Here is a schedule of the games that are going to be played by New Zealand at home during the 2007/2008 home summer season. Make sure you proudly show your support for your favourite teams and make this summer of cricket an entertaining occasion, and who knows, you could be made famous by showing some enthusiasm and dedicated support for your team.
If you are a BlackCaps supporter lets attend the games' dressed in black and on mass and let Bangladesh, West Indies and India know that we are a force to be reckoned with!
Here is the Black Cap's home schedule for the home summer season of 2008/2009:
2008:
West Indies in NZ
Test
Dec 11-15: New Zealand v West Indies Dunedin
Dec 19-23: New Zealand v West Indies Napier
Twenty20
Dec 26: New Zealand v West Indies Auckland
Dec 28: New Zealand v West Indies Hamilton
2009
One-day matches
Dec 31 New Zealand v West Indies Queenstown
Jan 3 New Zealand v West Indies Christchurch
Jan 7 New Zealand v West Indies Wellington
Jan 10 New Zealand v West Indies Auckland
Jan 13 New Zealand v West Indies Napier
India in NZ
Twenty 20
Mar 6 New Zealand v India Wellington
One-day matches
Mar 8 New Zealand v India Napier
Mar 11 New Zealand v India Hamilton
Mar 14 New Zealand v India Auckland
Mar 17 New Zealand v India Wellington
Mar 20 New Zealand v India Christchurch
First class match
Mar 22-24 New Zealand v India Lincoln, Canterbury
Test Matches
Mar 26-30 New Zealand v India Hamilton
Apr 3-7 New Zealand v India Wellington 
Thursday, November 6, 2008
New Zealand Cricket Test, ODI and Twenty20 schedule
Sunday, April 20, 2008
I dream of cricket....How about you?
Have realised over the course of my life I have had alot of dreams when asleep about cricket, and to this day I can still remember many of them, anyone that has had dreams about cricket feel free to tell me about them, am interested to hear about them!
In the meantime heres a collection of the dreams I had that I can remember:
- Smacking a 6 off Andy Caddick to get a century at Lords and win the Test for New Zealand (1999), and getting 10 for 21 in the match.
- O.D.I Debut against South Africa in 2003, Chris Cairns was captain/coach, I got 72 off 52 balls by smacking Shaun Pollock all over Jade Stadium (nowadays known as A.M.I Stadium) and getting 5 for 42 including a hat-trick, and Shaun Pollock had me caught behind by Mark Boucher.
- Having a net session with Muttiah Muralithiran at Carisbrook. Him giving me some useful tips to get the ball to turn furtherer and technique on putting flight and drift in my deliveries. I try to bowl like him in real life but it's still a dream!
- Being the last wicket in at a tournament in Toronto in 2002 against India. NZ needed 5 runs to win off the last ball and Ashish Nehra was bowling. He had been bowling very well towards me and some of his deliveries were unplayable and unpredictable. The previous 2 deliveries I played and missed wildly, swinging the bat like I was casting out a line to fish, and the crowd were warming up as he was running in and in the blink of an eye I took a swat at his short pitched delivery and lucky for me it was going down leg-side and managed to pull off a miraculous hook shot for 6, It was like a scud missile ging at lightning speed. a very flat tragectory. India were dejected, New Zealand elated to win the tournament.
- Playing against Australia at the M.C.G and I was 5th wicket in, Shane Warne was bowling to me and he happened to bowl a wrong-in that drifted way down leg and I managed to pull off a Brendon McCullum like shot (I think its called the shovel shot?) and whacked the ball for 6, however it whacked into the giant replay screen and I broke it!
- Playing County cricket for Nottinghamshire and witnessed Chris Tremlett getting a hat-trick.
-Being the 1st bowler to bowl over 170km/h, bowling a yorker to Shahid Afridi and breaking his stumps for a duck.
And the list goes on...
I could go on forever about more dreams but will tell anyone that requests me to:)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
In the International Spotlight...New Zealand Cricket
The New Zealand cricket team, also known as the Black Caps, played their first Test in 1929-30 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth Test nation. It took the team until 1955-56 to win a Test, against the West Indies at Eden Park in Auckland. They played their first ODI in the 1972-73 season against Pakistan in Christchurch.
The current Test captain is Daniel Vettori. He replaces the Black Caps' most successful captain, Stephen Fleming who led New Zealand to 28 Test victories, more than twice as many as any other captain. Vettori lost his first match as captain (vs South Africa) by 358 runs, New Zealand's worst ever defeat by runs.
The New Zealand cricket team became known as the Black Caps in January 1998, after its sponsor at the time, Clear Communications, held a competition to choose a name for the team.
As of October 2007, the New Zealand team has played 332 Test matches, winning 18.67%, losing 39.45% and drawing 41.86% of its games.
DOMESTIC TEAMS:
New Zealand Cricket involves the following first-class teams:
·Auckland Aces
·Canterbury Wizards
·Central Districts Stags
·Northern Districts Knights
·Otago Volts
·Wellington Firebirds
CRICKET DEVELOPMENT:
New Zealand Cricket has established High Performance Cricket training centre based at Lincoln University. It also operates a grassroots development programme for school children called 'MILO Kiwi Cricket' . John Wright, former NZ opening batsman, was appointed acting high performance manager for NZC in November 2007.
New Zealand has many private cricket academies and the Bracewell Cricket Academy based at Rathkeale College is one of the largest cricket academies, providing an Overseas Cricket Development Programme, a Pre-Season Coaching Camp, a Festival of Cricket.
There are around 100,000 registered cricketers in New Zealand. By way of comparison, Australia and the U.K. have around 500,000 each. According to Mark O'Neill, New Zealand's batting coach from 2007-09, the competition at club level in NZ is nowhere near as intense as in Australia.
"In Sydney there are 20 first grade teams, each club has five grades. To get to first grade you've got to be a friggin' good player and once you get there the competition is very, very fierce. Unfortunately it's not the same standard [in NZ]. Competition is everything and the only way the New Zealand guys are going to get that is to play the world's best players."
TOURNAMENT HISTORY:
World Cup
·1975: Semi Finals
·1979: Semi Finals
·1983: First round
·1987: First round
·1992: Semi Finals
·1996: Quarter Finals
·1999: Semi Finals
·2003: 5th Place
·2007: Semi Finals
Mini World Cup
·ICC Knockout 1998: Quarter Finals
·ICC Knockout 2000: Won
·ICC Champions Trophy 2002: First round
·ICC Champions Trophy 2004: First round
·ICC Champions Trophy 2006: Semi Finals
Twenty20 World Championship
·2007: Semi Finals
Commonwealth Games
·1998: Bronze medal
World Championship of Cricket
·1985: Fourth
Austral-Asia Cup
·1986: Semi Finals
·1990: Semi Finals
·1994: Semi Finals
TOURNAMENT VICTORIES:
·ICC Knock-Out Trophy Nairobi Gymkhana Club Nairobi Kenya 2000. New Zealand beat India in the final.
·2003 Bank Alfala Series Trophy held in Sri Lanka (New Zealand, Pakistan,Sri Lanka)
·2004 NatWest Series Trophy held in England (West Indies, England,New Zealand).
·2005 Videocon TriSeries held in Zimbabwe (India, Zimbabwe,New Zealand).
WORLD RECORDS:
·Richard Hadlee, one of New Zealand and the world's best all-rounders, took the world record for most Test wickets (374) vs India at Bangalore in 1988. He lost the record to Kapil Dev. Hadlee was the first bowler to reach 400 Test wickets vs India at Christchurch in 1990
·Andrew Jones and Martin Crowe held the highest ever 3rd-wicket partnership in Tests which at the time was the highest partnership for any wicket.
·Brian Hastings and Richard Collinge together scored 151 runs for the highest ever 10th-wicket partnership against Pakistan in 1973.
·Nathan Astle scored Test cricket's fastest ever double century versus England Christchurch 2002. He scored 200 off 153 balls with the second hundred coming off just 39 deliveries. He was eventually out for 222 — the dreaded double Nelson. He knocked the first hundred off 114 balls. Astle smashed the record by 59 balls, previously held by Adam Gilchrist Australia vs South Africa Johannesburg 2002).
·Geoff Allott holds the record for the longest time taken to score a duck. South Africa Auckland 1999. He faced 77 balls in 101 minutes for his zero score.
·Danny Morrison held another "unwanted" record for the most ducks in Test cricket(24)
. He lost the record to Courtney Walsh.
·Chris Cairns and his father Lance Cairns are one of the two father-son combination to each claim 100 Test wickets, South Africa's Peter and Shaun Pollock being the other.
·Chris Cairns held the record for the most Test sixes. He passed Viv Richards record of 84 (vs England, Lord's, London, 2004) and retired from Test cricket with 87. He has since been passed by both Adam Gilchrist (the current record holder) and Brian Lara.
·Chris Harris is the only New Zealand cricketer to have taken 200 wickets in ODIs. (vs England, Lord's, London, 2004). He is only the second player in ODIs to complete the 4000 run / 200 wicket double. (The other is Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya). He holds the record for the most ODI caught and bowled dismissals, with 29.
·Fast bowler Shane Bond holds the best strike rate in the history of One Day International cricket of 26.5 (one player out for every 26.5 balls bowled).
·John Bracewell became the first - and so far only - substitute fielder to take four catches in a One-Day International, vs Australia in Adelaide on 23 November 1980.
·The New Zealand team holds the dubious honour of the record for the most consecutive Test series played without a win - 30 series between 1929-30 and 1969-70 (40 years), comfortably ahead of Bangladesh on 16 series.
·Another unenviable distinction is the largest margin defeat in the Cricket World Cup, by 215 runs, by Australia. (April 2007).
Notable
·New Zealand dismissed Zimbabwe (Harare 2005) twice in the same day for totals of 59 and 99. Zimbabwe became only the second team (after India Manchester 1952) to be dismissed twice in the same day. The whole Test was completed inside two days.
·Daniel Vettori scored NZ's fastest Test century. (vs Zimbabwe Harare 2005). Vettori needed only 82 balls to reach the 100 mark.
·In the same match, he became the third NZ cricketer (after Richard Hadlee and Chris Cairns) to take more than 200 Test wickets.
·Lou Vincent holds the record for the highest one-day cricket innings by a New Zealander of 172 (vs Zimbabwe Bulawayo 2005). The previous best was Glenn Turner 171 not out (vs East Africa Birmingham 1975). Vincent and captain Stephen Fleming broke the New Zealand one-day opening partnership record against all countries. Their total of 204 beat Fleming and Nathan Astle's 193 (vs Pakistan Dunedin 2000-2001). The team total of 397 was just one run short of the then record one-day total of 398 (Sri Lanka vs Kenya Kandy 1996).
·Brendon McCullum scored the fastest World Cup (2007) fifty (off 20 balls) for New Zealand against Canada, beating Mark Boucher's 21-ball record set against the Netherlands six days earlier.
·In a match for the New Zealanders (i.e., the New Zealand national team playing a tour match against non-test opposition) at Scarborough, Yorkshire, in 1986 vs the D.B. Close XI, Ken Rutherford scored 317 runs off just 245 balls, including 228 runs in boundary fours and sixes. In terms of balls faced, this is almost certainly one of the four fastest first-class triple-centuries ever recorded.
EXTERNAL RELATED LINKS:
REFERENCE LINKS:
SEE ALSO:
*Acknowledgements to Cricinfo.com, Wikipedia.org and other related sites/links in this article/post.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
World Cricketing Records
Here are some links to records and milestones achieved in international cricket, rather than take up alot of space for an article I have found these links which are equally useful --->
ODI RECORDS:
1.ODI Records on Cricinfo.com
2.ODI Records on Cricketarchive.com
3.ODI Records on Cricket-records.com
4.Cricket records on Howstat.com
5.ODI Records on Cricmania.com
6.Wisden Cricketers Almanack
7.ODI Cricket on Icc-cricket.com
TEST CRICKET RECORDS:
1.Test Records at Cricinfo.com
2.Overall Test Records at Cricketarchive.com
3.Test Records on Cricket-records.com
4.Cricket records on Howstat.com
5.Test Records on Cricmania.com
6.Wisden Cricketers Almanack
7.Test Cricket Records on Icc-cricket.com
*Acknowledgements to Cricinfo.com, Cricketarchive.com, Cricket-records.com, Howstat.com, Cricmania.com, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, icc-cricket.com, Wikipedia.com
Monday, January 28, 2008
Gilly's retirement, what does this mean for the Aussies?
Just would like to say that it's sad to see one of the cricketing greats leave the game, but like what I said about Sachin Tendulkar I am privileged and honoured to have witnessed such a brilliant career right from it's on-set. Adam Gilchrist was to me the greatest wicketkeeper in modern times, and when he overhauled Mark Boucher's ( South Africa) world record 414 test dismissals it cemented his place amongst the greats, though the thing I will always remember about Gilly's career is the way he bludgeoned the ball to all parts of the ground, it was magic and he appeared to do it with nonchalent ease. He re-defined the wicketkeeper-batsman's role in the team's 11 and became an excellent role-model for all aspiring wicketkeepers, which brings me to the point about what my headline says. Who will be Adam Gilchrist's next successor? Who will fill the void of nearly a decade of excellence? It seems that Australia has a huge depth in cricket talent and according to their sports development programs etc theres no doubt they will find a new "Gilchrist" somewhere in the huge pool of talent. Does anyone have an opinion on who the next Gilchrist will be?
Adam Gilchrist (Gilly)
Played Test cricket for Australia 1999 to 2008
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