Where it all began....

I have been asked so many times in recent years about where my cricket obsession began.
So I think it's high time I commit the facts to (virtual) paper. My earliest memory of me and cricket is when I was 7 or 8 years old. We were living in Honiara, in the Solomon Islands, and I went to an International School. At this school, there was a large English community- both teachers and families. For PE, we invariably played Danish Rounders, or cricket. One particular day I recall cricket being on the menu for PE, and I was dead keen to get in and bat. There was Ben Rainbow at one end of the crease and me at the other. Bowling was William Beasley. The sheer exhilaration I felt at facing young Master Beasley's bowling was unprecedented. The look on his face as I whacked him to the boundary was even better. If I recall correctly, we won that match, and Ben and I put on some serious runs.
Fast forward a few years, and we were living back in Auckland. I was at the local Primary School with my younger brother. In winter there was rugby and netball. Actually that was also the "other" time the All Whites did well in the FIFA world cup. Not that I recall anyone ever kicking a soccer ball around at school. Naturally, in Summer there was cricket and softball. Softball never really spun my wheels. So once again, there was the lure of cricket. Of course most girls didn't play cricket in Standard 4, so I joined the boys team, and thought nothing of it. By now though, I think I was more of a bowler. I took great delight in twirling the ball around the batsman's ankles and tormenting them with my accuracy. However, it was a watershed moment when batting at the tail end (because as the girl it was what you had to do!), I collected a leather ball on the side of my nose and made a bit of a mess of my whites. I also had a bit of explaining to do when I walked home after school with a fat lip and nose!
A few more years went by, and although I didn't really play much more cricket, it was always there. Summer was always memorable with the cricket on the radio, and stories of Richard Hadlee, Jeremy Coney, and who could forget Lance Cairns with his one handed 6 off Excalibur? My younger brother played cricket for his school and was forever in the backyard mastering the art of bowling the googly. A skill, incidentally, he still has to this day! I did face a fair number of his practise deliveries in the backyard and had to bowl a fair few to him when he was working on the batting. I ended up doing my Bursary Art folio on a series of photos I had taken of him bowling and montaged together David Hockney style.
By High School, I was at an all girls school, and whilst there was cricket on offer, I wasn't that interested in an all girls team. We even had an ex NZ women's cricketer teaching PE. It just wasn't the same without the boys!
Luckily for me, I had a Grandma that was as big a cricket tragic as me. Actually, she was probably worse. Grace Craig was her name. She knew everyone at Eden Park and everyone knew her. GG (Grandma Grace) never missed a match, and was always in the stand with her thermos, oddfellows, and the crossword. She also had binoculars and a little radio, just to make sure she didn't miss any of the action. Oh, how she would laugh if she could see me living just like her today!
One especially memorable time at Eden Park came when I was in Sixth Form. I knew there was a match on at Eden Park and that GG would be there. Responsible child that I was, I wrote a note for my teacher saying that I had to leave school at lunchtime to go to a physio appointment, and that I would be gone for the rest of the day. Then I signed it with a flourish as I imagined my own mother might. To my surprise, it worked! I raced out the school gates and onto the ARA bus to take me down Dominion Road to Eden Park.
 GG was delighted to see me , and thrilled at my Machiavellian tactics! We spent many happy hours together at Eden Park over the next few Summers. GG always said hello to the players as they stretched and warmed up (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!). The players always nodded and acknowledged her, and I do recall John Bracewell stopping for a chat.
I started photographing the cricket and decided I wanted to be a sports photographer. That was great fun as I did my best to capture Martin Crowe at the crease, and Danny Morrison and Willie Watson in full flight. I could write a whole 'nother story about Danny & Willie, but will keep that for another day! I must have photographed every game for 2 summers before it dawned on me that it's actually really hard work! I went and did work experience at the Auckland Star, before deciding that whilst photography was great fun, it was a tough way to make money.
A few short years after this I met "he who must be obeyed" who, sadly, was not into cricket. So life took a different turn for a while, and from the late 90s until about 2008, I hardly watched any cricket at all. I didn't even have time to miss it as I was very busy with 4 small boys.
 However, the cricket passion was reignited a few years ago when sons  1 & 2 signed up to play junior cricket at Parnell Cricket Club. All the old memories came flooding back, and the passion for the game resurfaced. Now I have three sons playing at Parnell, and number 4 is desperate to join them. It is only his age holding him back. The boys and I attend every Auckland home game.
He who must be obeyed still doesn't get it. He is trying though. The first time I sat him in front of a match he shouted- "but there's two guys running down the pitch!" Yes dear. He came along to an HRV game last Summer and I think he just about coped. He accepts that he loses me to the lure of cricket from November to April every year. He even accepts that I don't take on any new work projects during this time- unless I can get time off to attend matches. I think he believes I go to the games to perv at all the finely honed athletes. Well, maybe I do.....a little. But it's so much more than that. And there are about 125 days to go until I can do it all again!

Looking back

Looking back on 2011, there is a lot to ponder.
Uppermost in my mind is a sense of sadness for the good people of Canterbury and sorrow for the harrowing year they have endured. At the same time, there is immense relief at being an Aucklander and not being faced with the decision of whether to go or stay in my home town. Would I leave Auckland if we faced the same predicament? Hard to say. It would be a wrench for sure.
It has been a phenomenal year for our sportsmen, most obviously the mighty All Blacks. Who could forget the deep emotional connection of being part of the stadium of 4 million? I never got to the final at Eden Park, instead opting to enjoy the 90mins of torture from the relative comfort of my living room. I did get to see Fiji v Samoa and the playoff for 3rd with Australia vs Wales. The deepest impression from those matches is huge pride at the way New Zealand welcomed the world to our backyards and showed them all how to party kiwi style. I sat next to some wonderful French and Welsh people at those two matches and was taught how to sing the Welsh anthem (sadly I struggled with all those consonants!), and joked with the French about their loss to the ABs from the night before.
The Breakers win in the NBL seems so long ago, but at the time was the first in a string of big kiwi victories. I don't even follow basketball, but couldn't help but be swept along with everyone else's euphoria.
Then, most recently, that epic win by the BlackCaps against Australia. The first one in 26 years on Australian soil. Somehow , that felt like the best victory since 1981..... The future is looking good for Rosco and his boys. There is plenty of experience in the side and lots of young blood to fire them along.
Other stuff that happened in 2011? The election. Big fat yawn. We all asked ourselves who these people are that voted for Winston Peters. Who cares! They are out there somewhere.
Us Jafas had the unexpected pleasure of being dusted in snow back in August. My dad told me that he saw snow in the Waitakere Ranges in the 1960s. It was the stuff of legend. Then we got our very own snow storm, while we were at MOTAT killing time after flights to the Mainland (to see some snow!) had been cancelled. We all gained a new word in our lexicon too as we learned about graupel. Jafas were heard to be knowledgeably discussing whether what they experienced was graupel or snowflakes for weeks afterwards. Meanwhile the good folk of Otago sniggered at our expense....!
Another memorable highlight for me came at Easter . It's hard to believe with the current tropical storms lashing the Big Little City, but Easter 2011 was unseasonably warm and sunny. The expectation is normally that Easter will be wet and horrible. Where have I seen that before? But last Easter was so hot, I found myself swimming at St Heliers beach under blazing skies that brought 23degrees . Maybe we are paying for that at this end of the year...

My final wee highlight came during RWC2011, and as a by product of that massive sporting tournament. By the way, the RWC is the 3rd largest sports tournament in the world behind the FIFA world cup and the Summer Olympics- whodathunk? Us Aucklanders gained free wifi hotspots placed strategically throughout the city. So what? Well, Auckland has always straddled that divide between being a town and a city on the world scale. We think we're a big city , but benchmarked against the rest of the world, we're teeny. I was in London in the middle of the year, and free wifi was everywhere. So when Auckland City brought it to us, it made me think that finally we are thinking big. Tourists expect to have this stuff available, it helps locals too.
It has to be a good thing to be at the beach doing your FaceBook updates on free wifi. Right?