In Visitors, I invite one person each month to share perspectives on a sport, a sporting event, sporting aspects or any thing in between. This month, Sportsfreak joins us to speak on John Bracewell’s ways and New Zealand cricket. I know, more cricket, but what can you do? With the Champions Trophy going on, Ashes coming up and then the world cup, cricket is bound to appear more on this blog over the next few months. If you would like to contribute for a future edition of Visitors, do not hesitate to e-mail me.

Greetings Sportsfreaks; it’s been a long time between drinks as they say, but I’m glad to be able to report from the battle front again; this time from India.

This season will truly be one of The Great Campaigns. My good friend Martin Snedden has organised a lot of great challenges for us over the next few months. First, there’s the Champions Trophy, followed by ODI series against Sri Lanka, Australia and England; ending up in a World Cup which is in my favourite touring place; the West Indies.

He certainly is still a very loyal commander-in-chief, although I do wonder if he gets a little over-worked at time. He told me he can easily organise a coaching job at home in England for me next year. The guy obviously forgot I’ve already got a job!

We have had our fair share of bad luck so far, but let me tell you this will not weaken our resolve one little bit. Poor Shane Bond is pretty sure that he’s probably injured, which has come as a blow that we need to overcome. At least we’re used to it so we can certainly take a lot of positives out of this. He’s working very hard with Gilbert Enoka the whole time to get through this problem, and I’m sure he’ll be playing again before the World Cup. Mark my words.

And the fact that we still beat South Africa earlier in the week shows that it was still the correct decision to take him on tour with us anyway. I’m pretty sure that just having him with us puts a lot of fear into opposing teams.

Read the rest of this entry »

New Zealand - West Indies Day 2 at Napier is haulted due to rain. Doesn’t matter. At least we have the Sri Lanka - Pakistan test in Colombo. Any live test cricket action can do on a Sunday morning.

Next thing I know, I see Sanjay Manjrekar announces that the match is delayed due to rain. Agh.

I love that test cricket is nature dependant (cloud causes swing) and has so many variables (ball deterioates, the pitch wears, the pitch is always different). But rain is some thing which always irritates.

This is not Wimbledon and thus Cliff Richard will not start singing. So go away rain!