{"id":96863,"date":"2025-10-23T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/96863\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:00:08","slug":"black-caps-v-england-rain-ruins-start-of-summer-as-new-zealand-pays-price-of-crickets-crowded-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/96863\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Caps v England: Rain ruins start of summer as New Zealand pays price of cricket\u2019s crowded calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo be fair, in the Mount, we played two of the three games against Australia to completion,\u201d said Walter. \u201cEither side of the rained out games, it was beautiful. If you go to Christchurch [it was] the same thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is disappointing. We\u2019ve spent a lot of time talking about the weather and the time of year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, you want to play cricket, but it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, questions have been raised over the fact that the start of the cricketing summer was scheduled for spring. The answer, though, doesn\u2019t lie in the \u201cwhen?\u201d, it\u2019s about the \u201cwhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TimTim Robinson of the Black Caps leaves the field for rain in the third T20 against England. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

As cricket further fragments into haves vs have-nots, the Black Caps are having to take what they can get.<\/p>\n

Both Australia and England travelled to New Zealand as curtain raisers to their marquee test series against each other, starting next month.<\/p>\n

And while Kiwi fans might be frustrated with having to watch three games out of six be washed out, this was simply the only time both of those nations – two-thirds of the game\u2019s elite alongside India – could squeeze New Zealand in.<\/p>\n

On top of that, for the second year in a row, the Black Caps won\u2019t play a single match on Kiwi soil in January and February<\/a>, with a white ball tour to India before the T20 World Cup instead.<\/p>\n

But for the players, the chance to face the game\u2019s biggest sides must be taken, even at the risk of washouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you play Australia and England, you\u2019re going to take every chance to play them,\u201d Black Caps wicketkeeper Tim Seifert said the day before the Eden Park abandonment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d rather play them this time of year than not. It is a different time of year that we are playing cricket, we\u2019ve seen that a little from the conditions we\u2019ve played in.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s [about] that balance between if you want to play these big nations or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those big nations, now largely governed by self-interest, are more at fault for this start to the Kiwi summer than New Zealand Cricket.<\/p>\n

Administrators are having to find ways to accommodate the international game on which the sport was built, amidst a rapidly growing franchise game.<\/p>\n

While players want to be able to do both, represent club as well as country, series like these highlight the issue for smaller countries like New Zealand.<\/p>\n

For now, until some kind of alignment is found, all teams that aren\u2019t England, Australia and India will have to take the good with the bad, as far as scheduling goes. <\/p>\n

\"RainRain interrupted the first T20 International between the Black Caps and England. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to come all the way to this part of the world and play one game,\u201d England captain Harry Brook professed. \u201c[It\u2019s] very annoying starting and coming off all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s part of the game, and we have no control over that. It\u2019s well above my pay grade; I have no influence on any of that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to come out here and try to execute as well as we can, play the best cricket we can, and hopefully the rain stays away. This time, it\u2019s managed to catch us every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Powell<\/a> is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTo be fair, in the Mount, we played two of the three games against Australia to completion,\u201d said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,7022,9837,42574,10474,16558,71492,26698,17752,307,1634,2550,305,51928,1019,7494,117,111,43,139,69,1118,1523,20442,3333,6560,71491,4497,14625,8229,4998,80],"class_list":["post-96863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-as","tag-black","tag-calendar","tag-caps","tag-control","tag-cricket","tag-crickets","tag-crowded","tag-disrupted","tag-dont","tag-england","tag-even","tag-have","tag-increasingly","tag-international","tag-less","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-over","tag-pays","tag-price","tag-rain","tag-ruins","tag-start","tag-summer","tag-they","tag-weather","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}