The Pink Report

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.

It was a real shame the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights didn't quite get across the line at the end, after Anton and Brandon Hiini, playing his first one-day game for the team, kick-started such a significant recovery effort in a must-win match. Anton walked in to bat when the team was 67/3, the team looking for a tall total of 294 to keep its Ford Trophy hopes alive.

In the first innings, things hadn't been going too badly really until Nathan McCullum, fresh from being named in both the T20 and ODI Blackcaps sides, started smashing the attack out of the park - his game-breaker innings of 90 came off just 43 balls thanks to seven sixes and some token fours for good measure. In the final analysis, it was what barred the gate on the Knights, who valiantly finished just a handful of runs short. Seven runs had been needed off the last ball, with Neil Wagner not too likely to gift an extra…

Both Nath's and Devvy's innings were great entertainment, which is why it's a shame relatively few people were there to enjoy it on a three-day weekend. Auckland cricket, fresh from successfully hosting the HRV Cup final, decided to make it free entry to their Ford Trophy game against the Knights just a few days later - I understand it probably would have cost them more to secure and man Colin Maiden Park (which doesn't have permanent fencing, etc  - they have to hire temporary stuff, although that was still in place from the HRV final when we played them) than they may have reasonably expected to take at the gate.

As it happened, a decent throng of regular supporters enjoyed a free, if rather quick, spectacle and yet more Auckland revelry in the side's last season at CMP. Shame about that last bit really, as apart from being exposed to wind, it's a fine ground for playing and watching cricket.

Yes, I know people have busy weekends these days - ever since the advent of Sunday shopping, life has changed and they'd apparently rather invest their leisure dollar on a three-hour HRV Cup match than a day-long experience. But the quality and appeal of domestic cricket hasn't deteriorated from those days in the 1990s when crowds of 5,000-plus - even getting up to 15,000 for the finals - were quite the norm. Ask the players and they still very much enjoy the one-day cricket challenge, and enough of us spectators clearly enjoy it enough to flock along to watch the Blackcaps when they turn to 50 overs.

But the domestic version has gone out of fashion (except for those of us who get it, of course). So if it's not catching the crowd, it's not making any money, and the Blackcaps selectors have already settled on their ODI picks, I find myself yet again questioning this season's structure.  

I was thrilled for Chris Martin the other day as he zeroed in on the Zimbabweans to nail his best test wicket bag yet and claim a very popular man of the match honour. At the same time he drew level with Chris Cairns on the all-time Kiwi wickets list, and it will be a sure bet that he'll soon move up to become, remarkably for such a late blooming career, New Zealand's second-placed pace bowler (former world record holder Sir RJH being a tough one to top).

Chris is a hell of a good guy with an underlying steel to him and has been crucial to the Blackcaps' recent test successes as the senior member of the pace and swing attack. Like all bowlers, the best thing for his game and body is bowling regularly. Which is why it absolutely sucked that he had little choice, as a specialist, which is a polite way of saying he can't bat to save himself, but to sit on the sidelines for the best part of two months over high summer - the Auckland Aces' HRV Cup 12th man for something like seven matches in a row.

I caught up with him recently and, as he said, "Nobody cares when you take a wicket in the nets". No matter how assiduously you work, it just doesn't give you the same feeling, feedback and confidence as playing matches - not to mention actual first-class matches, through the meat of summer. You have to admire the guy for turning it on the way he did against Zimbabwe after just the one measly warm-up game in Gisborne.

In another month's time, the heat will be right on him all over again to lead the New Zealand attack against one of the two top-ranked test sides in the world, South Africa. But in the meantime, because of the way this season has been structured, it seems he'll be doing little more than a whole lot more net bowling. Argh!

He's not alone in wanting a more logical season. "I think they (NZC) need to have a look at that at some stage for the betterment of cricket in general, " he said. "We need to play four-day cricket right throughout the summer. Some guys like Andrew de Boorder and Tim Mac (McIntosh), they'll play their last game for Auckland in early December and they won't play again until (almost) February. That's ridiculous! It doesn't make any sense.

"There will always be a window for Twenty20 - though I think it should be two or three weeks. At the moment, it's too long a period of white-ball play throughout the summer and it's quite hard for people to prepare for international red-ball cricket if there's no real red-ball cricket being played.

"We need to play four-day cricket right throughout the summer. They do consult the Players' Association (when planning the season), but we should probably have players consulted, too. Because we know what doesn't work…"

So here's my two cents' worth. There's no question New Zealand Cricket has to put its most popular domestic product in the window where most people are on holiday and keen to go catch a game. Major Associations do need to turn a dime somewhere, as flying cricketers around the country and putting them up in hotels (sometimes even within your own province, if you're ND) together with all the other costs of staging a match is a horridly expensive exercise. Playing the HRV Cup a little earlier in the season, as they attempted last summer, just didn't fly as well in that regard - and NZC has a duty of care towards its six feeder associations, of course, to make sure they can remain financial.

Meanwhile, the last licks of spring weather and its pre-Christmas tantrums can have a too great an influence over Plunket Shield pitches and matches played as early as November, in my opinion. That's never going to change a great deal, since we're stuck with being a coastal sliver of a country, our weather whipped up by the oceans; rather than a big, largely dry continental mass like Australia. How we envy them that aspect - but hey, that's another topic.

So if crowds aren't trotting along to the domestic one-dayers like they used to, tell me what's the point of playing them in January, when we could be serving up good red-ball test preparation? I say open the season with the Ford Trophy. Play a few matches tournament-style at the same venue, for all it matters - might save a bob, plus you could then also easily bring back reserve days to try to obtain the truest results.

Sort out the top four sides before Christmas - and those sides can then resume for the 1.5 week playoff phase leading into the Blackcaps' one-day series, whenever that might be, for the explicit purposes of readying the leading white-ball players. Have your exclusive little HRV Cup window over the holiday period - and the rest of the time don't stop playing the Plunket Shield.

The oracle has spoken.