Kiwi trio play straight bat to contentious day-night issue

New Zealand Cricket chief executive David White. Photo / Sarah Ivey

As a show of unity it was impressive. As an exercise in convincing the world that day-night tests represent a bold future and New Zealand are damn fortunate to be at the forefront of the revolution, it was less so.

Still, the Windsor knots were in place as New Zealand Cricket chief executive David White, Sir Richard Hadlee and Players Association boss Heath Mills stared down the cameras yesterday.

Each would have their own reasons for being enamoured of the announcement that New Zealand and Australia are locked into a seven-year transtasman playing deal, including the first day-night test, but cricket politics being what they are, not all of them were articulated.

Hadlee's motivations are perhaps most simple. He is a proud man, undoubtedly this country's greatest cricketing treasure, and the spearhead of a family who have given so much to cricket, especially father Walter.

It gave him immense pride when the Hadlee name was put alongside the Chappells to launch a transtasman trophy. It would have cut like a knife when that concept was allowed to wither on the vine almost as soon as it was started. He indicated that he wasn't totally sold on the concept of pink-ball cricket, but if it means the Chappell-Hadlee trophy's lustre is returned, he's buying regardless.

White's motivations are perhaps not as pure as Hadlee's but that doesn't make them wrong. The Black Caps are a hot-ticket item. That's not something you could call them very often, and White is not going to miss the opportunity to cash in. If it means humouring his counterpart James Sutherland and pretending he's looking forward to day-night tests, he'll put on a smile and do it.

"We have got 28 ODIs, eight Chappell-Hadlee series in seven years. We haven't had a Chappell-Hadlee series for five years, and we haven't had a test match for four years. It's a lot more cricket with Australia, more than we have ever had before," he gushed.

Those 10 tests in seven years become five in six years if you take out next season's offerings.

White is probably already in the legacy phase of his NZC reign, so securing a bushel of cricket against our nearest and most hated foes is a big win.

If he can do it without getting offside with his players, the ones that have elevated New Zealand above the ordinary over the past couple of years, it's a win-win.

Which moves us on to Mills, whose knot looked just that little tighter than the rest.

The players don't want to play day-night tests and the sudden appearance of a $1 million prize pool can only be viewed as a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. To pretend anything else would be disingenuous, so Mills played the "bigger picture" card.

"In the context of a great seven-year deal, the players are going to support this day-night cricket test ... we understand the bigger picture."

If he's smart he'll claim some of the glory for himself, too: perhaps New Zealand would never have received so much cricket from Australia if they hadn't objected to the day-night test in the first place.