Actor Shane Cortese in bed with his cricket bat. Photo / Michael Craig
There's something about cricket that makes people nostalgic. The Beige Brigade is the classic case in point, a group of grown men whose impish modus operandi is to keep alive an era of the New Zealand game that lasted less than 10 years.
They're not alone. People remember Martin Crowe's
early-1990s headbands as much as they do his glorious cover drives. And when Tim Southee ripped through England a few weeks back and the bumper Wellington crowd started chanting his name, all anybody could say
was, "it was just like the Hadlee days".
But nothing conjures nostalgia quite like a cricket bat. For a certain demographic approaching their middle years, reciting the pantheon of great names - the Duncan Fearnley Magnum, the Gunn and Moore Maestro, the Slazenger V12 - brings with it a kind of awe and reverence, a sense that the world was once a much better place.
Anybody who loves cricket remembers their first willow. It's a landmark moment of child development, something etched into the DNA. To prove the point, the Herald on Sunday spoke to eight well-known New Zealanders about their first bats.
Cortese barely needs a second to consider the question before responding. "I had a Gray Nicolls Four Scoop that I slept with. It had the four green scoops in it. I used to take it to bed."
Within the Gray Nicolls family, the Four Scoop was like new money compared to its patrician sibling the Single Scoop, but Cortese loved his blade all the same.
"It was an awesome bat," he says. "I batted right down the order. All the guys who batted up the order had a Single Scoop. If you had a Single Scoop, you were OK, you were Geoff Howarth-esque. But I was pretty pleased to get my Four Scoop."
The runs didn't flow freely in Cortese's career with the Tauranga Boys' College 1st XI. Despite being a flashy actor, his best moment came turning a trick as a dour night watchman.
"We were playing against Greerton and we were getting done. It was a two-day game, so I had to go in for the last 10 minutes on the Saturday night before the next Saturday. I just gritted it out for my highest score of 43 not out. We got done outright but we showed a
bit of grit and determination."
The New Zealand paceman didn't really take up bowling until he was 16. Previously he was a wicketkeeper batsman (he filled that role for the Auckland under-14 team) until he grew and discovered success as a bowler.
His first bat was one made by his father and it now sits in his garage at home with the signatures of both the New Zealand and England teams of 1983 splashed on it.
"I was about four or five when he gave it to me and it was awesome," Mills says. "It was more of an autograph bat and I never used it in a game - just in the backyard against my older brother Heath.
"My first proper bat was a World Series Cricket one, which was huge at the time. It wasn't a branded one but had the sticker with the red ball and three wickets. I've still got that one somewhere, too.
"Any time my brother's club team was short, I would get a call-up and I would use the World Series Cricket bat. He was 16 and I was eight so it was a bit daunting but also a lot of fun."
"My first real cricket bat was a V100," says the Black Caps ace.
"I was 12 years old. My granddad bought it for me. I'd just started playing rep cricket for Central Districts and granddad said it was 'time you had your own bat'."
Taylor's story differs markedly from some of the others here in that the new bat was put to highly effective use. "I scored heaps of runs with it," he says.
Taylor was such a crack batsmen that he earned his first full sponsorship deal with Gunn and Moore at 13, but that didn't stop him using his trusty V100.
"I had to take the stickers off the Slazenger and put Gunn and Moore stickers on it."
Taylor still has fond memories of his granddad's present.
"It was cool because I'd always borrowed everyone else's and the club's bats, so it was nice to have my own. It's probably at home in Masterton somewhere. I think I saw it a few years ago but I didn't see it last time. Maybe someone's taken it, or my sister got rid of it when I got a duck."
McOnie's first bat was a granddad's garage special, one of those thin toothpick things with no stickers that years of varnishing and neglect have left a deep, golden brown.
"It was a hand-me-down from the 1960s," he laughs, "and I always remember getting out first or second ball with it.
"It had a hand-burned tag on it and it didn't even have a rubber grip. My old man was pretty tight with that sort of thing."
McOnie never quite reached the stars as a batsman. The highpoint was the last game he played for his Sacred Heart Intermediate second team.
"I hit a six off the final ball. One six - that was it. That was my finest moment with the bat. I was always better with the ball in hand."
"I got a Gunn and Moore Autograph when I was eight years old," says the Black Caps test bowler.
"It was a birthday present. I put it in my brother's rugby sock, which I stole off him. I used to put the bat in the sock and tie a string around it so it was nice and protected."
Wagner was so serious about keeping his bat in good condition that he spent hours breaking it in.
"I had the old-school County cricket ball on a stick, and I knocked it in with that."
Wagner's memory of his early days with the Autograph is precise.
"In those days, I was more of a batsman than a bowler. In my third game, I opened the batting and scored 42 runs which, at the age of eight, was quite a lot. I remember I kept playing pull shots to the leg side and one cover drive I was very proud of."
Before he became an Olympic gold medallist, Murray's first love was his Slazenger Bradman.
"I was at Bombay Primary School, so I must have been about nine," he says. "I remember having to do the cricket-ball-in-a-sock thing to break it in for five hours.
"There was a group of us who played cricket. We were borrowing whatever the school had and then a few of the guys started getting their own equipment, so I was like, 'I want a bat!'"
Like Cortese, Hurley, and McOnie, however, the new possession didn't result in a blossoming of run-scoring.
"I remember getting a royal duck [with the bat], first ball of the match. I got caught, and I was like, 'shit, that sucked'. I was never great as an opener but that's where the coach always put me."
In spite of that, Murray was protective of his Bradman, always worrying that his mates were "going to ruin the handle, or fold the top of the grip down or stretch it out of shape. It was a pretty cool thing to have. It was something to treasure and look after."
"I had a Gray Nicolls Four Scoop," he says, straight off the bat.
Unlike Cortese's, though, Hurley's version had seen better days by the time he got it.
"I bought it second hand off a neighbour for about 30 or 40 bucks. It certainly wasn't flash."
Hurley got the bat when he was playing under-12s in his Taranaki home town of Hawera. It was a prized possession, even if it didn't produce a great deal of runs.
"I've always been a handy batsman rather than a good batsman," he says. "We had
to retire at 30, but I think I got a couple of 20s, opening the batting and swinging wildly."
The Four Scoop also helped spark a passion that Hurley has never lost. "I've played cricket all my life. I've never really stopped."
"I had a Gunn and Moore Striker," says the White Ferns captain without missing a beat.
"When I was growing up, there were quite a few players using GM so, when I went into the shop, that was the cool bat. Dad came with me and was telling me the cheap one was the best."
Bates was seven when she got the Striker, but even by that early stage she excelled at cricket. Before she got to high school, she played in boys' teams at the Carisbrook club in Dunedin.
"I remember hitting my first six over square leg using that bat. I tried to hit another one next ball and got out."