Twenty 20

A while ago, we bought tickets to see all of Wellington’s home games in the HRV Cup, the Twenty20 cricket tournament here in New Zealand, from one of the discount websites that I use. The tournament kicked off on Thursday, but Wellington’s first match was on Saturday. The competition is between 6 teams playing each other team twice – one home and one away – with a final between the top two teams (duh! who else?) at the beginning of January. We’ll miss Wellington’s final home match as we’ll be up in the Bay of Islands for Christmas, but we will be able to see all the others.

The weather has taken a distinctly summery turn over the last week, so we donned summer clothing, did a spot of slip-slop-slap, and at around 1 o’clock we headed down to the Basin Reserve, Wellington’s cricket ground – about a 20 minute walk from our flat, so a pleasant stroll in the sunshine. We found seats outside on the benches, with a good side-on view of the wicket for our budding sports-photography careers! That's Mount Victoria in the background.

The Basin Reserve

There were a number of people handing out free stuff from the sponsors, HRV, as well as Wellington’s team sponsor, Hell. They make pizzas; we haven’t tried one yet, but now we have a discount voucher…next time we’re in the mood for pizza, we’ll give them a try. They had a mobile pizza wagon at the ground, called "Hell On Wheels". 

We picked up a pair of free sunhats, and also the obligatory 4/6 placard to wave whenever anyone hit a boundary:

So, at 2pm, the game was on, between Hell Wellington Firebirds and Otago Volts. Honestly, who comes up with these names? Wellington won the toss and put Otago in to bat. The game was fast and furious, as anyone who’s seen a Twenty20 match will attest, and despite losing a wicket in the first over, Otago went on to post a respectable total of 153. Their hero was former international Aaron Redmond, scoring 82 off 54 balls, including one six hit out of the ground and down Adelaide Road. So now the chase was on, and Wellington…lost a wicket without scoring a run. After that they perked up, rallied round, uttered some more clichés and stayed ahead of, and even exceeded the required run rate without dropping too many wickets; until the 15^th over when disaster struck, and they lost three wickets in two overs – but more importantly, only picked up 6 runs in those two overs. With all the work to do, they managed to get back on top of the scoring rate, and in the final over needed 5 runs. Not too difficult, and with a 2 and a 4 they eventually won by 3 wickets with 2 balls remaining.

Action shot

Wellington are off to a good start, and we’ll be back down to the Basin Reserve tomorrow to watch their next game against the Canterbury Wizards. This is their first match, so hopefully Wellington will be able to use today’s experience to full effect. Anyway, it’s a wonderful way to spend three hours on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon, and Speight’s have the beer franchise inside the ground. What’s not to like?