A cricket match is played in a swede paddock in Northern Southland. Photo / Anne Osment
A cricket match is played in a swede paddock in Northern Southland. Photo / Anne Osment
Just like a crop circle in a maize field, mystery surrounds how a cricket pitch appeared in a swede paddock in Northern Southland.
Anne Osment, of Five Rivers, said part of the mystery had been solved — the pitch appeared because a contractor "had a miss" when sowing a winterswede crop in a paddock on Rex Carter's farm in Mossburn on the final Saturday of last month.
However, who placed a set of wickets at both ends of the barren section of swede patch remains unsolved.
"Nobody knows."
When a group of Mossburn Hotel patrons - a mix of past and present farmers - noticed the wickets, they took it as an invitation to hold a "social" cricket match.
Osment hoped the match would become an annual event but future sites would be need to be dictated by oversights of contractors when sowing winter crops.
