Larsen’s greatest summer hits
Being a New Zealand cricket fan in the 1990s was hard work. The 1992 World Cup took us beyond the stratosphere of expectations. Eight months later, a suicide bomber outside the team’s Colombo hotel threw a series against then-minnows Sri Lanka into disarray on and off the field.
A superb 1994 test victory against South Africa at Johannesburg was duly followed by the misery of the subsequent series loss, a string of ODI defeats and off-field indiscretions.
A rare series win against England amongst a mere 17 test victories from the 81 played during that period.
And so on.
In a decade defined by inconsistency, Gavin Larsen was a mainstay of the NZ one-day team through that turbulent decade, claiming 113 wickets in 121 games that stretched from Sir Richard Hadlee’s twilight through to the 1999 World Cup semifinal loss to Pakistan.
Larsen’s economy rate of 3.76 runs per over was the one of the lowest in world cricket.
Of those who took 100 or more wickets in the 1990s, only Curtly Ambrose and Craig McDermott’s were lower.
‘‘It’s a few haircuts ago now to be fair and things do tend to blur but I do pinch myself – a little medium pace bowler from Onslow somehow cracks it and plays over 100 games for his country,’’ said the 56-year-old.
‘‘It was certainly an interesting period in which I played – there was some really good stuff, there was some really bad stuff – it was turbulent and controversial at times – lots of memories but the vast majority are fantastic.’’
Along with Chris Harris and a conveyor belt of medium pacers, Larsen represented the sharp end of New Zealand’s ‘‘dibbly, dobbly’’ bowling approach designed to blunt opposing batsmen. Not that they were a fan of the tag.
‘‘We didn’t actually like talking about it to be fair – I thought we were a little bit underestimated as a bowling unit, maybe to the opposition’s peril – certainly our pitches assisted, they were slower in nature,’’ Larsen said.
The use of frustratingly frugal medium pacers became a hallmark of New Zealand sides in that era, beginning with the successful 1992 World Cup campaign – a career highlight for Larsen.
‘‘I think what sat right over top of it all was that we had a master captain in Martin Crowe and, tactically, he was just magnificent. He pulled all the strings and the gameplan he developed was tremendous and we probably saw that unravel when we had his injury in the semifinal,’’ he said.
‘‘That still hurts all these years later because I firmly believe we had a team that could have won that World Cup.’’
Occasionally, Larsen’s batting prowess came to the fore on the international stage – notably at Christchurch on December 17, 1995.
With a bit of help from renowned tailender Danny Morrison, Larsen scored a crucial 14 not out from 10 balls to steer New Zealand to a 1 wicket win over Pakistan with 1 ball remaining.
‘‘I didn’t win many games for NZ with the bat, so that was actually pretty special and to do it when you’re nine down with someone like my old mate Steely at the other end,’’ he said.
‘‘I think the first two balls he faced he had mad swishes at them. I went down and said ‘mate, bat on ball. I don’t want to see you trying to hit the cover off it again. I’ll try to do this this myself, you just make sure you’re backing up’.’’
‘‘It just transpired that I managed to hit a couple of gaps and before we knew it we were down to that last over – Wasim Akram didn’t bowl it particularly well and yeah, we got through.’’
Pakistan also featured in Larsen’s best ODI bowling performance – a 4-24 return at Eden Park in 1994.
However, it’s not considered the medium pacer’s best effort.
‘‘I remember in a one-dayer at the Basin I bowled five maidens in a row to Aravinda De Silva [7 overs, 5 maidens, 9 runs, 0 wickets] – that’s vivid in my memory because that’s me doing my job.’’
‘‘I had to be frugal and keep my RPO as low as possible, so usually it was good old Harry at the other end that we could exert pressure in the middle and let the glory boys do the hard work up front at the death and we did that reasonably frequently.’’
While proud of his one-day achievements, Larsen said the pinnacle of his career was his eight test matches, which at one point saw him open the bowling against the West Indies at Barbados in 1996.
‘‘We were riddled with injury and battling – the ball was swinging a bit and so I opened with Danny Morrison and we also had the might of Justin Vaughan, Dipak Patel and Robert Kennedy.
‘‘It was bizarre really. I remember looking up at the scoreboard after half a dozen overs and seeing I’d taken the first three wickets and thinking ‘I’d better take a photo of that’.’’
While he valued economy over wickets in his bowling endeavours, claiming a big scalp was always a satisfying reward.
‘‘Lara didn’t rate me or any bowlers, he was just a magnificent player – I got him out a few times [once in tests, twice in ODIs] and I remember setting a few traps for him because Brian wouldn’t want me to settle into line and length, so it became quite an intriguing battle with him.’’
‘‘Sachin [Tendulkar] had the widest bat that I ever bowled to – you just never seemed to find anywhere close to the inside or outside edges of his bat but once again I had a couple of successes against him.’’
Now based in Nelson where he balances his national selector commitments with a commercial manager role at Nelson Cricket, Larsen was impressed with the development of cricket within the region in recent years.
He said, with a couple of infrastructure tweaks, the village green setting of Saxton Oval had potential as a test match venue
‘‘I doubt we’d ever see a major team playing here but certainly a lesser nation. It’s tailor-made for white ball cricket.’’