Feb 23 Christchurch
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After a leisurely start to the morning, I drove into town, parked outside the new Art Gallery and walked to the old Arts Centre in search of Barrie, my potter friend. After covering the area of stalls at least twice, I found him on a corner I was convinced I had explored before, and we had a long chat. I left for a while to find a coffee, then returned to make my farewells & to buy one of his dishes. While I had been at the market the cloud had lifted and the sun was feeling increasingly hot on my head. Having left my hat in the car, it seemed advisable to beat the retreat and head back home. |
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Driving to the cricket ground and parking within 10 minutes walk was easy. Finding the right entrance was a little more difficult. About one third of the ground, the area adjacent to where we were sitting, had been demolished. as a result, our entrance had gone but the map of the ground failed to acknowledge this. We eventually found our seats, right at the end of the stand, out of the sun and in the teeth of a gale. My tee shirt and shorts promised to be inadequate and my sun hat had to be packed away before the wind sent it many a mile.
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The demolition site looked hideous and featured a row of diggers lined up to watch the play. The wind was whipping up clouds of dust from the empty site and blasting them across the pitch. It was only after a couple of hours that someone organised a spray truck to damp everything down.
The facilities at the ground were quite good, the loos at any rate. Beer was readily available but the queues for coffee were horrific. I waited five minutes, during which time I didn’t move an inch and more people joined behind me. I suspect it would have taken half an hour to get served.
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Of the cricket, not too much can be said. We didn’t bat at all well and, with minor exceptions, showed a complete lack of urgency. By half time, however, the sun had started to move round and I had actually started to warm up a little. The pitch was invaded by hundreds of small children playing a variation on the real game.
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The second half started in humiliation for England and continued that way throughout a splendid sunset. The tide was just beginning to turn in England’s favour when the rain arrived and everything got rather wet. In spite of this, the spray truck continued to trundle around on the demolition site. Presumably the driver had been told to start and no one had told him to stop. We all went home and discovered that New Zealand had won.