There are few things more enjoyable and relaxing than watching test cricket - ball by ball, at the ground. And that's what I've been doing for the past five days.

I was lucky. My wife and I had planned to attend the first New Zealand-India test at Hamilton a couple of weeks ago, but circumstances conspired to make that impossible.

So we decided to go to the second test at Napier instead and while McLean Park doesn't have the appeal of Hamilton's lovely Seddon Park - a truly cricket-on-the-village-green ambience - Napier is a much nicer place to spend a week.

Hamilton is a place you bypass if you can, drive through if you have to, and stay in if you must. Seaside Napier, on the other hand, is one of New Zealand's more pleasant places to be.

(Nor, incidentally, does Seddon Park compare with the genuine stadium atmosphere of Eden Park as it used to be, which has always been my favourite place for watching test cricket.) But more importantly than that, if we'd gone to Hamilton we would have seen New Zealand trounced by the Indians in less than four days.

At Napier, however, we were privileged to see what few New Zealand cricket fans have ever seen at first hand - our team bat for nearly two days and rack up a score of more than 600 runs. And to top it off to watch another event that is relatively rare - three batsmen score more than 100 runs in an innings, and one of them more than 200.

The performances of the incomparable youngster, Jesse Ryder (201), Ross Taylor (115) and Brendon McCullum (163), all in less than two days' play, made for mesmerising cricket-watching, and the trip to Napier would have been worth every penny just for that period of play alone.

My thanks go again to those veteran radio commentators Bryan Waddell and Peter Sharp, who, among others over the years, have taught this latecomer to cricket most of what he needs to know to follow the complexities of the game.

Such as the difference between slips and gullies, silly mid off and mid on, deep fine leg and mid-wicket; cover drives, straight drives, cut shots and pull shots and so on and so forth.

Every time I attend a test match I have my pocket radio plugged into my ear, my binoculars glued to the action, and every time I learn more of the intricacies that lend such fascination to the great game of test cricket.

In those quiet times which are part of any test match, the folk on the bank and in the stands hold as much interest as what's going on in the middle.