The Pink Report

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 take it to the NZC board that Whangarei should host one of the BLACKCAPS’ test matches with Zimbabwe in December, after which all that will be required is the tick from the ICC’s international venue man. And if that wasn’t enough on its own to make him the toast of Northland, he also made a compelling speech about the need to look after traditional cricket.

Something that should send quivers of unease down every New Zealand cricket lover’s spine is the news that Cricket Australia is intending to list itself on the Australian Stock Exchange. Odd timing, you might think, from a country whose team just blew out of the World Cup. Not to mention a team that’s lost its captain, the Ashes, and the general halo of cricketing supremacy it wore for a full 20 years before embarking on its bitter downward slide.

In Steve Waugh’s day, Cricket Australia’s fortunes were such that the blue-chip skipper was one of the highest paid professional cricketers around - his million-dollar salary used to make New Zealand player payments look like chicken-feed. For that matter, even his Aussie predecessor Allan Border had only been on $95,000. Three consecutive World Cup victories, 15 unbeaten years in the Ashes and a test and one-day team that throttled its opposition with regular monotony ensured the massive gate-takings and sponsorship deals that drove payments above six figures, let alone five.

But that was before professional international Twenty20 and a few Indian billionaires changed the deal by paying players like Ross Taylor $1.3 million for just a couple of short-term burls in the IPL. Now the Aussie team is on its cricketing and financial backside, compared the big boys overseas. Gate takings for traditional cricket at home have dipped - its fickle public off to watch something Australia is good at, like Aussie Rules. Struggling with its finances, that Cricket Australia is at the same time eyeing public investment via the stock exchange can mean only one thing: it’s looking firmly to the T20 bandwagon to milk cricket’s New Money.

Australia has big plans for the Big Bash, its T20 comp, which will be relaunched as a league next summer to make it even more attractive to professional players and investors. Private investors, Indian billionaire types, may be permitted to own as much as a 33 per cent stake in the eight Big Bash League teams, creating a cash injection allowing franchises to sign up even more big names from around the world, while Cricket Australia stands to rake in the significant betting revenues that can come from having a comp exciting enough to catch the interest of cricket-watchers beyond its own borders. In a nutshell, Australia is getting its own little version of India’s IPL.

The problem for New Zealand is the December-January timing of the Big Bash: it cuts right across our own domestic and international season, meaning administrators here will inevitably be challenged with keeping our top professional players in our own game. So Denis Currie, who came from a grass roots admin background in Auckland club cricket to sit on New Zealand Cricket’s board for 20 years, spoke pointedly about the need to “protect traditional and test cricket” in the changing landscape. And while we’re on that subject, given the backroom struggles trying to ensure a quality international tours programme for the BLACKCAPS at the moment, no one was happier than Denis that the BLACKCAPS made the ICC World Cup semi-finals. Trumping the likes of England, South Africa and Australia on that grand stage makes it a little harder for the big boys of world cricket to justify eschewing us.

Meanwhile, the last first-class battles of the 2010/11 season are underway around the country today and as usual there will be more players than spectators. One thing that always amuses me is how many sports aficionados will call up Radio Sport and the like with their fervent views on who should and shouldn’t be in the BLACKCAPS when they’ve never been to a Plunket Shield match - the training ground for test cricket. They wouldn’t have a clue.

Then again, if you’d relied on any of the weekend’s Sunday papers to keep you informed, you wouldn’t have known first-class cricket was still going - let alone got any previews of an intriguing final week in which any one of four teams could snatch the national title at the last.

Even many of the dailies seem to lose interest in domestic cricket once Super Rugby starts and bounces cricket off the back page, leaving just a couple of column inches spare for the summer game. Many take their results copy from NZPA, the national agency that sends out anything worth knowing to their media clients. But you’ll seldom see anyone from NZPA at a domestic cricket match - those perfunctory little paragraphs you see in the paper are the handiwork of their journo sitting in the Auckland office perusing the live scoreboards on the net, or covering one match but asked to sum up all three in 60 words.

Last week even New Zealand Cricket got caught out when it ran an NZPA summary of the day’s play in the match between the Volts and the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights: a scoreboard error had had Pete McGlashan sitting on four catches mid-innings, when he’d only gloved three - an error that was later corrected, but not in time for the desktop reporters. Gotcha. They don’t see the dropped catches, the brilliant takes, the turn or the bounce or the smashing straight drive, because their employers have found a more cost-effective way to deal with it than by paying them to spend four days away at a cricket match in somewhere awkward like Rangiora.

Which is, of course, where the Knights are facing off against Canterbury, both teams hoping to get their mitts on the Plunket Shield.

The Wizards suffered a pre-match blow when their experienced wicketkeeper Reece Young was ruled out with a fractured a finger - but his replacement, 19-year-old Tom Latham (Rod’s son), has looked a capable young talent this season. The Knights have answered with a promising youngster of their own, Hamilton offspinner and New Zealand under-19 development squad member (the squad being groomed for next year’s World Cup in Darwin) Joe Walker making his first-class debut, with James Baker unavailable with a niggle and Bradley Scott and Jono Boult on the sidelines for this last match.

Joe took 10 wickets in Hamilton’s successful Hawke Cup challenge against Marlborough last month and is still at Hamilton Boys’ High School, where his teachers have included Bradley and Graeme Aldridge. I guess we can safely say that it’s not every day that a lad gets to make his first-class debut with a couple of his secondary school teachers in the same changing room - one to watch.

With a four-point lead on the rest of the country heading into the match, at the moment the Wizards need an outright from Rangiora to make absolutely certain of the title. They’ll have one eye on the Stags’ match against Auckland in Napier. If the Stags beat the wooden-spooners outright with first innings points, the Wizards will need a maximum points outright of their own to be champions. But rain is already interrupting proceedings in Rangiora, and the forecast looks likely to create one of those irritating stop-start matches in which no one gets anywhere fast.

If the Wizards end up taking first innings points and a draw, and the Stags happen to get a six-point outright (without the first innings) to equal them on points, then the Wizards will still claim the trophy by virtue of having had more wins this season than the Stags. The Aces have thrown a spanner in the proverbial by coasting to 101/1 (after a century opening stand in the morning session). The acid is on the Wizards to stump up. And the Stags. And of course, the defending champion Knights want it bad, too. But the Knights have to hope against hope now that the Stags don’t get a win - because if the Knights win and the Stags win and wash up on equal points at the top of the table, the two sides will finish with an equal number of wins and it will come down to run rate - and there the Stags hold all the aces, as it were.  

The Firebirds have a mathematical chance too, if other games fall their way, and have rushed Andy McKay and Luke Woodcock off the World Cup plane to help their cause. As for us, I’ve been trying to avoid mentioning this, but we’re three down for 24 already in slippery conditions, the high-flying top order all gone, including Daniel Flynn for a golden duck. A double hundred one day, a golden duck the next. Isn’t that just like cricket to do that to you?

But our friend La Niña might yet stick her oar in to decide what's what for 2010/11. Showers and rain are predicted for both the matches down south, while Napier may have a finer time of it. What can we say but good luck there and may the best teams win in this still-very-important bastion of traditional cricket.

The Plunket Shield sits in its carefully packed shipping container, ready for its trip to Rangiora.

***

The young Northern Districts Maori team scripted a memorable finish to their Twenty20 match against the Telecom Cook Islands at Seddon Park on Friday. Chasing ND Maori’s 151, the Cooks needed 12 runs off the last over, bowled by ND Maori captain Leighton Parsons, and were on course after the first few deliveries - but when ND Maori’s wicketkeeper-coach Graeme Stewart got a stumping off the penultimate ball, the Cooks were left needing to blast a six off the last delivery to win.

In the event, they could only squeak two off Leighton’s last delivery, handing Northern Districts Maori their maiden victory. But nobody went home unhappy. “To be within three runs of a team of the quality of ND Maori is a great achievement and we should all be proud,” the Cooks said before heading for the airport and their date in Samoa at their big two-yearly ICC East Asia-Pacific showdown. And for Northern Districts Maori there was a lot of pride in beating an international side even as the concept is still finding its feet - three of the Maori players (Shayde Perham, from St Peter’s School in Cambridge, Elliott Timoti, from Tauranga Boys’ College and Danyon Stewart from Hamilton Boys’ High) are still at school.

Catch coverage of the occasion and interviews with the Northern Districts Maori side on Sky Sport’s cricket show later this week. Short scoreboard: Northern Districts Maori 151/7 (Brett Sorrenson 23, William Kokaua 28, Elliott Timoti 19, Shayde Perham 17, Graeme Stewart 22, Wayken Punga 2/21, Davis Teinaki 2/16) beat Telecom Cook Islands 148/5 (Rob Samuel 33, Tino Etita 29, Vane Tangimetua 27, Toala Teinaki 19 not out, Api Mamanu 18, Danyon Stewart 2/29).