White-ball reality is just not cricket
OPINION: When Kane Williamson can’t remember a match – or one of his innings – that’s significant. As his New Zealand side begins a run of 23 white-ball cricket matches over the next three months, ponder how many will linger in your memory. Will they be there next summer? Summers to follow, when your hair has reduced at the same speed your stomach has expanded?
The Black Caps skipper certainly couldn’t recall the last time he and his team-mates played in Whangarei ahead of yesterday’s first of three one-day internationals against the West Indies at Cobham Oval.
Let me jog your memory. It was on Waitangi Day in 2012, against Zimbabwe. Batting first, New Zealand plundered 372-6 and Zimbabwe replied with 231-8. Not a contest to have the heart pumping until the end the day.
Unless you were Rob Nicol. He blazed 146 off 134 balls, Martin Guptill, Jacob Oram (batting at three) and Tom Latham also made runs but Williamson’s forgetfulness may be explained away by his personal contribution of four.
Even as one of world cricket’s elite players, Williamson remains a cricket numpty - he knows what happened, how and how many, when and where.
It’s inconceivable to think that he’d have forgotten a test innings - even if he’d failed with the bat.
But one-dayers, T20s - well, here one day (or for three hours), gone the next.
Yet that’s what cricket fans are set to consume for summer – a ‘diet’ of fast food, comfort snacks and shots. You may get happy very quickly, you may find some of it tasty, but don’t expect to feel sated, and don’t think it will last.
This is a contrarian view – I’m acutely aware. That’s how I am – I like country music, Charles Bukowski and films that seem to have no obvious conclusion.
I see the crowds at test matches and know that term is an oxymoron.
Before play had started on Wednesday, the numbers Chris Gayle’s tour of New Zealand is off to an inauspicious start.
The superstar West Indian batsman made 22 as opener batting first in the one-day international against New Zealand in Whangarei on Wednesday but didn’t take the field initially in New Zealand’s reply.
It’s understood the former skipper was feeling unwell and may have been undergoing tests to determine the problem.
New Zealand were 230-4 after 43 overs and crusing to victory chasing West Indies’ 249.
For latest from the first oneday international go to stuff.co.nz assembled on the banks at Cobham Oval were greater than those who appeared on the grass at Seddon Park throughout any day of the second test between the same sides.
Sports fans – hey, people in general – are happy to to be entertained by short bursts of high-octane entertainment. And why not – we could all do with some excitement.
But week after week after month after month of the same fare doesn’t seem fair.
I’m writing blind with this, but I presume it’d be like watching a reality TV series. It’s life, but scripted, produced for mass consumption.
Should I ever be forced to endure that, I imagine it’d be akin to being pushed in the back through Dante’s nine circles of hell.
I’d be test cricket Limbo land – three months between the Windies and England featuring in the whites, as others Lust for the white ball to constantly disappear into the stands, over-indulging in the Gluttony of coloured clothing cricket. Is it Greed or sensible fiscal policy from New Zealand Cricket that we’ll witness months of fans clammering to catch a six and claim the cash? Debatable, but I feel my Anger rising.
It’s undeniably Heresy for us who worship at the altar of tests, that format which can contain episodes of Violence but also allow us sheer beauty.
It’s not the one-day matches and Twenty20 games are Fraud, nor Treachery - we’re not being forced to watch them, and they’re provide exactly what it says on the lid.
I grew up watching cricket and learning the game in a different era. Adjusting, even gradually, is still hard, however.
I adored the one-day tri-series in Australia in the early 1980s. To watch international cricket every few evenings as an obsessed teen was manna from nirvana.
Maybe it’s garnered a greater golden glow over time, but it was fresh, and a relative rarity. We can’t say that now about the pyjama game.
Still, lives and worlds move remorselessly on. My cousin Bill, Wainuiomta-bred, has lived overseas for 30 years. He watched here that mesmerising Windies tour of NZ in 1980 that was chock with controversy amid the pulling power of a touring side that featured Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.
Visiting NZ at present, he finds it tougher than a well-done steak to come to grips with the idea that the Windies are on these shores as long-priced underdogs in every game they play here.
Plus ca change – as they say in French cricket.