A cricket interlude

As blog readers may know, I quite enjoy a spot of cricket. I've followed it with the kind of sad, all-consuming passion that only a person who in his own cricketing life batted at 9, fielded at long leg and rarely bowled, can.

So it has given me and other cricketing tragics the world over great pleasure these past couple of days to see one of England's greatest but seemingly most underappreciated players, their opening batsman Alastair Cook, finish up his England career by scoring 71 and 147 in his final test, after having struggled to reach 20 in the tests preceding it.

As cricinfo writer George Dobell put it regarding the ovation given for Cook reaching his hundred:

Well done to Alastair Cook for hewing himself two last monuments to greatness, and well done to the crowd for giving him something that no embittered columnist, ex-player frenemy or twitter big mouth will ever be able to take away from him.

The Cricket World Cup

There hasn't been much action here on the hobby front of late because the cricket World Cup - which is now on in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - has been taking up quite a bit of my time.  As a kiwi I follow the New Zealand team, so I was extremely pleased to see them get past one of the tournament favourites, South Africa, in a testing quarter-final the other night. 

It is not always easy being a follower of New Zealand cricket.  Our sides have tended to be made of up honest triers and the odd player capable of turning a game on its head.  New Zealanders have attempted to make up for lack of talent with grit and nous, but a rash of premature retirements during former coach John Bracewell's time in charge set the team back a long way, and it still hasn't really recovered from that.

Still, it's moments like these that we must dare to hope that this might just be the time that they make it through to a World Cup final, and give themselves a chance of glory!