Wellington welcomes the world

Crick­et in the 21st cen­tury is a var­ied and com­plex entity, and noth­ing demon­strates that quite like this sum­mer in Wellington.

The appet­iser, if pies can be called an appet­iser, is the Geor­gie Pie Super Smash tour­na­ment, which is near­ing its cli­max. Because of the made-for-TV nature of the event, Wellington’s host­ing involve­ment was con­tro­ver­sially lim­ited to a three-day week­end at the sta­di­um. While a crowd of 3,000-plus would have cre­ated a great atmo­sphere at a T20 match at the Basin Reserve, by tele­vis­ing it under lights you get a New Zea­l­and-based audi­ence of upwards of 90,000.

New Zea­l­and Crick­et has sharpened up its act in a lot of ways over recent years, and that includes the play­ing depth at domest­ic level. How­ever, the com­mer­cial viab­il­ity of the major asso­ci­ations has been neg­lected at the expense of the focus on the nation­al side. There is talk about privat­ising these asso­ci­ations to make them more com­mer­cially focused. Expos­ure like the T20 tour­na­ment is vital if such a move is to be viable.

The Basin does come into play in Janu­ary, with a test against Sri Lanka, fol­lowed by Wellington’s defence of the Ford Trophy, ‘defence’ being a term rarely heard across most Wel­ling­ton sports teams. Crick­et Wel­ling­ton acknow­ledges the ground’s appeal, and the double-head­er over Anniversary week­end will be pro­moted as a ‘Cel­eb­rate the Basin’ event, as opposed to a mere sport­ing contest.

This is the one sea­son, how­ever, when the real high­lights will be not actu­ally be at the spir­itu­al home of crick­et in the cap­it­al, but at West­pac Sta­di­um, as the ICC Crick­et World Cup rolls into town.

It will be 2011 all over again. The giant screen and fan zone on the water­front will be back, along with the fan trails to the sta­di­um and all the col­our that goes with such an event. In 2011, through the vagar­ies of the draw, Wel­ling­ton did not quite exper­i­ence the full atmo­sphere of the Rugby World Cup due to the fact that Eng­land and Ire­land nev­er got to play here. Trav­el­ling fans, espe­cially those arriv­ing from the oth­er side of the Tas­man, ten­ded to spend as little time in the cap­it­al as pos­sible. Dur­ing the week you could be for­giv­en for not know­ing there was any­thing going on at all.

This time around it is quite dif­fer­ent. Eng­land, and its accom­pa­ny­ing loud yet well-behaved Barmy Army, gets two pool games in the cap­it­al — against New Zea­l­and and Sri Lanka, whose fans are pretty numer­ous and devoted them­selves. As a bonus, there is a quarter-final, which will almost cer­tainly involve New Zealand.

There has been a lot of recent angst about West­pac Sta­di­um being the wrong shape and that it is not really a crick­et ground. Much of that is jus­ti­fied, and it is always going to suf­fer when com­pared to the Basin. How­ever, for those three matches in Feb­ru­ary and March, it will be able to deliv­er to a level that can make the tour­na­ment organ­isers and Wel­ling­ton proud.