Such a thing as a free lunch
Obviously the pay for being a cricket commentator is not as good as we thought. A man looking suspiciously like a former England cricketer was seen yesterday shamelessly grabbing a brown bag of food from the media lunch table and hand-delivering it to a woman on the bank of the Basin Reserve.
Reliving Kuggs' drop-off
On a similar subject, nothing quite beats two-test wonder Chris Kuggeleijn getting caught on live telly wandering up to the top of the temporary stands at Seddon Park and dropping his match pass over the fence for somebody else to use.
Watch it in all its glory here.
Security priorities It's the big issues that endear us so much to security firms used at sports grounds. Yesterday it took security (and NZ Cricket) 16 minutes to rope off the wicket block at lunch. It took them a split second to reprimand an Englishman that must have been pushing 100 for lighting up a pipe on the terraces.
Captain Cook slumming it
Kudos for England captain Alastair Cook, who was on the bank at Anderson Park, Kelburn, for the Beige v Barmy T20 on Wednesday. Beige went 2-0 up in the series after chasing down Barmy's 129 for the loss of just two wickets. Game three, a dead rubber, is at the Auckland Domain on Thursday. Admission is understandably free.
Leicester's surprise comeback
Mark Hammett proved his sense of humour was still intact this week despite an injury crisis which forced him to call up Southlander Jason Rutledge to cover as hooker. In asking about Rutledge's call-up, a television reporter inquired instead about Rutledge's father, Leicester, a 60-year-old former All Black who played the last of his 13 tests in 1980. "You're fairly lucky," the reporter opined, "Leicester Rutledge is a pretty experienced campaigner." "Leicester Rutledge? Leicester is a very experienced campaigner," Hammett replied with a chuckle.
Import bedding in
Most blatant sponsors' plug of the week goes to the Southern Steel, who sent out a press release describing import Jhaniele Fowler's struggles to find a bed that fit her towering 1.98m frame. "My bed just didn't fit... my feet were hanging over the end, I had to sleep curled up and my back wasn't really coping with it," Fowler said. Fortunately Southern Steel sponsor Bedpost came to the party with a custom-made 2.1m long bed for the Jamaican shooter. Thank goodness, we were really worried there for a while.
Hole-some fans
A group of Galatasaray fans were caught trying to dig their way into Schalke's Veltins-Arena this week in a bid to see their team training in preparation for their Champions League encounter. Stewards discovered them trying to create a passage under a perimeter fence using only their bare hands but, with the ground frozen solid, they did not get very far.
New-age Ecclestone
Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone, 82, has showed he's no dinosaur when it comes to the issue of women in sport. "All the things that people worry about - whether a woman can cope with the G-forces and all that - she has proven that she can," he said of Danica Patrick, who this year has joined Nascar following a stint in IndyCars. So Bernie, we're left wondering what the "all that" part of the equation is?
