'Grant Elliott on strike' - reliving the best day in NZ cricket history

It's the best seat in the house.

Seat 12, row T, section 318. It's where, with as much certainty as possible in the circumstances, a discoloured white Kookaburra ball landed after being propelled from the New Balance-branded bat of Grant Elliott late into the night of March 24, 2015.

By the time the ball reconnected with terra firma, 45,000 at Eden Park and hundreds of thousands more gathered around TVs had let out a collective roar that would have drowned out a space launch.

It was the culmination of the most extraordinary day of cricket in New Zealand history, and another chapter of World Cup woe for South Africa.

Tomorrow, nzherald.co.nz launches an oral history and audio documentary of that momentous day produced by award-winning reporters and cricket tragics Dylan Cleaver and Andrew Alderson. It follows the twists and turns of the semifinal between New Zealand and South Africa through not only the eyes of key players, but also the fans that invested so heavily in their team's fortunes.

If you want to know what it feels like when you're a boundary fielder standing underneath a ball with the crowd waiting for you to make the catch, this is the story for you.

If you want to know how nerves can make even the most diehard fan leave the ground before the end, this is a story for you.

If you just, like us, love cricket for its consistently implausible plot lines, then this is definitely a story for you.

And it all boils down to this: "Elliott on strike..."