the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights completed the perfect script to keep their hold as leaders of the Plunket Shield points race. The tension and drama came in two forms. First, there was the weather. Yes, apparently even in "sunny Gisborne&q...
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Happy Days
When the Plunket Shield starts up again tomorrow, the order of the universe will at last be back to normal. The Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights will once again be playing in a competition in which they're on top, and us plebs will once again be able to listen to live audio commentary of first-cla...
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Hawke Cup Runs Over
Hamilton's brilliant defence of the Hawke Cup on the weekend was one for the books. Talk about overachieving. The team played outstandingly well at Galloway Park, not so much crushing Wairarapa's spirits as digging a large hangi pit in the middle of the wicket and feasting on the scr...
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Yo! What's Happening?
With an annoyingly long 15-day break between the end of the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights' Ford Trophy campaign and the resumption of the Plunket Shield, you might be forgiven for thinking it's gone all quiet on the northern front. Not quite. To bring you up with the play, by way of some...
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History At Cobham
For the thousands of people who turned up in slightly iffy weather at Whangarei's Cobham Oval yesterday, there was more than a chance to be part of history. The one-dayer between the Blackcaps and Zimbabwe was the first ever international cricket match played in Whangarei of course, but ...
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Ford Focus
If nothing else, the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights went out on a high. They were untroubled in their defeat of the Canterbury Wizards - a finalist in the impending playoffs - after winning the toss and bowling first yesterday in Rangiora. It started off as a field day for spinner Jono Boult, who...
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Ton At The Tron
Hamilton cricket supporters should have been feeling quite spoilt on Sunday. Not only did the strong Hamilton rep side retain the Hawke Cup over at Galloway Park, but home-town Knight Anton Devcich blasted his maiden one-day century for ND: an unbeaten and gutsy 101 at virtually run-a-ball pace...
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A Minor Disaster
I'm beginning to wonder if there's something in the water at Colin Maiden Park. A malevolent taniwha lurking in the pipes below the visitor's changing room, who stirs and gets antsy when he catches the whiff of maroon and gold gear bags. Yesterday's drubbing by the Aces was a...
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The Bronze Medal
Yep, it's the one no one really wants. But even after last night's loss to an electric Brendon McCullum and his Volts team, the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights can at least console themselves that they finished in the top three for the 2012 HRV Cup. That's an improvement on the fourth ...
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Next!!
I have a sneaky feeling these are the hardest games of all. You know what I'm talking about: the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights playing their round 10 HRV Cup match this week against the Volts knowing they are without a shot at the finals. The two 2012 finalists, the defending champions ...
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Points & Permutations
With a heading like that, it feels rather like I'm about to write a Jane Austen novel. But since we're not in early nineteenth century rural Hampshire, I'll stick to the knitting: a quick run-down of what needs to happen for the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights to make the 2012 HRV Cup fin...
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Dan Vettori Interview
"Our man Dan" has been a busy bee travelling between the HRV Cup campaign here in New Zealand and Australia's Big Bash T20 comp where he represents the Brisbane Heat as an overseas player. We chatted to Dan at the Mount yesterday about the logistics of playing in two countries ...
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Mount To Climb
Hands up who woke up this morning feeling brighter about the HRV Cup? For a start, we had a match yesterday at the Mount in a La Niña season that didn't involve a single drop of rain. Yesss! Not only that, but the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights thrashed one of the form sides in the comp s...
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Meet Brett Hampton
With a bunch of home games coming up at Mount Maunganui, we thought it only fitting that we should introduce you to one of Bay of Plenty's finest: big-hitting Brett Hampton. Talented all-round sportsman Brett was brought into the Yahoo! Northern Knights' squad for the earlier HRV Cup ma...
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Southern Discomfort
Someone needs to sort out these mugginses at New Zealand Cricket in time for next summer. The scheduling this season has proved highly contentious. They must know by now that if they schedule Twenty20 games for the New Year, a cyclone or storm front will appear, and it will rain. When they sit ...
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Blasting Off
What a difference a week makes. There we were fretting about our limited fortunes in the Ford Trophy campaign, the top start to the Plunket Shield suddenly tempered by being winless and dead last on the one-day points table after four rounds. But there’s plenty of hope to be taken from th...
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Meet Daryl Mitchell
This is the third in our series of intrepid video interviews in which we profile exciting young players stepping up to the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights for the first time this season. Although based in Perth in recent years, where his father John was coaching the Western ...
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Corey’s 21st Bash
After an incredible week for New Zealand test cricket and a flourish in the Ford Trophy, there are a few things worth wrapping up before we turn pink at the HRV Cup tomorrow. Wednesday’s away match at the Basin Reserve was the last Ford Trophy match for a month and a half: the competit...
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Meet Anurag Verma
I'm not publishing the Ford Trophy points table in this week's column because I don't like it. Yay for video cameras (even when their microphones misbehave towards the end and randomly drop their sound levels…) and for really interesting video interviews in which one of our t...
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Five To Go
Which is another way of saying the all-too-short prelim phase of the Ford Trophy is nearly halfway gone… and the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights are keen to start winning! The contrast between the team's Plunket Shield and one-day fortunes couldn't be more stark: top of the fou...
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G Whizz
A flurry of milestones has gone toppling all at once for evergreen Graeme Aldridge. One minute the 34-year-old mainstay of the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights’ bowling attack was playing his 100th one-day game for the Knights; the next he was taking his career best first-class figures and knock...
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Hoodoo Gurus
Well they do say good things take time. It may have been almost a decade (that’s 20 home games) since the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights last won a first-class match at Seddon Park, but now that the spell is broken, the guys can revel in a satiating victory. Not only was the win a right whal...
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Meet Mitchell Santner
Mitchell Santner, our left-arm orthodox spinner from Hamilton, is the youngest face in the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights squad this season. After being included in the twelve for the opening rounds, 19-year-old Mitchell made his first-class debut in round three in Dunedin against ...
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Changing Gears
Nobody tell Joey Yovich that gales are forecast today in Dunedin. It could tip him over the edge. I certainly sympathise, because there’s only so much gusty wind, bitter cold and ugly rain that us warm-blooded Northerners generally care for. I have it on good authority t...
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Cold Comfort
Yay! After the Wizards-Aces game fizzled to a dull old draw in the only match to last four days, the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights have vaulted to the top of the points table after two rounds of the Plunket Shield. This week the team is chilling out (literally, we...
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As Good As It Gets
What a brilliant, positive week it’s been for the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights. • The team has become the first to chalk up the maximum 20 points from a match under New Zealand Cricket’s new points system; • Kane Williamson has set a new record individual score; • ...
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Points And Order
Thanks to the ever-helpful Ellery at New Zealand Cricket, this week I’ve got my pink mitts on a shiny new copy of NZC’s Playing Conditions. Ninety-two pages of cricketing nitty-gritty. Bliss! It’s coming in handy already as I try to get my head (which is generally a calculus- ...
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Bounty For Boulty
As Trent Boult sat back reflecting in the changing rooms at Cobham Oval after the opening day of the 2011/12 season, he thought to himself that it couldn’t have got off to a better start. Trent’s 5-48 - he got McIntosh, Cachopa, de Grandhomme, Bruce Martin and Andre Adams - was the ...
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Video Report: Corey Anderson
Yes, I've gone multimedia! Meet new Yahoo!NZ Northern Knight Corey Anderson and get the skinny on the fast-moving, swinging, seaming battle between the guys and the Auckland Aces at Cobham Oval.
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Great Expectations
Here at last! The 2011/12 New Zealand cricket season is underway today with round one of the Plunket Shield. We’re in Whangarei, the Aces have come to play and the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights are thoroughly amped and ready to rumble. After the heartbreaking finish to last season (in with...
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Radio Goo Goo
I’m back, and not a moment too soon. I put my pink pen down for a wee while, turn my back and look what happens: dingbat people tampering with the very essence of our summers. If you haven’t caught up with the news - and heaven knows Radio Sport didn’t go bellowing it from ...
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Catching Up With Kane
A big moment is coming up for Kane Williamson tonight as he finally steps out in his first-class county debut for Gloucestershire. Finally? What on earth do I mean, you ask?? Our Nossy’s only 20 - that’s making good time to be signed up as an overseas pro by an English county! In...
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The Pink Meanie Quiz
Time to test your Northern Districts cricket knowledge with a bunch of obscure questions that I’ve been collecting and saving up all summer. I’ll be secretly impressed if you get even one in four correct, the rest you can count as educational! Watch out for my trick questions, I don...
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The Jason Uden Awards
Any of you who don’t know who Jason Uden is either haven’t been to too many Northern Districts games or don’t listen to Radio Sport. A first-class barracker and the team’s greatest supporter with the tattoo to prove it, Jason and his fellow agrarian mates were quite unmi...
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Some Season Stats
When the Northern Districts cricket family gathered for its 2010/11 awards night a week ago, there was time to pause and reflect that, while neither the flagship Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights nor the youngish, work-in-progress Northern Spirit side bagged any silverware this season, the summer sti...
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Celebrating The G Force
Two words you often hear when people talk about Graeme Aldridge are ‘heart’ and ‘consistency’. As of Friday evening, you can also add the words, ‘2011 Northern Districts Cricketer of the Year’. Graeme’s ability to front up game after game and...
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Farewell Sweet Shield
And so the rainy rollercoaster that was the 2010/11 season ends with no trophies in the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights’ hands - but crikey, the final few days were packed with more intrigue than a whodunnit bestseller. Let’s start with those desperado Stags in Napier. They knew they...
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A Battle Or Two
On Friday I shot up to Whangarei for Northland Cricket’s season celebration and awards evening. Guest speaker was President of New Zealand Cricket Denis Currie who delighted the room by confirming that he’s keen to see Cobham Oval become a test ground later this year. Currie will ta...
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Flynntastic
Was it the most devastating hour of batting yet seen in a bona fide session of the Plunket Shield? That is to say, against proper bowling: not counting those occasional silly sessions when teams dish up full tosses and baptise card-carrying batsmen as bowlers in order to contrive a declaration....
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Message from the Bridge
Eight days of good cricket. Twenty-four sessions. That’s what it’s come down to as the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights look to define their 2011 season with the Plunket Shield. Retain the first-class silverware for an impressive third summer in a row and all their frustrations from the ...
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Mud And (No) Glory
We came. We saw. We didn’t conquer. We did do an awful lot of sitting around - and got to see a few of the sights of West Quay and the country’s deco capital. The Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights had an unscheduled break in Napier this past week, but with just two rounds to go and a l...
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Northern Maori Represent!
This Thursday in Hamilton Northern Districts Cricket is planting a seed. For the first time an official Northern Maori team will come together to play cricket and the hope and intention is that it’s the beginning of something much bigger nationally. Run your eye through the squad (belo...
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Glitter In The Gloom
Last Wednesday, the biggest thing on James Baker’s mind was playing for Hamilton. His six-foot-four frame curled over his desk in Mainfreight’s Hamilton office as he checked off his last few tasks ahead of the impending trip down to Blenheim, to Horton Park where they’d meet C...
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A Seddon Synopsis
It’s the morning of the third day here at Seddon Park in the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights’ pivotal match against the Auckland Aces. The cicadas are already burring like little buzz-saws in the trees up on the bank and as the sun streams down the guys are out there playing their high-...
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Thinking Big
All afternoon, I kept looking at the scoreboard. I kept photographing the scoreboard. I had some more coffee and rubbed my eyes, but no, it really wasn’t a trick of the light. Those numbers were beaming bright in the afternoon sun. On the country’s biggest first-class ground, BJ Wat...
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The Turfectionist
On the sliding scale of mind-numbing chores, rolling a cricket pitch is up there with doing the vacuuming. Important, yes. Must be done, yes. Gets results. But not exactly cerebrally stimulating. The motorised roller inches its way to one end of the block, slow as a snail - and we’re t...
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Gone Fishing
A couple of weeks ago Jacob Oram emailed me from India, just after the BLACKCAPS had played their World Cup warm-up against Ireland. “Probably the best 'minnow' I have played against,” Jake wrote. “It would not surprise me if they knocked over a bigger team in their gr...
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Surrealism City
Trust me, from the parallel universe of Auckland it still feels weird to be talking about cricket when there’s a massive relief effort going on in Canterbury. In the pavilion at Colin Maiden Park the earthquake aftermath news coverage was kept on throughout the match between the Aces and ...
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It’s Not About The Cricket
Tonight at Seddon Park in Hamilton there’s going to be a cricket match and behind the scenes there’s a phalanx of organising types who have been wondering if they’ve done the right thing by going ahead. Needless to say, down in Canterbury the Wizards aren’t meeting th...
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Northern Exposure
There was a Northern Districts wicketkeeper (I shan’t say whom) whose language and commentary behind the stumps earned him the nickname “Filth” from his opponents. Loveliest, most polite fellow you could possibly meet at any other time, but once he crossed the boundary rope it...
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It’s Moments Like These
Being of unspeakable age these days, most of my contemporary female mates are going through that phase where they’re bringing up small children. I’ve noticed a distinct disparity, arising from the lottery of life, whereby my friends bringing up little girls have all kept a good gras...
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New Stars Rising?
When the Northern Districts selectors named their squad for the resumption of the Plunket Shield in Whangarei this week, there were a whopping six changes from the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights team that played the last first-class game at the same ground in November. To recap, that Plunket Sh...
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Game Over
There’s a little gap in the mountains surrounding the Queenstown Events Centre and through it the hardcore that turned up for the 2011 semi-final playoff between the Volts and the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights could spot the next wave of low grey clouds marching in. Five minutes’ noti...
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A Quest In Queenstown
In 2007 I travelled with the All Blacks at the Rugby World Cup. Sitting in on team meetings and even a selectors’ meeting as they picked their test team, over the five weeks it was an extraordinary opportunity to understand how high profile players worked behind otherwise closed doors, an...
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Just Timing Our Run!
It’s all on now. After a rare tie in Whangarei against the Volts last week and an equally frustrating loss away to the Firebirds, the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights find themselves in a must-win situation for their final round match against the Stags in Whangarei this Wednesday. The men&r...
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Heart and Soul
Being a journalist, it’s hard to keep me away from a free lunch, which is what I’m doing in Whangarei. Lou, the professional caterer at Cobham Oval, does the best cricket lunches in the country. There’s even ice cream for dessert, just like they used to have last century at Se...
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When Silly Points Matter
There’s nothing like a quick overseas jaunt to freshen up your cricket season. Oh all right, Invercargill isn’t really foreign. But after weeks of steamy 30 degree heat in the north, landing in a place where the overnight temperature dropped to single figures, the daytime high wasn&...
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Groundhog Day In Whangarei
Heavens to Betsy, I’m not sure my frail constitution can take many more of these one-day games. Tight finishes every match is doing quite unnatural things to my cardiac rhythms. And as for Bradley Scott, the poor fellow is hallucinating. He had a strange feeling of déjà vu, ...
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Take That, Stags!
The morning after the win, the Achilles tendons were as rigid as railway tracks, the back creaked out of bed like some storm-splintered sea mast and a double shot of caffeine was required intravenously. And I wasn’t even playing. This summer the only men’s domestic one-day match ...
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Straight Old Line
The crazy little win over the Auckland Aces on Sunday was a great lesson in never giving in. I have to admit that for most of the match, I thought the fellas had blown it. The Aces have a straightforward bowling plan based around internationals Kyle Mills and Daryl Tuffey, with Michael Bates...
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ALL IN THE FAMILY
What a pretty sight it is at Seddon Park today for the second day of the National Bank Test with Pakistan. The sun’s beating down at 30 degrees and the banks are speckled with twirly bright sun umbrellas. Spectators of the day award, however, goes to the two guys who brought along an infl...
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All Weather Hero
Cricket groundsmen are men’s men, and I’m not just talking about the barbecue and cold beers you might spy in the groundsman’s nook at Seddon Park. Karl Johnson, whose official title is Turf Manager, Waikato Stadium and Seddon Park, and whose ubiquitous informal title is ...
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Momentummed Out
If there’s one word I’m sick of hearing at the moment, it’s ‘momentum’. It’s become a buzz word and I think it needs to buzz off. My beef with it is that sometimes it’s used as a euphemism for performance. If you play to your potential, your innings or ...
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Just Chillin’ With Herschelle
OK, so it’s down to the wire. Hold onto your most optimistic hopes for the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights tomorrow in Christchurch that the rain shoos and they can get back to that winning feeling and reel home a big one to make that final. If the Aces could do us a favour and thump the Stag...
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Wright Stuff
Pukekura Park is an absolutely lovely cricket ground when you’re not being humiliated in the middle of it. Thursday evening’s batting collapse against The Nemesis illustrated that even in Twenty20 cricket, sometimes you have to change down and travel at a speed befitting the conditi...
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Rain & Other Four Letter Words
Mushrooms. Thousands of toxic, pointy little mushrooms, poking up over the newly-washed grass like fairy umbrellas. My keen mind detected this was not a good sign at a cricket ground. Neither was the endless yellow and blue blob on the Metservice rain radar right where the North Island used to ...
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Bringing Home The Bacon
Pop polls around the place have been inviting cricket fans to vote on which HRV Cup side signed the best overseas players. Every one I’ve seen has been a no-contest win to Northern Districts, and with South African Herschelle Gibbs jetting in this week the star factor has just shot even h...
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Pete Powers Up
A few weeks ago, Peter McGlashan had every right to be peeved off. Like the rest of the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights, he’d been in tiptop shape heading into this season after the squad collectively took their fitness to a new level during the off-season - which is saying something because ...
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Electric Knights In Oamaru
Twenty20 is supposedly a batsman’s game where bowlers just can’t win, but in discharging the Volts by nine wickets, the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights showed the value of tight line and length even in this amped-up form of the game. Everything should have been in the Volts’ fa...
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Real Pros
How good are those Aussies? No, no, no, not the Ashes team (er, definitely not the Ashes team at the moment... and far be it for us Kiwis to poke fun at their struggles). I’m talking about the ones fronting for the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights. David Hussey and Brad Hodge have made the ...
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Stags’ Night - Again
I’ve been thinking all day about how to avoid writing about the cricket. Quite tricky, given this is a cricket column. It’s not the Seddon Park result that’s got me ducking, but the fact I didn’t see the game myself, having been winging my way back to New Zealand at the ...
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It’s Pink Time!
There’s only one colour to be seen in this Thursday night in Hamilton and I reckon a few fellas might even be sneakily excited about dusting off the pink paraphernalia that’s been stored away in the wardrobe awaiting the return of the HRV Cup. If there was one remark I kept heari...
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A Week Of It
In the context of New Zealand’s mining tragedy this hardly seems a week to be getting too upset about the cricket. Friends of mine come from Huntly coal mining families and I know their thoughts have been constantly with West Coasters, rather than trained on the happenings at Cobham Oval....
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Plunket Points Race
It’s hard to believe the first phase of the Plunket Shield campaign is already almost complete. Round three this week is our last feed of four-day cricket until mid-February no less; in the interim all the teams will switch their focus to the white ball in the HRV Cup and national men&rsq...
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Landslide At The Basin
The first outright victory of the season is on the board for the Northern Knights after a demolition job on Wellington’s shaky-looking line-up. The Firebirds finished last in the Plunket Shield and men’s one-day comp earlier this year, and second to last in the HRV Cup, which can&rs...
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100 Positives For Joey
I think we should clone Joey Yovich. At the very least, he should donate a cheek-swab of his DNA to sports science for genetic research. We need to know how a medium-fast pace bowler can play forever without missing a single game through wear and tear. It’s a very proud occasion for Jo...
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Gladness and Sadness
According to all pedants in the world, we’re still in spring. Summer opens on December 1, and officially this brilliantly sunshiney weather coating the country is just the dress rehearsal. I’m not having a bar of it. The cicadas have hatched and started purring, tiny mantises are sc...
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Kane’s A Rockstar
A long time ago at a cricket ground far, far away (OK, Napier), I was one of the last two people lingering in a grandstand after the final day’s play at a test match between India and New Zealand. The other was a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar. He’d left the Indian dressing room to fi...
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A Knight In Hong Kong
News that Scott Styris is to lead the New Zealand team at the Hong Kong Cricket Sixes this weekend reminded me that this boutique little tournament on the international calendar is still going strong. If you’re still adjusting your set to the speed and ballistics of Twenty20 cricket, you ...
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Review of 2009/10
With a shot at three national trophies last summer, the Northern Knights bagged two of them. Two out of three ain’t bad and the team and coaching staff can be proud of dominating so many matches with a strong, balanced and feisty team. The side was defending its title in the New Zealand...
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