Free Can Anyone Hear Me? by Peter Baxter

stuff for beleaguered Poms, as England declared on the second evening at 551 for six and even snatched a wicket before the close.
    It took Australia until late on the fourth day to get to their eventual reply of 513, with centuries from Ponting and Clarke.
Monday 4 December 2006
    Barring something extraordinary, the Test is heading for a draw.
Tuesday 5 December 2006
    The extraordinary thing happened. England collapsed and in between the wickets they became completely strokeless, so that when they were all out at tea, Australia turned it into a cakewalk and won with three overs to spare.
    Itwas a shattering finish, which has left us all feeling numb.
    Shane Warne had been at the heart of it. Perhaps he was lucky to be given Strauss’s wicket to start him off, when England were looking secure enough at 69 for one, but he also bowled Pietersen round his legs and ran out Bell. He seemed to be willing Australia to victory. England were dismissed for 129, having lost nine wickets for 70 in the day.
    Australia needed 168 to win from 36 overs and despite losing four wickets, the force was very much with them. They went on, of course, to take the series five-nil.
    I did not cross the Tasman Sea to New Zealand until the 1992 World Cup and only ever covered one Test tour there – that in 2002. Starting that tour in Christchurch, I stayed in an hotel right by the cathedral, the shattered tower of which would become a symbol of the devastating earthquake of 2011. I watched the live television pictures of that destruction from Australia in horror.
    Many of the principal New Zealand grounds are also rugby stadiums, which makes them not always ideal cricket venues, not least because of the reliance on drop-in pitches. The character of these changes during the course of a game in a very different way from conventional pitches.
    Lancaster Park in Christchurch (officially known as Jade Stadium in 2002) was a case in point. The Super Rugby tournament of teams from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa was growing in strength and popularity at that stage and we were approaching the start of that season when we were there, so all the gearing up at the ground was for their home team, the Crusaders.
    Our commentary on the first one-day international was abruptlyinterrupted. A mechanical digger had apparently severed a cable in Sacramento, California. Astonishingly, this put us off the air in Christchurch, New Zealand.
    When this sort of thing happens, we make do with some commentary on the telephone while we assess the scale of the problem. These days our portable satellite dish – a wonderful technological breakthrough – then comes into play. On this occasion, so confident was I of the excellent technical service that we had so far enjoyed, that I had left the equipment back in the hotel. That meant a hasty dash was needed, followed by the dismantling of a louvred window that faced in the right direction to find the satellite, which is stationed more or less over the Equator. From the South Island of New Zealand, that means you are pointing your dish at a comparatively shallow angle and buildings or tall trees can offer an obstruction. However, on this occasion, with miles of the outside broadcast producer’s best friend, gaffer tape, holding the dish precariously out of the window, we got the commentary back on the air in decent quality.
    For the Test Match there, the new drop-in pitch provided a steady clatter of wickets for the first two innings, with a century from Nasser Hussain separating the sides. Then, from the middle of the third day, the pitch seemed to flatten out dramatically and from 106 for five, we saw Andrew Flintoff making a rapid first Test hundred and Graham Thorpe racing to 200 in 231 balls. For only a matter of hours it was the third fastest double hundred in Test history.
    Then, on the fourth day, needing 550 to win and despite losing their sixth wicket when they were still 300 adrift, New Zealand gave