Taieri College cricketers in front of the Taj Mahal on a recent tour of India. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Hitting the mark
I have just one wish for what will be my 20th season of covering the great game for the Otago Daily Times — a successful Plunket Shield campaign. Not going to waste it on the Black Caps — they look like they might get it done without my help. The Volts, however, will need some assistance. Otago have not won the first-class competition since 1988 when New Zealand still had a population of three million and moustaches were popular. Actually, now that I think about it, moustaches and the low population may have been linked.
Crease bound
So, cricket will return to the Olympics. The accountants have figured out a billion cricket-loving Indians equals a lot of rupees. And, well, cricket really needs another pinnacle event. The sport is limited to a T20 World Cup seemingly every other month, a men’s and women’s ODI World Cup once every four years, the World Test Championship final every other year, the Ashes and, the most fabulous of them all, The Hundred (shakes head, buries face in hands and mutters, ‘‘Oh dear Lord, make it stop’’). So, roll on 2028 and the Los Angeles Games. The Americans are going to love it.
Clubbing it
We make no promises we won’t bang on about how appalling PlayHQ is each week. That said, this is your space. Email us your comments, photos and news tips from the grassroots game and we’ll do our best to make room in the order. Hugh Tait is opening the batting this week. He helped lead the Taieri College First XI, and a few ring-ins from Trinity and Bayfield, on a two-week tour of India. They were based in Delhi and played a mixture of schools and academies from the area.
‘‘Amazing tour for the lads — a real contrast to what they would normally see and do,’’ Tait wrote.
‘‘The cricket has been good [but] tough work for the bowlers.’’
Sam Duff impressed with a couple of centuries. But the word is the bowlers have seen enough of rolled-mud pitches.
The declaration
Free-to-air coverage is the best development in cricket in decades. It is going to put the game in front of so many more eyeballs than having it hidden behind a paywall.
