CRICKET: Bay's famous-five connection looks to be nearing end

DOUG LAING
The dropping of Craig McMillan and Nathan Astle from the Black Caps this season has accelerated the closing of the curtain on a Canterbury connection which has been synonymous with the establishment of Napier's McLean Park as a firm fixture on the one-day international cricket calendar.
They are two of a bloc of five, headed by Stephen Fleming and Chris Harris who have each played 17 of the 24 ODIs at the park. Completing the list is Chris Cairns.
The connection started when Harris, now 36 and having played his last ODI only last season, made his McLean Park ODI debut, against Sri Lanka in 1991. It was a winning debut, not out 11 when NZ won the game by five wickets. A year later Cairns arrived in a World Cup match against Zimbabwe which was badly affected by rain, and two years later Stephen Fleming strode onto the park for a match-winning 90 against India, still the highest ODI debut score by a New Zealander.
It was also a winning McLean Park appearance for Fleming and Harris, but not so Astle, who first appeared in an international on the park in New Zealand's first home day-night game, against Zimbabwe in 1996.
But McMillan was in the winning team, with 53 off the bat, in a victory over Australia two years later, which holds special memories for Fleming (with 111 not out) and Cairns, claiming his only five-wicket bag in an ODI career now stretching to 213 matches.
It may provide another proud memory, for having claimed his 200th wicket in Christchurch earlier this week, he will be targeting the 5000-runs mark, needing just 80 more as he started the fourth match in the five-game series in Wellington yesterday.
Fleming, now 32, and returned to the squad this week after a short break for health and family reasons, is the top-scorer in ODIs at McLean Park with 676 (average 56.33), and started yesterday needing just 22 to pass 7000 runs in what would have been the 247th of his ODI career.
Two of the 34-year-old Astle's ODI centuries have come at McLean Park - 104 not out in a nine-wicket win over Zimbabwe in 1998, and another 104 when the Black Caps were beaten by Australia two years later by five wickets. He has scored 532 ODI runs at McLean Park, averaging 48.36.
While none started the week as certainties to play tomorrow against Sri Lanka in Napier, Central Districts CEO Blair Furlong said the absence of such top players was unlikely to impact on attendance.
"People come along for a variety of reasons," he said, "but I think it's mainly to do with seeing international sport." The park can cater for about 11,000, and Furlong expects the crowd to top the 9500 in Christchurch when New Zealand sealed the series on Tuesday.
The forecast looks good. Rain now seems a myth that once hung over McLean Park matches. Only four of Napier's 24 ODIs have been troubled by the moisture stuff.