It’s now a different ball game in a time-conscious age
Men in White, that bible of New Zealand cricket, compares the win to VE Day, Edmund Hillary conquering Everest and Peter Snell's middle distance triumphs in Tokyo.
When the New Zealand cricketers take the field against England at Seddon Park tomorrow night, there’s every likelihood they will be wearing black armbands.
The death of former captain Bevan Congdon last week, a day before his 80th birthday and shortly after celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of this country’s first test victory over the same opposition, surely warrants it.
Congdon performed with both bat and ball in that historic game, with 44 runs in the first innings and a pair of wickets to help wrap up the English tail.
Men in White, that bible of New Zealand cricket, compares the win to VE Day, Edmund Hillary conquering Everest and Peter Snell’s middle distance triumphs in Tokyo. A pardonable hyperbole considering the country had waited nearly half a century.
Congdon was in charge of the side that achieved an arguably greater ‘‘first’’ four years before. I suppose the besting of the mother country, where the sport had its origins and from whence colonisation came, takes some beating but, given the insufferable arrogance of our Australian neighbours, personally I would rate the 1974 victory over Ian Chappell’s side a notch or two higher.
The fact that Australia had refused to play us for the best part of three decades, both a reflection and reinforcement of our perceived inferiority, gave the win added importance. Congdon claimed the prize wicket of Greg Chappell, his bowling a valuable foil for Richard Collinge and the brothers Hadlee.
Forty-four years later we face both Australia and England in a three-way tournament, in a truncated format that would have been inconceivable back then. Bizarrely, a handful of matches ago, New Zealand were ranked the No 1 Twenty20 side in the world, somehow better than India, where hundreds of millions are annually poured into the format, if not necessarily its international expression, or South Africa, resplendent with batting geniuses and up-and-coming quicks, or either of the teams who have already toured here this summer, West Indies and Pakistan.
Such is the mercurial nature of the format though – and paucity of matches played, an irony given how prevalent they are at national level – that three losses in a row have seen a rankings table shift from first to fourth.
With Australia resurgent on the back of their Big Bash brouhaha, New Zealand were again lambs to the slaughter on trans-tasman grounds, putting in a performance to rival that of the world cup final.
How dispiriting that at a time when we have achieved a kind of parity or at least competitiveness with Australia in the 50-over game that the Chappell-hadlee series is messed with again.
A three-way one-day international (ODI) competition based in Australia would have been a nostalgic revival of the type of tournaments enjoyed in the early days of the Packer regime, the era of underarm deliveries, disallowed Martin Snedden catches and a plethora of sixhitting from the senior member of the Cairns clan, the one whose name was never dragged through the courts.
In those heady days, New Zealand always fell at the final hurdle, if they managed to make the final in the first place.
Some of us, growing up, dreamt of a Benson & Hedges series win. Perhaps then it seemed as important as a first test victory, an opportunity to stick it up those blowhard Channel 9 commentators, not to mention their ethically challenged, perennially cocky players.
A T20 tournament split across two countries is hardly the same thing.
There’s a degree of contrivance about a competition that at once signals the end of one tour – the Ashes – and begins another, England in New Zealand. Its virtues are populist ones. Bums on seats. Cricket in the age of the time conscious, tailored for those whose attention spans are dictated to by social media.
T20 is cricket’s Instagram, short and flashy and without much of a history yet to celebrate.
How would Bevan Congdon have coped? In his prime, would he have made the team?
Given that Kane Williamson, by critical consent and statistical analysis our finest ever batsman, is currently having his place questioned, at least by local ‘‘expert’’ Simon Doull, you fear not.
Like Williamson, he might just have had too much class. Yet, seen in context, as everything should, he was a borderline great one-day cricketer.
Congdon averaged 52 against England and 131 against Australia. His ODI strike rate compared favourably with that of Martin Crowe. I would pencil him in.