“Tea and Biscuits in India” Vol.7
World Champion Aussies break Kiwi hearts again
11th March 2024
NEW ZEALAND 162 all out and 372 all out
AUSTRALIA 256 all out and 281–7
Australia win by 3 wickets
What were you doing in 1993? Perhaps that isn’t the question or indeed the opening gambit you were expecting for this, my final journal entry for an English Winter of watching cricket through the night, but Australia have broken their near neighbours cricketing hearts once more on their home turf and New Zealand’s 31 year wait to triumph over their cousins from across the Tasman Sea continues. We’ll get to Alex Carey’s astonishing return to form with the bat and the Kiwis exciting approach to victory doused and extinguished by yet another stoic and determined performance from Aussie captain Pat Cummins soon enough, but as I started these journals this Winter with a New Zealand victory over England in India, the country of “destiny” in a World Cup they simply had to win on home soil but were thwarted by those pesky World Champion Australians, we seem to have come full circle, so why not luxuriate in a little time travelling back to the early 1990's?
I may have started these journals in October of last year, filling them with tens of thousands of words and songs of praise for the grandest of all games, so perhaps it won’t come as a shock to you that I’ve also watched far, far more cricket than I’ve actually appraised with my own written word. We’ll return to 1993 shortly, but a Winter of watching Test Match cricket has also included the witnessing of Bangladesh shocking the world and New Zealand with their triumph by 150 runs as November tiptoed into the Christmas month of December, and a month full of cricket that saw Australia demolish a plucky if weak Pakistan 3–0 and either side of South Africa smashing India to pieces by an Innings and 32 runs. This match in beautiful Centurion ran concurrently with the always pleasing Boxing Day Test Match in the Coliseum of Melbourne’s storied “MCG” and whilst India returned home to lick their wounds ahead of England’s visit in the New Year, the West Indies arrived in Australia for a 2 match Test series that saw an expected crushing of the visitors by 10 wickets in the first match in Adelaide before Brisbane bore witness to one of the greatest matches in modern times and a cigarette paper thin West Indies victory by just 8 runs.
I watched it all, each and every match through the night, and back in a long ago 1993 I no doubt watched a large number of the 36 officially registered Test Matches that were played during a year also officially recognised as the “International Year For The World’s Indigenous People”. 1993 saw out-going USA President George H W Bush sign an arms reduction treaty with Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin before in-coming President Bill Clinton brokered the “Oslo Accords” between Israel and Palestine. The first attack on the World Trade Center resulted in the killing of 7 innocent human beings before ten times this number and many more were murdered in the siege of Waco, Texas. Czechoslovakia dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia respectively, the moon was as near to earth as it would be until the year 2008 and “Unforgiven” won Best Picture at the 65th Academy Awards. In April tennis superstar Monica Seles was horrifically stabbed at an event in Germany. June saw Kim Campbell sworn in as the first female Prime Minster of Canada. July saw a devastating tsunami in northern Japan tragically cost the lives of 230 people and in the final month of the year that saw the births (should you wish to feel old!) of Ariana Grande, Pete Davidson and Zayn Malik, drug cartel boss Pablo Escobar was shot and killed on a rooftop in Medellin, Colombia.
On the cricketing field of 1993, whilst England were losing a home Ashes series 4–1 to the auld enemy Australia as well as away series defeats in Sri Lanka (1–0) and India (3–0), the year started in spectacular fashion with a 1 run victory for the visiting West Indies in Adelaide, Australia, before coming to an end almost 11 months later with a 52 run victory for Pakistan on home territory in Rawalpindi against Zimbabwe and in between, my amateur cricketing exploits continued in the whites of “Portsmouth Civil Service” and a team I’d migrated into from my junior colt playing days. I was always rather proud of being good enough as a young school-age teenager to play for the senior Men’s team and now as a 21 year old fresh from college I spent every Sunday afternoon in the daunting company of men much older than myself. But I was an accomplished fast bowler in my youth and even if I say so myself, an integral member of a Sunday team that often crumbled to defeat yet I felt I belonged and appreciated on those long Summer afternoons of 1993 sunshine. A season or more later I was swapping my childhood team for a cricketing gang of “Zombies” on a Sunday afternoon who despite their name were a ragtag bunch of ex semi-professionals and young would-be starlets whilst also playing cricket every Saturday afternoon too when not following Liverpool Football Club to yet another defeat and the proud captain of my work’s team on cold, wet and windy Wednesday evenings following our sporting passions as we escaped the drudgery of a 9–5 existence inside a high-rise glassed box in the centre of the city.
Much has changed in the intervening 31 years: I left my hometown on the south coast of England for the central heartlands and wastelands of a long ago Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century. I became a father and travelled the furthest reaches of this Shakespearean Sceptred Isle in all directions of the compass in my search of vacuous corporate success as well as Premier League points for my beloved footballing love of Liverpool. I’ve loved and I’ve lost. I’ve watched from afar as the world has become ever more populated with vexatious players in a vaudevillian play in an upside down world that only eyes wide shut could possibly see. I’ve lived in a historic “toy town” beside a gently rolling river and marvelled at the bells from the church atop a hill and barked at a full moon high above a “Grand Old Lady” and the world’s oldest iron bridge. I’ve said farewell to two of the kindest and loving ladies ever to grace this strange world of ours, in the words of Roy Batty “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”, and I’ve watched a lot of Test Match cricket, a lot of Test Match cricket.
Which brings us in conclusion to last night or rather, a cold and wet morning of the future in New Zealand whereby Christchurch resembled Headingley in Yorkshire on a cold September day. The slate grey of Christchurch delayed the eagerly awaited 4th day’s play by an hour and just under 4 hours later, and a final day in my cricket watching odyssey that had started out in rainfall, progressed to full, bright sunshine and now ended under rain filled clouds and beneath the glare of the “Hagley Oval” floodlights, Australia, against the odds, broke New Zealand hearts once more.
Starting the day in pursuit of 202 further runs for victory and with only 6 wickets in hand, Mitchell Marsh was granted a “life” from only the 7th delivery of the day as Rachin Ravindra dropped a simple if diving catch at the “Gully” position but after scampering a single, Travis Head perished from the very next ball in almost exactly the same manner but this time, Will Young safely pouched the catch. New Zealand, already heavy favourites entering day 4 were now firmly in control with Australia still needing 199 runs to win but to say Ravindra’s dropped catch would be costly would be to heavily underestimate the 53 further runs Marsh would add in a 140 run partnership brilliantly dominated by Alex Carey. The wicket-keeper batsman would himself be granted a “life” when given out LBW on 19 but Matt Henry’s brilliant in-swinging delivery had, in the cricketing vernacular for the final time in these journals, “done too much” and after his reprieve from the TV umpire, Carey simply didn’t look back.
The 32 year old from Loxton is forever under pressure for his place in this Australian team and was rather shell-shocked by the outlandish criticism bowled his way following last Summer’s infamous dismissal of Jonny Bairstow in the Ashes. I championed him then for his quick thinking and I’ll forever praise him now for a battling innings of 50 from 61 balls received and although he’d eventually finish 2 runs shy of a Test Match century, he couldn’t wait to celebrate with his captain as he hit the winning runs to cap a remarkable 3 wicket victory.
New Zealand debutant Ben Sears threatened to turn the already written script above upside down by dismissing Mitchell Marsh and Mitchell Starc in consecutive balls to set up both a hat-trick opportunity and leave Australia still needing 59 runs for victory. But step forward, once again, Aussie captain Pat Cummins with a serene 32 runs from 44 balls and with Carey gliding along at the other end, Australia, as they always seem to do, ripped a victory from the jaws of almost certain defeat.
I wanted the Kiwis to win but I didn’t have a real dog in the fight. I was just grateful for yet another opportunity to watch Test Match cricket through the night and a final chapter of my Winter odyssey had a rather fitting, sporting conclusion.
“World Champion Aussies break Kiwi hearts again” can also be found across pages 228 through 235 as well as acting as chapter number 21 and the final chapter in Act Two of my self-published book “Tea and Biscuits in India”, my third in a cricketing hat-trick of self-published tomes on the grandest of all games.
Here’s some other stuff I prepared earlier too.
"Tea and Biscuits in India" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Alas, Ms. Campbell didn't last long- by the end of the year, she and most of her government members were voted out of office, with their party reduced to an all-time low representation in Parliament.