England in New Zealand - Vish's tour diary

“Will pork belly do?”

To the surprise of no-one, cricket writers all wanted to be cricketers. Some of us still do, even if their numbers in the Middlesex leagues suggest this was never an option. But that’s why we’re here; the love that drives us to be as close as we can be to this stupid, nonsensical pastime. In the case of this touring party to New Zealand, the dream has always been that, one day an England captain turns to you and asks you if you fancy taking the top end or need a nightwatcher (you'll get no say with the Nighthawk by the way. The Nighthawk moves as the Nighthawk moves – you should know this by now).

By this point in our respective careers, all of us have made our peace. But when Michael Atherton asked me last week if he could slow-cook some pork for my dinner, while we were both aimlessly perusing the meat aisle of a supermarket, something stirred beyond the accompanying veg. An England captain – much in the same way a head of state in the United States is still referred to as “Mr President” after they’ve served their term – has turned to me and asked for a preference to cook my dinner. Never mind that it’s a recipe taken from the Financial Times when I’m an over-entitled Vice Munchies guy. This is what I’ve always wanted to be asked, sort of. “Oh that would be lovely,” I reply, as if he’s asked me to bat six.

Touring throws up these sorts of things. Occasions when you’re in Mount Maunganui ahead of the first Test and the correspondent for The Times (as Atherton is also known...) needs a place to stay as his accommodation isn’t ready yet. At times it feels like this series has operated outside the realms of cricket’s consciousness, given the high-profile clash taking place in India right now. This, on the other hand, seems like an offshoot: a strand of the multiverse that gets a Disney+ spin-off rather than any meaningful silver-screen time. For the record, the pork belly was good: patiently cooked, gratefully eaten – home cooking’s not really been a thing this past fortnight – and a perfect excuse for the easiest intro I’ve written on this tour. For a man above it all, Atherton is a perfect couch-surfer.

The Mount is the kind of place that grabs you by surprise: one of the best places to be and yet it will leave you unsure why you’re actually there. The Bay Oval has only hosted four Tests, and New Zealand have now lost two of them. Just 19 first-class matches have happened here since it was granted that lofty status in 2015. Even day-to-day, it’s largely acknowledged as Northern District’s holiday home. It’s so off the traditional grid that New Zealand’s sporting celebrities – Blackcaps, All Blacks, maybe even Nottingham Forest's own Kiwi Chris Wood, when he’s not chasing his first touch - regard it as the place to be, for however long or little they’re not on their respective treadmills.

Over the past week, however, the only celeb in town worth talking about was Trent Boult. He didn’t play the first Test, did he? We don’t need to through that again. But he lives close: close enough to have cycled in to play in a T20I against Sri Lanka in January 2016. He took 3 for 21 from his four overs, by the way.

Maybe if this was another short-form game, Boult might have showed up in the first Test. That seems to be more his vibe right now. Lord knows New Zealand could have done with him. He could have jogged to the ground too, using the 2pm start time to spend the mornings trying to break his course record up the 232-metre elevated route to the top of Mount Maunganui itself, which he has reportedly done in 10 minutes 9 seconds before.

There is a tangible sense that the Blackcaps are losing the thread of a sport and a format they commanded, if only for a cycle that culminated in their World Test Championship victory in June 2021. The sense from Blackcaps fans is one of an understandable antipathy. In terms of participants and cash, they don’t have the Big Three clout. And yet they’ve enjoyed embarrassing all three of them, directly or indirectly, on their way to the WTC summit.

Now there seems to be an acknowledgement that, however long or deep this current rut goes on for, it is simply them taking their requisite Ls, as if this was the comeuppance of a monkey-paw wish made many moons ago. I had to double-check that Kane Williamson, another Tauranga native, actually played the first Test, but he did. That there was no discernible ovation when he walked out to bat in his hometown speaks, in its own way, of a worrying malaise.

And yet, as the show heads into Wellington while the North Island considers how they move forward following the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle, it’s hard not to feel even more of an aside. Blair Tickner’s humbling and impactful media briefing at the Basin Reserve on Wednesday was a tacit reminder of the puniness of form, and of the game itself.

It is remarkable that he and his team-mates were able to give the first Test their attention, given what unfolded prior to it. As much as the chat around the second Test is of binding together and providing a welcome distraction, perhaps even a first positive result under Southee, and a first win in eight, none of this really matters. And it’s not just because this all operating outside the auspices of the World Test Championship.

It was while waiting in a barbershop for a loosely age-appropriate haircut within hours of arriving into Wellington that a fellow punter noted my accent and asked if I was here for the cricket. “Your McCullum’s ours, you know?” he said, familiar with the British penchant for nicking and then parading things that aren’t theirs. “You boys got lucky, ey? We had him for years and didn’t appreciate him."

That’s not strictly true of course. But it does feel damn lucky to be covering English cricket right now. Partly for relevance and entertainment. But here and now, for existing in a bubble isolated from the travails of a country going through yet another trauma. Only one of those things matter, and, in all honesty, it doesn’t feel good to be this removed from it all. We all just wanted to be cricketers.