…And Relax (A Bit)

Today’s announcement of the relaxation of some rules around Covid provide a bit of relief to the beleaguered hospitality and entertainment industries. Not much, but a bit. From Saturday 26^th March, we will still be under the red traffic light setting, but…

·         Indoor gatherings can increase from 100 to 200 people

·         Outdoor gatherings are now unlimited

·         Masks no longer required outdoors

·         QR code scanning is no longer required

And from 5^th April…

·         Vaccine passes no longer required

·         Mandates for certain sectors to be vaccinated (all except health and aged care, border workers and corrections) to be removed.

The traffic light setting will also be reviewed on 4^th April.

Hooray! Unfortunately, this is too late to help Ladyhawke, who has decided to cancel (rather than postpone again) her Time Flies tour ☹. Hopefully, by the time of Midnight Oil’s gig on 10 May, restrictions will have been loosened further to allow indoor concerts to take place.

Moves were already afoot ahead of today’s announcement to get back to pub quiz, as this is still allowable under the red setting, but with a maximum 100 people. This was cancelled by the pub and quizmaster as they wanted to protect themselves as much as possible. The new 200-person limit is higher than the capacity of the Old Bailey, so no worries there.

This also means that the remaining matches of the cricket World Cup and Super Rugby can be played with no restrictions. Sadly, the White Ferns have not been doing too well so it looks unlikely that they’ll make the semi-finals, so we won’t be seeing them in action again. We may look at going to see the Hurricanes in action, though.

 With any luck, the next announcement will see a move to Orange setting, and things will get back to neo-normal.

 

  

Cricket World Cup

The ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup is under way in New Zealand. There are, in fact, three world cups happening here over the next two years – cricket, rugby and football – of which this is the first. The Basin Reserve in Wellington is a key venue for the competition, so, last year, I took advantage of an earlybird offer to get tickets for all the Wellington matches for a bargain price.

Then New Zealand moved to Covid red traffic light, and all bets were off. Initially, the restriction was a maximum of 100 spectators per match, so all tickets were refunded. Bugger. Since then, spectator numbers have been relaxed, firstly to 10% of a venue’s maximum capacity, and then, by the look of the crowd on Sunday, quietly ignored altogether. As a previous ticket-holder, I was offered tickets prior to the general public, and so we decided to go and see the White Ferns take on Australia. For the price, I might add, of half the total that I paid for seven matches earlier.

The weather wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t raining, just cloudy and grey and with a nagging Southerly keeping us cool, so we were wearing fleeces in the stands. The White Ferns had won the toss and elected to bowl first. They started out strongly, keeping the run rate down at around 3.5 and taking three early wickets to leave the Aussies on 56/3 in the fifteenth over. It looked like we had them on the run, and WASP had gone up to 54% (from a pre-match 26%). Unfortunately, the Aussies didn’t panic, and just carried on accumulating runs, slowly at first, but picking up the pace for a fourth wicket stand of 57, and a fifth wicket 101, which really did the damage. Even so, with Australia on 214/5, and five overs to go, restricting them to a reasonable score was still feasible.

Or it would have been, if the new batter hadn’t been Gardner. She came in and swatted 48 off 18 deliveries, and even though those around her lost their wickets, this took them to a final score of 269/8, leaving the White Ferns a target of 270 to win.

270 isn’t an impossible target, but unfortunately, Australia also have the best bowling attack in the competition. This probably accounts for them being No.1 in the world rankings, favourites to win the competition, and so far unbeaten. Wickets fell quickly and regularly and it soon became apparent, despite a valiant effort from Satterthwaite batting at 4 and accumulating 44 runs, the failure of the top order (Devine 6 and Melie Kerr 1) meant that too much was asked of the lower batters and bowlers. Wickets fell regularly, and when Satterthwaite was caught it was pretty much all over. The White Ferns were bowled out for 128 in the 31st over.

This leaves them fourth in the round robin stage of the competition, and they really need to win their next three matches. Fortunately, they’re against England and Pakistan, who have so far failed to win a single match between them; less fortunately, they must play South Africa, who are also unbeaten so far.