History, Legacy & Redemption For The World Test Champion Blackcaps
Monday 28 March, 1955. The New Zealand cricket team were bowled out for 26 in a Test against England in Auckland – to this date still the lowest ever score in a completed Test innings. 26 is a number that’s embedded in the folklore of kiwi cricket, a punchline still rolled out in chaotic excitement whenever a team gets their top order amputated cheaply. Is this gonna be the one where the unwanted record is finally broken? Invariably: no.
What’s a punchline now was once a complete humiliation. New Zealand at that time had never won a Test match and they’d been at it for a quarter of a century. Teams like Australia refused to play the NZers in proper Test matches while the English tended to dole out shorter Tests to keep it funky. But a combination of a few supreme batsmen, some damp weather, and those shorter Tests had allowed New Zealand to work a few impressive tours of England to raise their stocks. They seemed to be on the right track. Then 26 all out happened. This account from John Reid’s book Sword Of Willow...
“This shocked the country – but none were more shocked than the eleven cricketers involved. “New Zealand strikes rock bottom,” the critics said. I hope that’s right. I would shudder to think it was not rock bottom. We had matched England in the first innings and now, this. It was too bad to be true, but the record books will show that it was, indeed, true. What brought it about? Some superb bowling by Tyson, Statham and Appleyard and some woefully inept batting by New Zealand, batting that showed a total lack of application. Once a landslide starts it is very difficult to arrest, and these collapses have been all too prevalent in New Zealand teams up till the last three years.”
Those words were published in 1962... safe to say that if there was and end to those pesky batting collapses then it was only a temporary one as any Blackcaps fan old enough to buy booze has experienced more than a couple of them which are now embedded in the memory. But that’s the story of New Zealand cricket, man. We’ve always been the team that doesn’t quite get it done. Every nation has their share of horror stories – India were bowled out for 36 in the first Test in Aussie last summer (and still went on to win the series 2-1, which was massive in helping the Blackcaps qualify for the World Test Championship final). What’s different about the Blackcaps is that even our great moments are usually still tinged with disappointment. For example...
Nathan Astle blasting 222 against England in 2002, the fastest ever Test double ton... in a match we lost
Shane Bond using Aussie bats as kindling with 6/23 at the 2003 World Cup... in a match we lost
Bert Stucliffe and Bob Blair’s legendary (and tear-jerking) counter attack in South Africa in 1953... in a match we lost
Grant Elliot’s six down the ground to win the 2015 World Cup semi-final... a game we won preceding a final in which we were ungraciously spanked
Martin Crowe against Sri Lanka in 1991... a drawn game more famous for the one run that Crowe didn’t score rather than the 299 that he did
Dare we even mention the 2019 Cricket World Cup final? That was probably the worst of them because the Blackcaps truly did enough to win that match but a series of cruel twists of fate conspired against them. Also chuck in the 1992 World Cup heroics that didn’t lead to a trophy, plus a few other spattered semi-final defeats at big tournaments. In between that there have been Test series wins in England and Australia. Richard Hadlee’s wicket tally. Some ripper Chappell-Hadlee series. Brendon McCullum’s 302. It’s not all bad... but the trend is undeniable.
The Blackcaps have this whole ‘everyone’s second favourite team’ thing going on. It’s a bit like the ‘lad you’d want your daughter to date’ idea. Part of that is being a team of nice blokes who don’t take themselves too seriously and who leave the scrappy stuff on the field without exception. But also part of that is because the New Zealand cricket team has always kinda been seen as non-threatening. They like us because we’re fun but they still win. It’s a back-handed compliment.
Hence why the 2019 World Cup final was so utterly devastating. That one felt like it was going to be a landmark day in kiwi cricket in which that loveable loser cliche was shattered into a million pieces on the ground... only to instead lose once more in the most horrific kind of way. It’s one thing when you’re comfortably outplayed as was the case in the 2015 final but jeezus when those cruel twists of fate are the difference then you start to feeling like it’s just never going to happen. Eighty years of international cricket had led to that point and then the ball ricocheted off Ben Stokes’ accursed bat and not so long after that we all learned about the concept of ‘boundary countback’. What can you even do at stage but dig a hole and bury yourself in it?
The way the Blackcaps, led by Zen Master Kane Williamson, handled that devastation in the moment is an absolute inspiration to this day. Celebrating the triumphs is easy but staying level-headed in the wake of disaster is not. The thing is, that ability to accept their spoiled destiny and carry on which is precisely what allows this team to be so good in the first place as they compete against teams with far bigger resources. To trust in what they do, to trust in each other. To go out there and play to the best of their abilities regardless of the situation. To know that as long as they do the best they can with all that they can control then the rest is fickle and fleeting. There will be good days and bad days both. Enjoy the good ones, try to learn from the bad ones.
The summer after 26 all out, the New Zealand cricket team hosted the West Indies across four Test matches. A stacked Windies side featuring the likes of Garfield Sobers, Everton Weekes, and Sonny Ramadhin won each of the first three Tests pretty handily: two by an innings, one by 9 wickets. The fourth Test was in Auckland at Eden Park – the scene of the rock bottom that John Reid had written about.
Reid himself scored 84 in a first innings total of 255 after winning the toss and electing to bat. Harry Cave and Tony MacGibbon then took four wickets each as the Windies were bowled out for 145 and something strange seemed to be happening in New Zealand’s 45th Test. Seven wickets for Denis Atkinson made things tough next time out but a declaration at 157/9 still left the visitors 268 to win in the fourth innings with two sessions remaining on the last day. Here’s Reidy once again...
“It was an afternoon almost of fantasy. Word whisked about Auckland of the Eden Park situation, office workers jammed homework into satchels and furiously rang for taxis, labourers clumped off the job and housewives thrust bottles into the mouths of babes and took them to their first test match.
Cave struck like a snake immediately. He had Paraudeau groping and bowled and the rout was on. Furlonge, Sobers and Smith came and went and the atmosphere was electric as Weekes regarded the flotsam and jetsam of a wrecked innings and strove to bring reality back to the situation. There he stood, the key to the match, this keen-eyed little man, gathering runs, comfortably. How to move him? With Weekes gone the way would be open. He alone was playing the medium-pacers with a disturbing aplomb so I tossed the ball to Jack Alabaster. The tension of the situation got at Jack and he bowled Everton the rankest long-hop. Weekes accepted it with a surprised, undisguised joy and hooked it hard and high.
Patrolling around mid-wicket was a sprightly little man named MacGregor, never happier than when fielding in the outfield with the ball sailing though the air towards him, for he has a beautiful pair of hands. He sighted this one from the time it left Weekes’ bat, was under it and as the crowed caught its breath and the players froze, and he cradled it joyfully.
I think most sensed that this catch was the winning of the game. With Binns, Weekes, had added 46 runs but now the hutch was open. It lasted not much longer than it takes to tell it. Weekes went at 68 for seven; the innings ended nine runs later.”
The cricket team of Aotearoa won by 190 runs, their first ever Test match victory after 26 years of trying. 26 being the same number that they’d been bowled out for a year earlier at the very same ground. A poetic coincidence as the humiliation of 26 all out had fuelled that cathartic success just as the ultimate triumph of the inaugural World Test Championship final was fuelled by the broken hearts of 2019... not quite at the same ground but still in the same country. Oh and they polished off a Test series victory away against England in the weeks before just to really hammer the nail home.
History is cyclical but it’s not always proportionate. That Blackcaps team of the mid-50s were battling for acceptance in the cricketing community. The lads of 2021 just toppled the biggest cricketing nation on the planet for world domination. That ain’t lovable loser territory, no way. This was something else entirely which we’ve longed for (and suffered for) many years past.
The sun was rising in Aotearoa as Luteru ‘Ross’ Taylor whipped the ball off his pads and away to the square-leg boundary for the winning runs. A new dawn. A new day.
How bloody good.
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