New Zealand Cricket and the Black Caps don’t control the weather. They have even less control over an increasingly disrupted international cricket calendar.
As October saw the earliest start to a summer of international cricket in New Zealand history, the Black Caps have ended up on the wrong side of two Twenty20 series.
Both of those, though, were impacted by spring rain. A three-match series against Australia at Mount Maunganui’s Bay Oval was shortened to two games.
Then, to really rub salt in the wounds, this week’s three-match series against England saw two matches rained off, with the Black Caps suffering a 65-loss in between. Frustratingly, that series opener saw rain deny New Zealand the chance to chase down 154 for victory.
And while the Black Caps would be within their rights to be aggrieved at seeing two marquee series shoved into the margins, coach Rob Walter accepts that there’s little that can be done from his side.
“To be fair, in the Mount, we played two of the three games against Australia to completion,” said Walter. “Either side of the rained out games, it was beautiful. If you go to Christchurch [it was] the same thing.
“It is disappointing. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the weather and the time of year.
“Of course, you want to play cricket, but it is what it is.”
Naturally, questions have been raised over the fact that the start of the cricketing summer was scheduled for spring. The answer, though, doesn’t lie in the “when?”, it’s about the “why?”
As cricket further fragments into haves vs have-nots, the Black Caps are having to take what they can get.
Both Australia and England travelled to New Zealand as curtain raisers to their marquee test series against each other, starting next month.
And while Kiwi fans might be frustrated with having to watch three games out of six be washed out, this was simply the only time both of those nations - two-thirds of the game’s elite alongside India - could squeeze New Zealand in.
On top of that, for the second year in a row, the Black Caps won’t play a single match on Kiwi soil in January and February, with a white ball tour to India before the T20 World Cup instead.
But for the players, the chance to face the game’s biggest sides must be taken, even at the risk of washouts.
“When you play Australia and England, you’re going to take every chance to play them,” Black Caps wicketkeeper Tim Seifert said the day before the Eden Park abandonment.
“You’d rather play them this time of year than not. It is a different time of year that we are playing cricket, we’ve seen that a little from the conditions we’ve played in.
“But it’s [about] that balance between if you want to play these big nations or not.”
Those big nations, now largely governed by self-interest, are more at fault for this start to the Kiwi summer than New Zealand Cricket.
Administrators are having to find ways to accommodate the international game on which the sport was built, amidst a rapidly growing franchise game.
While players want to be able to do both, represent club as well as country, series like these highlight the issue for smaller countries like New Zealand.
For now, until some kind of alignment is found, all teams that aren’t England, Australia and India will have to take the good with the bad, as far as scheduling goes.
“You don’t want to come all the way to this part of the world and play one game,” England captain Harry Brook professed. “[It’s] very annoying starting and coming off all the time.
“But it’s part of the game, and we have no control over that. It’s well above my pay grade; I have no influence on any of that stuff.
“We’ve just got to come out here and try to execute as well as we can, play the best cricket we can, and hopefully the rain stays away. This time, it’s managed to catch us every day.”
October 1 - 1st T20 v Australia - Australia won by six wickets
October 3 - 2nd T20 v Australia - No result (2.1 overs bowled)
October 4 - 3rd T20 v Australia - Australia won by three wickets
October 18 - 1st T20 v England - No result (20 overs bowled)
October 20 - 2nd T20 v England - England won by 65 runs
October 23 - 3rd T20 v England - No result (3.4 overs bowled)
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.