Cricket: We Aucklanders are doers not watchers

By Murray Deaker

The size of the crowd who go to Eden Park over the next five days will give a clear indication of the place test cricket now holds for Aucklanders.

This Australian team are the best in the world and probably the best ever to tour New Zealand.

They come up against a Black Caps side who annihilated the West Indies over Christmas and New Year, a feat not previously performed with such panache by a New Zealand team.

The team have just risen to sixth on the ranking list of test-playing nations, a level considerably higher than our customary position.

Given that background and our traditional enthusiasm for transtasman rivalry, you could be forgiven for anticipating that record crowds will flock to Eden Park.

Wrong.

My intuition tells me that the only people besides the players, the umpires and the scorers likely to be there for every ball are Roger Brittenden and his bunch from the Queen St Cricket Club.

For the sake of cricket's coffers I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Test cricket may still appeal to the players and the purists, but the Auckland masses embrace it with about the same enthusiasm as they would greet an increase in their rates.

Unbelievable as it may be to the ardent Aussie cricket fan who is prepared to queue for a seat at the Boxing Day test in Melbourne, Aucklanders appear more interested in watching a couple of yachts going in and out of a viaduct than sitting in the sun at Eden Park, analysing why Shane Warne is the greatest legspinner the game has ever seen.

Aucklanders flock in enormous numbers to an opera in the park, the arrival of a solitary Whitbread yacht in the middle of the night, rock concerts and test rugby matches.

But outside those, we're not a city of spectators. Ask the Football Kingz, the Warriors, even the record-setting Auckland Ranfurly Shield team. None of them have ever played to regularly full stadiums. In the case of the Kingz, most of their spectators could fit in a telephone box.

It isn't that Aucklanders aren't interested in sport. They're simply not good watchers. Aucklanders are doers and they're doing a diverse range of activities.

The defence of the America's Cup has finally opened the rest of ths country's eyes to Auckland's fixation with the Waitemata and the Hauraki Gulf.

At last my relatives in the South Island might listen when I try to answer their disparaging questions associated with the lack of numbers sitting on their backsides watching other people doing things at Eden Park or Ericsson Stadium or North Harbour Stadium.

Aucklanders fish, swim, waterski, jetski, yacht, boat, snorkel, dive and windsurf in ever-increasing numbers on the most beautiful harbour in the world.

Frankly, if I had been brought up in this city where it inevitably seemed to rain any time I had got my eye in, I doubt I would ever have picked up a cricket bat.

The so-called summer season used to start in October, but with the amount of rain during November and early December, you were lucky if you got more than a couple of bats before Christmas.

Who in their right mind wants to give over the greater part of their weekend to the uncertainty of a full day's play when there is a marine playground second to none out their back door?

I think given the basic facts, cricket does remarkably well to attract the sort of numbers it does to Eden Park.

What chance the Kiwis against Australia? Stephen Fleming probably summed it up better than anyone when he explained that the analysis of his team's statistics for batting and bowling showed a marked improvement from the West Indies one-day series to the Australian.

Despite this improvement, we were thrashed by the Aussies. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the huge difference in standard between the West Indies and the Australians and the enormous challenge it poses for the Black Caps to lift their game about four levels.

All of which is lost on the average Aucklander who is busy worrying about what bait to use on the snapper this weekend and couldn't give a toss about Shane Warne's flipper unless it got stuck in his outboard motor.