Free Can Anyone Hear Me? by Peter Baxter Page A

England quite a scare. Nathan Astle made the fastest ever Test double century. It took him only 153 balls and his second hundred came in 39 balls. He made hislast 88 runs batting with the number eleven, an injured Chris Cairns.
    England did win and the margin of 98 sounds comfortable enough, but the abiding memory was of England’s fast bowlers craning their necks as successive deliveries were smacked out of the ground by Astle in his 222.
    Over the last ten years or so, one-day internationals in Wellington have been played at the Westpac Stadium, known to one and all, because of its shape, as the Cake Tin. It is a multi-purpose stadium, principally – this being New Zealand – used for rugby. And it feels even less like a cricket ground than the other similar grounds.
    My only experience of cricket in this stadium was a rain-affected one-day international in which England’s demise was dramatic enough to attract the local headline, which is so beloved in the Antipodes, ‘THESE PATHETIC POMS’. In the interval the crowd were invited to contribute to the sound effects for the second ‘Lord of the Rings’ film, which was being made at the time. By stamping their feet and beating their chests, they became the Orc Army. I was trying to conduct the
Test Match Special
interval programme at the time and had to explain to listeners what was going on, but I think of that evening whenever I see the orcs marching on Helm’s Deep in
The Two Towers
.
    By contrast, Wellington’s Test ground, the Basin Reserve, is very much a cricket ground. It does, however, have the dubious distinction of being a traffic roundabout. The Test match there in 2002 was blighted by the news that arrived with us during the third morning, that Ben Hollioake, who had been part of the touring team for the one-day internationals at the start of the tour and in India before that, had been killed in a car crash in Western Australia overnight. Such a sudden loss seemedto knock the stuffing out of England even more than the southerly gale, which can be the curse of Wellington.
    That tour ended with a Test in Auckland at Eden Park, another ground famed for rugby, having staged two world cup finals, in 1987 and 2011, both won by New Zealand. As a result the ground has a special place in New Zealanders’ hearts.
    It is not a great cricket ground, though. To play cricket, the pitch – another drop-in these days – is orientated on a diagonal corner-to-corner line. That can mean, for instance, that fine leg is practically in the batsman’s back pocket, while the square leg boundary is in a far-distant corner. That seems to create more of a problem with field settings in one-day cricket.
    The most bizarre thing I saw there, though, was the cold and rain-interrupted third Test of the 2002 tour. On the fourth day, New Zealand were batting with a first innings lead of forty under their belts. With playing hours extended to make up for lost time, the floodlights came on during a gloomy afternoon and, probably sensing the fielders’ desire not to continue, the batsmen turned down offers of bad light from the umpires and continued to build their lead past 300.
    It was apparent that fielders simply could not see the red ball against the dark stands, but play continued into the evening in a way that was subsequently ruled out by the guidelines for Test umpires.
    That lead enabled New Zealand to give themselves a day to bowl England out and they managed it before the tea interval.
    These days, tours of Australia have lost something, with the paucity of up-country games, when everyone could see a bit more of the nation than the increasingly sophisticated major cities. Touring teams are less likely now to hear thecheerfully partisan public address announcement once delivered, ‘From the Piggeries End it’s gonna be Stormy Gale. And let’s hope he puts the wind up the Poms.’
    At least most major tours do start