Summer lovin’

The Black Caps™ may be pants (tech­nic­al term) but there’s at least one reas­on to look for­ward to the Sum­mer crick­et sea­son: the Wel­ling­ton Fire­birds have signed Aus­sie super­star Brett Lee as their second over­seas play­er for the year. Accord­ing to the Wel­ling­ton Crick­et web­site, Lee will play the second half of the HRV Twenty20 […]

Basin Goings On

Basin Reserve scoreboardThe “Fin­ance Com­pany Implo­sion” has seen sev­er­al name changes for our beloved Basin Reserve over the past few months. It is now known offi­cially as the Allied Nation­wide Fin­ance Basin Reserve and the ground improve­ments con­tin­ue at good pace. Between the end of the the rugby sea­son and Labour Week­end the wick­et block and prac­tice areas were re-laid and improved drain­age tech­no­logy installed. The R. A. Vance Stand is hav­ing a new view­ing plat­form built at the back for the media and, I’m guess­ing, to also improve tele­vi­sion cam­era angles from the North­ern (Or J. R. Reid Gate) end of the ground.

Mean­while, a new edi­fice is being erec­ted beside the ven­er­able old (actu­ally crap) score­board at the South­ern End. Any ideas what this will be? It looks like a new replace­ment or addi­tion­al score­board or a big screen (or some com­bin­a­tion).

I walk through the Basin every day and it is look­ing a pic­ture – the relo­ca­tion last year of the war memori­al to the top of the bank was a splen­did move. This sum­mer we have a vis­it from Bangladesh (recom­mend­a­tion: don’t buy a five-day-pass) for a Test Match from Janu­ary 12 and Eng­land (hence all the media improve­ments) from March 13.

So, how about that Cricket?

So, it’s lightly drizz­ling up here at Wel­ling­tonista Towers at present, which is just a short walk from the Sta­di­um, where today’s One Day Inter­na­tion­al (or Oh Dee Eye as they seem to have taken to call­ing this form of the game on the telly) between the NZ Black Caps and the Aus­trali­an, er, Baggy […]

It’s Just Not Cricket

Former Zim­b­ab­wean crick­eter Henry Olonga will speak at a pub­lic meet­ing in Wel­ling­ton on Thursday. Olonga, along with fel­low play­er Andy Flower, caused a stir at the 2003 Crick­et World Cup by wear­ing black arm­bands dur­ing all his matches. Olonga fled his home­land shortly after­wards and now lives in Lon­don. The Green Party has brought […]

The Beige Brigade hit the Stadium

Well, we’ll be head­ing off to NZ v. OZ one-day crick­et match tomor­row not only to see (hope­fully) a hard-fought con­test between the two best one day crick­et sides in the world at the moment, but also to see how much of the facial hair and lock-teas­ing action that graced last night’s fest­ive twenty20 game […]