The year-end party in cricket's hinterlands

The party next door has brighter lights and a bigger sound system. When the beat drops in Melbourne on Boxing Day, the biggest nations in South Asia and Oceania will dance on the game's most colossal stage. The rumble of their feet will be heard around the cricket world. Meanwhile, the only rumbling felt across the Tasman in Christchurch was of the tectonic variety. Two days before its Boxing Day Test, a quake measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale struck the region, followed by aftershocks.

If the series needed reminding it was taking place in cricket's hinterlands, this was it. The ground the teams are playing on is literally in danger of caving in on itself.

Still, like the locals whose resilience has breathed new life into a beleaguered city, the teams will push on. Fresh from a heartening outing in the searing heat and tawny-coloured dust of the UAE, New Zealand are back and buzzing at home, with a summer breeze at their backs and a puke-green pitch before them.

For the first time in some years, their public is buzzing too. There was a while in that post-Stephen Fleming era when being a New Zealand cricket fan was self-flagellation. The bowling was serviceable in patches when Shane Bond and Daniel Vettori's cardboard bodies held firm, but the top order had the structural integrity and general air of self-parody as a slowly collapsing circus tent. For years, Chris Martin gamely took it upon himself to provide the end every New Zealand innings deserved.

But no longer are they woeful. Step outside in Auckland or Christchurch and the names Trent Boult and Tim Southee float in with the wind, from the chatter of a hundred backyard barbeques. Peek into a tradesman's Christmas function, and beefy rugby-playing men holding unpalatable beers speak in hushed, reverent tones about five-foot eight Kane Williamson's immaculate back foot punch - scrawny arms, ginger beard and all.

Once a brash unfulfilled talent, Brendon McCullum is now an erudite leader, with the once-spurned, now-content Ross Taylor for a lieutenant. Not so long ago a sporting pariah, coach Mike Hesson has more recently begun to be admired. That New Zealand's batting has come this far without Jesse Ryder, whose talents are so bright he could have sent his nation into regular epileptic shocks, is a marvel in itself.

The one discipline in which New Zealand never dipped was their fielding, and as ever, it borders on the ridiculous. A fully-flung, horizontal Williamson routinely takes catches at gully like a cartoon character would cling to a speeding train. The slips are safe. The ground fielding secure. New Zealand fight for every run.

If it is scrap you are after though, look no further than the visitors. New Zealand found this out during the World T20, when chasing 120, they were ambushed by a chubby guy, with a straight arm, creaky knees, a poor carrom ball, and an enormous heart.

Sri Lanka are outgunned almost every time they play overseas, as they are again on this tour, but damned if they don't know how to compete. In the mid-year tour to England, their pace attack was either panned, or regarded with the kind of sympathy reserved for the asthmatic child in P.T. class. Then at Headingley, Shaminda Eranga - who first caught the coaches' eye as the sixth-fastest in a north-western province bowling competition - bowled a bouncer to win the Test off the penultimate delivery, and made James Anderson cry.

Like Eranga, who had not played competitive cricket until 20, others in the side also have backgrounds that read like superhero origin stories. Suranga Lakmal, whom Chaminda Vaas has singled out as the leader of the pack, was a scrawny, working-class kid from the southern backwaters, until Sri Lanka's fast-bowling coaches discovered him and introduced the concept of having sufficient protein in one's meals.

Nuwan Pradeep, with hair like it was cut by his mother with a machete, first came to notice when he bowled quickly in a soft-ball competition organised by a Sri Lankan TV station. He was also 20 when cricket became a career possibility.

Dinesh Chandimal lost his kit bag, and his family's home, in the 2004 tsunami. Seven years later, to the day, he debuted in Tests and struck Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel et al for two half-centuries in a Sri Lanka win in Durban.

You can't make these stories up. These players haven't come to town with neon lights advertising their averages, and town criers heralding their cover drives, but they had learned how to survive off the field long before they had turned their attentions to cricket.

But while the team relies on its street-smarts, they have heapings of upper-crust swank too. With a Test match to go, Kumar Sangakkara has hit more runs in this calendar year, across formats, than any other batsman. Angelo Mathews has arguably been even more impressive in Tests, having played a lot of his innings with a shaky tail, balls perpetually to the wall.

Between these two teams, in 2014, they have walloped India in all formats, defeated England in England, and at home for good measure, beaten West Indies in their own backyard, won a World T20, an Asia Cup, beaten Pakistan, and drawn a Test series apiece in the UAE, while more high-profile teams have suffered there. Is this not the year-end tour, and the Boxing Day Test you'll be watching? Well, perhaps it should be.