Napier shows us World Cup joy

We're entering the World Cup's third week, and while some towns have exhausted their share of the action already, Napier - cricket's most easterly outpost - has to wait until Wednesday for its first game, when Pakistan take on UAE. Hawke's Bay, however, has been embracing the game beyond the boundaries of McLean Park.

Last Thursday I was lucky to be one of more than 2000 people tucked away at Clifton County Cricket Club - amid arid and parched farmland barely fit for cattle to graze and rolling hills, at the end of a dusty and beaten path - for the Legends of Cricket Art Deco Match, where a Clifton team captained by Mark Greatbatch (a member of the club) took on Jeff Thomson's Rest of the World XI, containing Black Caps, All Blacks, TV personalities and honest local folk. In the preceding week, I had covered cricket in some aesthetically glorious spots - Nelson, Dunedin, Christchurch - but none as breathtaking as Clifton.

If you were feeling generous, you could term the on-field action "leisurely". For those interested, Thomson's team batted first and made 172 for 7, only for Greatbatch's lot to chase it down with three overs to spare. Thommo, now 64, slung it down off a few paces, Adam Hollioake described his performance as "horrible", while Chris Harris and Mathew Sinclair battered boundaries, and Dion Nash bowled tidily. Tickets were sold to watch these guys and they were treated like royalty - wined, dined, golfed and driven to the ground in vintage cars - by the highly impressive Hawke's Bay Tourism. But before the game had even begun, it was clear that this was about far more than them.

The Art Deco theme made it about Hawke's Bay; Napier is a unique, stunning town, but only by unfortunate happenstance. A devastating earthquake razed the town in 1931, and Art Deco was the architectural plat du jour during the two-year rebuild (how we all long to untangle the web of red tape in Christchurch and pull off a similar miracle). Now it's a key part of the area's identity and leaves the sense that it should be on the Mediterranean, not the South Pacific (which, incidentally, you can see from Clifton). The day's outfits - jackets, cravats, fedoras, glamorous dresses and Gatsby spats - celebrated a colourful era.

This was mainly about celebrating and promoting the game alongside its great party, though. Other parts of New Zealand are doing lovely things too; Afghanistan played two games in Dunedin, so the tourist board went hunting for Afghan families in the area, found five, and thus laid the foundations for the wonderful atmospheres at those games; Nelson has made up for being the only Kiwi venue without a Black Caps game by filling the wonderful Saxton Oval with rent-a-mob children; Hamilton will host a game at the Hobbiton movie set the night before India v Ireland. Tourism is a key industry in New Zealand, and this stunning country is determined to show itself off during its moment in the sun. After all, who knows when a chance like this will present itself again?

It's about this country, but most of all it's about cricket in this country. The game is at a peculiar juncture; the Black Caps seem on the verge of something special, but former stars are in the dock and the board certainly isn't invited to dine at cricket's top table.

The only dispiriting aspect of Thursday's festivities was chatting to former players, who explained life as a first-class cricketer in New Zealand - or at least those who can't get into the Black Caps squad or win T20 contracts overseas - is a cricketing half-life: six months of the year working away from the game, no clear coaching pathway when the boots are hung up, and a players' association that is accused of failing to look beyond its star attractions. The World Cup is an opportunity to change the game at every level in this country; to inspire a generation; to make rugby stars of cricket players.

Which is what Clifton Country Cricket Club is all about. "This club is all about fostering a love of the game of cricket," Greatbatch told me once more at the day's end. These people care about cricket, from top to bottom, young to old. Napier and Hastings schools' 1st XIs played out a curtain-raiser ahead of the Legends Match, but for a day every person present was a cricketing kid. There were the actual striplings raising the curtain, and the hundreds more watching from the pristine banks - perhaps a third of the crowd weren't old enough to buy a beer. There were the grown adults - young, old and every inch between - in thrall of their heroes, asking for autographs, soaking up the chance to watch them don the whites and share a beer; Ian Smith charmed, as ever, while Thomson, Hollioake and Greatbatch spun yarns in a hilarious question-and-answer session. But it was the fourth member of their line-up who stole the show.

Martin Crowe was a late addition to the party. It was supposed to be Ian Botham, to tell tales of beer and barbecues, of foreign tours and fly-fishing, but he pulled out a couple of days before. In Crowe, Clifton's cake found its cherry. When he rose to address the room, the floor stood in appreciation. When he returned to his seat having given a speech equal measures entertaining and emotional, just as there were when he became the third New Zealander inducted into the ICC's Hall of Fame at Eden Park 72 hours later, people were reaching for their hankies. Thirty-three years and a day after he made his Test debut against Australia, he had the room in stitches with the story of facing Thomson and being run out that day; moments later they were in tears as he described Saturday's game as a "bookend" to his cricketing life. He spent the day diligently signing for, posing with and chatting to those for whom he had been a hero for a third of a century.

These days don't last long, but the World Cup's extra-curricular activities might just have as much game-growing value in a micro sense as a trip to watch the Black Caps can on a broader scale. Clifton and Hawke's Bay are leading the way, with their own, quiet backwatery-style capitalisation on the game's greatest party. This was New Zealand cricket at its most honest, open, welcoming and joyous. Everybody was a cricketing kid; now watch them grow.