Cricket World Cup: Auckland surrenders to lure of semifinal

Blackcaps fans go crazy. Photo / Nick Reed

Even in Showgirls, the cricket was playing. Auckland had surrendered to the game. The lure was too strong and those inclined had found Eden Park or a television or a bar with a television or even just a mobile phone.

It felt like a weekend. Queen St was thinned of its usual week-day bustle.

Staff at the ANZ's corporate offices had the best excuse. The bank sponsors the Black Caps. By liberty or licence, there were 25 staff in the tearoom on the eighth floor crowded around the television. Ardent cricket fans sat closest. Gasp! Sigh ... Others chatted, hurrah'd on cue and just seemed to be loving this game which draws people together.

Long banks of desks were half-empty. Many people started early then, as 2pm drew close, evaporated. Pete Barnao wants to evaporate. He has been given tickets for the game. "Someone cancelled on a friend." The ticket is coming from Hamilton. Tickets, he agrees anxiously, are not real until you hold them. It's 39-2.

Down the road, there's a man who's keen to talk in that way enthusiasm makes you want to share it. And then he's not. "Actually, I shouldn't be here," he says. "I should be in a meeting."

It's 64-2. At Deloittes, Mohit Takyar has reunited with an old love. He played cricket in India 20 years ago before moving to the United States where they don't understand it at all.

"During World Cups I used to get the coverage in the US."

The office has a laptop that has been hooked up to a projector and the game is displayed on a big screen. It's 71-2. The Right Track Sports Bar is showing the cricket on a multitude of screens. It is packed. Next door, Velvet Burger has no cricket and is almost empty.

And then there was Showgirls, the downtown strip bar.

Even there, the cricket was playing. Not all eyes were watching as Tim Southee returned to the attack, but the cricket competed with the half-clothed workers for customers' attention. It's 77-2.

In a travel and tourism kiosk near the Devonport ferry terminal, Helen Silvey has the cricket playing quietly on a transistor radio. South Africa's Rilee Rossouw is caught by Martin Guptill and Ms Silvey's professionalism is a wonder as she grabs discipline, blanking out the radio so she can continue dispensing advice to a European tourist.

She's loving this World Cup. "I've been watching cricket all my life." She went to the Pakistan-South Africa game and got among the Pakistan fanzone. Wow, what fun!

Ear to radio, she's still trying to work out which South African player went. "I'd love to be there."

At Eden Park, it's 113-3.