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Sports correspondent & historian with |
The new cricket season has started to emerge with the twin announcements of the NZC Major Association 2025/26 contracted players and the home international schedule.
A smorgasbord of international cricket awaits Western Bay of Plenty cricket fans with Australia, England, West Indies and South Africa going into battle with the Black Caps at the Bay Oval.
There is genuine excitement building as Australia pay a visit to the Blake Park cricket ground for the first time, since the first sod was turned 20 years ago.
Kiwi cricket followers look forward to nothing better than the team from the other side of the Ditch returning home with a defeat.
The first Australian cricket side toured New Zealand in 1887. They opened their tour on January 9 and 10, 1887, against Southland at Invercargill, with records showing their ship berthed at Bluff on the morning of the match.
For many years, the Australians did not rate New Zealand as good enough to play full tests, with state sides and occasionally an Australian XI visiting our shores.
The first official test between the two nations was played at the Basin Reserve in Wellington during March 1946.
The Australian views on the inferiority of New Zealand sides seemed to be vindicated when the New Zealanders were bowled out for 42 and 54, with Australia winning by an innings and 103 runs.
The advent of ODIs and later the T20 game has evened the ledger between Australia and New Zealand’s Black Caps.
A clean sweep of the three ODIs in February 2007 sits at the top of New Zealand’s post-World War II cricket battles with Australia.
Australia were rolled for just 148 in the series opener, with the host nation cruising to a 10-wicket win.
Second-up came a Mike Hussey century (105) in the visitors’ total of 336/4, as the Black Caps squeezed home by a solitary wicket and seven balls, courtesy of Ross Taylor’s 117 runs.
Seddon Park in Hamilton was the venue as New Zealand hunted for a series whitewash.
With this writer in attendance among a full house of Kiwi cricket fans, Australia posted another mammoth score of 346 for the loss of five wickets. Matthew Hayden anchored the innings with an unbeaten 181.
The New Zealand reply seemed to be in tatters at 41 for the loss of four wickets.
Craig McMillan, coming in at six, started the rescue with a 75-run partnership with Peter Fulton (51), which continued with Brendon McCullum.
McMillan battled on, but the home side still had work to do to clinch an unlikely victory when McMillan was dismissed for 117.
It was left to McCullum, who eked out the necessary 66 runs with James Franklin, Daryl Tuffey and number 10 batter Mark Gillespie’s valiant 28 runs.
The scorecard showed McCullum had finished with 86 not out and New Zealand had snuck home by a solitary wicket, with just three balls to spare.
Passionate Black Caps fans are certain to make it a full house at the Bay Oval when the home team square off with the Aussie raiders on October 1, 2 and 4 this year when Australia compete in the ICC three-game T20 series.
Kiwi cricket fans’ night-time dreams leading into the series are likely to contain a clean sweep of the Aussies but whatever the outcome, it’s sure that three great battles will have taken place at the Bay Oval.