Small crowds attend NZ tests
The numbers don’t lie.
Attracting crowds to test match cricket in New Zealand, particularly before Christmas, has become a treacherous uphill battle.
New Zealand Cricket are not alone, of course, but they are certainly pinning their hopes on the inaugural day-night pink-ball match against England at Eden Park in Auckland in March on reviving their numbers for the five-day game.
Around only 3500 turned up to the second test between the Black Caps and the West Indies in Hamilton, across the four days it lasted, as the hosts completed a 2-0 series whitewash with a 240-run win. That was 1196 on Saturday, 1186 on Sunday, 686 on Monday and as at the lunch break on Tuesday, just 394.
NZC general manager commercial, James Wear, said those figures compared very similarly to the numbers which attended the Pakistan test in Hamilton last November, while the one against South Africa at Seddon Park in March this year had a healthier turnout.
The first test against the West Indies at the Basin Reserve in Wellington attracted around 7000 across the four days, with the same ticket prices as Hamilton - $110 for a match pass for an adult ($20 for a junior), or daily prices of $35 from the first session (junior $5), $25 from the second session (junior $5) and $15 from the third session (junior free).
There are also concession deals for students and gold-card holders, and cheaper tickets for those purchasing in advance.
There’s always the struggle for weekday sales, but on the Saturdays in both cities crowds surely could have been bigger if local club cricket hadn’t been staged, while leading into Christmas people are generally busy with other things like shopping and social functions.
Wear suggested punters in Hamilton also often don’t buy in advance, instead waiting to see what the weather is looking like, and that some were perhaps put off by showers in the forecast.
But he acknowledged NZC weren’t exactly enamoured with the numbers they had seen.
‘‘Obviously we’d prefer to have more people there. It’s definitely known that we do struggle to get people to test cricket.’’
It’s the issue right around the world too, as Twenty20 takes hold and attracts a big following, and brings in new fans.
And for the Black Caps, they now go on a lengthy run of 23 (24 including the T20 tri-series final) white-ball matches.
The public will have to pick and choose when and where they spend their money with plenty of options at their disposal.
In a summer with just two more tests, Wear is predicting those remaining ones - against England in March/April, in Auckland and Christchurch - will attract ‘‘significantly more’’ punters, chiefly due to the time of the year.
But it’s the first day-nighter in New Zealand, and the ninth overall, which has NZC chiefly excited, like plenty of other authorities round the globe.
‘‘The pre-sale numbers four months out - I can’t tell you what they are - but they are significant for us,’’ Wear said.
‘‘So we think it’s really going to be a shot in the arm for test cricket in this country.’’