Dec 26: Boxing Day Cricket - Black Caps v. Pakistan

brought to you by Barrantes Tour & Travel sports reporter, Todd

For my birthday, Laura got tickets to a Twenty20 test between The Black Caps, New Zealand's National cricket team against Pakistan at Eden Park Stadium in Auckland on Boxing Day.  Boxing Day is a major holiday in any British Commonwealth (and a HUGE shopping day - we saw the sales signs going up on store fronts on the 24th.)  It was a perfect day for cricket, and Laura, Vanessa, Graham, Elena and I headed off for what proved to be an exciting afternoon.

First, a few words on cricket...there are several similarities to baseball, so I will make my comparisons to that. 

• The pitcher is called a bowler, and the batter is the batsman.  
• Imagine there to be a home plate and then only one other base which is located basically at the pitcher's mound, the same place the bowler delivers the ball from.  There is always a 2nd batsman on the other "base" at all times.  
• Instead of a home plate, or a strike zone, or a base, there are two sets of three sticks stuck into the ground close together and about waist high called stumps and between the stumps are suspended two small bails.  
• Instead of attempting to pitch a strike like in baseball, the bowler is trying to throw the ball to hit the stumps and knock the bails off the top.  This causes the batter to be out.  
• If the batter hits the ball with the bat in the air and it is caught, the batsman is also out.  If the batsman hits the ball into play in any direction (there is NO foul teritory) the two batsman can run between the 2 sets of stumps.  This is how runs are scored, one run for each run of the two batsman between the wickets.  The running batsman can also be thrown out like a runner in baseball byknocking the bails off the stumps before the batsman makes it from one set of stumps to the other.  
• There is a large oval boundry at the edge of the playing pitch.  If the batted ball reaches the boundry on the ground, the batter automatically gets 4 runs, no need to run.  If the ball clears the boundry on the full (in the air) then the batsman gets 6 runs. 
• The game is broken up into 'overs.'  Simply an over is 6 bowled balls.  One bowler bowls 6 balls, then the field orientation flips, and a different bowler throws the next over.
• The object is to score as many runs as you can before 10 of your 11 batsman get out, this is an inning.  A true 5 day test is supposed to be two innings.  It takes a while. The two shorter formats of a game are a one day international, ODI, which is simply 50 overs of each batting lineup and you get as far as you can.  Finally there is a Twenty20, which is just that, 20 overs for each side. This is the type of game we saw and takes about as long as a baseball game to play.

Our game was very exciting.  The Blackcaps were on a 12 match loosing streak coming into the match, but those games were all away from Kiwi soil, so they were excited to get home.  Due to their recent loosing streak, there was quite a team shakeup.  They had a new coach, and their captain Daniel Vatori (quite a fovorite of our landload Vanessa) was benched for the game. 

The Black Caps won the toss and elected to bowl first, a good strategy call (so I am told).  Pakistan started strong racking up many early runs.  Then came Tim Southee, one of the second  set of bowlers who stepped up for the Black Caps and got a wicket (the other name for an out) on the last ball of his first over.  Then, in his second over, he got three Pakistan batsman out on three consecutive ball (!!), a cricket hat-trick which is very rare.  It was very exciting.

The Black Caps got their turn to bat needing to beat the 143 runs.  They started slow and remained steady.  Batsman Martin Guptill score a half-century (50 runs in one a bat) which was cool.  Despite facing the very famous Pakistan bowler Shoaib Akhtar, who get some early fast wickets from the Black Caps, New Zealand won the game by getting 144 runs to beat Pakistan's 143.