Michael Walker is a poet who has been a past contributor to
this blog 2013-2014. I did a search for him at the Poem Hunter website, and
found two more poems relating to cricket by Walker. Earlier posts of his
cricket poems were popular.
Walker has never published in book form, but posted about
773 poems and French translations on the Poem Hunter website. Here’s the link: Michael
Walker - Poet Michael Walker Poems.
Walker’s first
poem mentions Pukekura Park which until recently was a venue for Super Smash T20
cricket played by the Central Stags, with very short boundaries meaning a high
proportion of shots were clearing the boundary with ease. Entertaining knocks
occurred like Michael Bracewell’s match winning ton 141 not out off 65 balls in
January 2022. “The 30-year-old hit 11 fours and 11 sixes on a field with
admittedly small boundaries…” (NDA News website)
Walker’s
second poem is on an Eden Park Test between England and New Zealand. Played with a pink ball, Boult was man of the
match taking 6/32 and 3/67. His first innings effort effectively won the match
for New Zealand along with Tim Southee’s 4/25. It was by an innings and 49
runs. Yet England made 320 in the second innings, and attempted to stage a
comeback. The damage was already done.
The match
reports says: “It was a much better batting performance from England,
aided by improved underfoot conditions. Fuller-length deliveries were easily
negotiated with the old pink ball not swinging, and the shorter ones were more
comfortable to handle too, a slow fifth-day pitch allowing batsmen the time to
adjust.”
Players not
much remembered now were Mark Stoneman for England who made 55 in the second
dig and Todd Astle for New Zealand, the spinner.
MICHAEL WALKER
Life And Death
I know, or I think I know, where
I was born.
New Plymouth, a city with two sprawling cemeteries,
where I found my grandparents' gravestones at last,
but they were covered in gray lichen and moss.
The kindly sexton said she would spray the gravestones
and I will go back to see them cleaned and clarified.
My grandparents were always there for me.
My grandfather taught me table manners, sternly.
He and I used to watch the cricket at Pukekura Park
then we would wander around the lake,
seeing the sleek canoes gliding on the surface.
I loved to hear the fountain playing on and off.
I thought that death may not be the end,
when I found their graves last weekend.
15 June 2016.
Return To Eden Park
The pink-
ball test between England and New Zealand
was effectively decided in the very first session,
when I saw a fine spell of unchanged fast bowling,
by Boult and Southee, which routed the English batsmen.
New Zealand's first day-night test also featured their batsmen
for the rest of Thursday, Williamson driving close to a century,
while the left-hander Henry Nicholls scored freely in the air
off the four-man fast-medium attack, and the luckless Moeen Ali.
A pink, waning crescent moon shone above the ground on Thursday,
then came two days' rain which washed out most Friday, all Saturday.
I went back on Sunday when Williamson completed his record century,
and Nicholls went on and on to 145 not out at the 427-8 declaration.
Under a white half-moon, England's batsmen set off for 370, far
away,
yet I saw three of their batsmen back in the pavilion by stumps,
all caught off Boult or Wagner; even so Malan and Ben Stokes
kept their wickets intact confidently until the end of play.
Stokes and Woakes scored slow half-centuries in the second innings,
but both were caught off Wagner when well set and little to follow.
England was all-out for 320, losing by an innings and 49 runs.
Boult and Wagner took three wickets each, but so did Todd Astle the
electric leg-spinner.
27/28 March 2018.
New Zealand v England, First Test (D/N), 22-26 March
2018, Eden Park, England tour of New Zealand.
Poems © Michael Walker 2016 and 2018
Previous posts featuring Michael Walker:
Michael
Walker’s NZ cricket sonnets
Michael
Walker’s new Richard Hadlee poem
Michael
Walker’s NZ-England cricket poem
