Boxing Day means one thing besides shopping for bargains. It means cricket.
Ideally, it means the first day of a test match. There is no other day so well suited to the beginning of a five-day odyssey. The holiday season allows many to sit down to watch with the prospectof following the match for its duration. But they are all in Australia.
The best New Zealand cricket can provide for Boxing Day is a one-dayer, the first of a three-game series against Sri Lanka. It might be fun, there might be a close finish tonight, but it is the sort of fixture we could see on any Saturday of the summer.
Boxing Day ought to be a showcase for the real thing.
Purists have cause to wonder if real cricket still exists after the second test against Sri Lanka at Hamilton last weekend.
On a newly laid and lively pitch both sides bowled short bouncers and batsmen obliged them, playing shots they should have left in their one-day bag.
Even the new world No 1, Kane Williamson, was caught on a hook in his first innings.
Limited-over cricket has encouraged more cavalier batting in test matches but the collapse of Sri Lanka's second innings at Seddon Park last Sunday was ridiculous. Perhaps it is just as well we are not offered a third test today.
Yet we envy Australians and South Africans their Boxing Day tests starting today. It is the right way to start the summer.
