Cricket, Sun, Beers, and Friends
Cricket, sun, beers and friends sounds like a winning combination and so it proved to be the weekend before Easter. Living in New Zealand does not present many opportunities to watch England play test cricket so we took the chance to travel up to Wellington to do so. Incidentally, of the seven England test matches and numerous one day games that I have seen, I have never seen them play in England . What that says about me I don’t know? However, I think it is a combination of cost, ticket availability, televised games, access to venues and taking it for granted.
Unfortunately, there was not a test match scheduled for Christchurch as the games here have been poorly attended in recent years. Additionally, the fact that one side of AMI Stadium (formerly Jade Stadium and before that Lancaster Park ) is currently a building site would not have exactly enhanced the ambience, at this less than scenic concrete temple, but that is a different story! Instead, all three test matches were played at three smaller ‘boutique’ cricket grounds in Napier, Hamilton and Wellington . This meant that the big (big in NZ terms!) cities of Auckland and Christchurch missed out. To be fair, this was probably the correct decision as playing in near empty, at what are really rugby, stadiums does not do the image of cricket any good.
We flew up, after work on Thursday, to watch days 2, 3 and 4 of the game. Andy and Jenny (friends from England : New Forest Ladies Cricket Club) picked us up from the airport and whisked us to their place where they had the ‘question’ beer ready. In case you are wondering, ‘question beer’ is a beer that allows the ‘consumer’ to participate in and score points in sports trivia, i.e. there are questions printed on the underside of the bottle cap. Points are awarded on an arbitrary basis (i.e. biased) by the question master (i.e. consumer of the beer). Our tradition of drinking and playing ‘question beer’ was established when the four of us went to Melbourne over Christmas 2006. Needless, to say the game of ‘question beer’ was played each night then and again was an integral part of our stay in Wellington !
The Cricket
Okay so the cricket was not always of a high standard and the scoring was average but from an English perspective the result was good. Not only did we witness a convincing victory but the sun shone for us too! The Saturday was a fine day for test cricket: glorious cloudless skies and a scorching sun brought a capacity crowd to the grassy banks of Wellington ’s Basin Reserve.
Sitting on our picnic rug, drinking cold beers with friends, made the day one of the best I have ever spent at a cricket game. And the cricket wasn’t too bad either! We also made it onto live tv when a rather intoxicated kiwi fan fell face forwards over Andy, somehow saving a few sips of his beer! Apparently, this clip even made it on to the BBC News. See attached link. http://youtube.com/watch?v=fyc22i1hVbk
Well that was our one break away for the summer (a summer spent painting) and a good one it was too! I believe England is touring the West Indies , during the next northern hemisphere winter…
Unfortunately, there was not a test match scheduled for Christchurch as the games here have been poorly attended in recent years. Additionally, the fact that one side of AMI Stadium (formerly Jade Stadium and before that Lancaster Park ) is currently a building site would not have exactly enhanced the ambience, at this less than scenic concrete temple, but that is a different story! Instead, all three test matches were played at three smaller ‘boutique’ cricket grounds in Napier, Hamilton and Wellington . This meant that the big (big in NZ terms!) cities of Auckland and Christchurch missed out. To be fair, this was probably the correct decision as playing in near empty, at what are really rugby, stadiums does not do the image of cricket any good.We flew up, after work on Thursday, to watch days 2, 3 and 4 of the game. Andy and Jenny (friends from England : New Forest Ladies Cricket Club) picked us up from the airport and whisked us to their place where they had the ‘question’ beer ready. In case you are wondering, ‘question beer’ is a beer that allows the ‘consumer’ to participate in and score points in sports trivia, i.e. there are questions printed on the underside of the bottle cap. Points are awarded on an arbitrary basis (i.e. biased) by the question master (i.e. consumer of the beer). Our tradition of drinking and playing ‘question beer’ was established when the four of us went to Melbourne over Christmas 2006. Needless, to say the game of ‘question beer’ was played each night then and again was an integral part of our stay in Wellington !
The CricketOkay so the cricket was not always of a high standard and the scoring was average but from an English perspective the result was good. Not only did we witness a convincing victory but the sun shone for us too! The Saturday was a fine day for test cricket: glorious cloudless skies and a scorching sun brought a capacity crowd to the grassy banks of Wellington ’s Basin Reserve.
Sitting on our picnic rug, drinking cold beers with friends, made the day one of the best I have ever spent at a cricket game. And the cricket wasn’t too bad either! We also made it onto live tv when a rather intoxicated kiwi fan fell face forwards over Andy, somehow saving a few sips of his beer! Apparently, this clip even made it on to the BBC News. See attached link. http://youtube.com/watch?v=fyc22i1hVbkWell that was our one break away for the summer (a summer spent painting) and a good one it was too! I believe England is touring the West Indies , during the next northern hemisphere winter…
posted by pandc at
31.3.08
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