Vishak Sivakumar’s 2019 NZ cricket song

Vishak Sivakumar is a writer I came across doing key word searches in the National Library catalogue recently. I don’t know anything about him.

He composed a song called ‘Cricket Ball’ that was published in Toitoi: A Journal for Young Writers and Artists. I will include it here in the Tinging Catch archive.

VISHAK SIVAKUMAR

Cricket Ball

You are round and sturdy.
You are tightly gripped in my hand.
You fly through the air like an energetic eagle.
You hit a bat as hard as metal.
You hit a stiff stump which glows bright red.
You land in hands as soft as cotton.
You hear cheering as loud as a stampeding elephant.
Sometimes you soar too high and are never seen again.

Song © Vishak Sivakumar

(from Toitoi: A Journal for Young Writers and Artists, No. 16, Winter 2019)

André Surridge’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

André Surridge (1951-2019) contributed poems to A Tinging Catch and my football anthology Boots. He has a sporting interest. I came across his work when we were both regularly published in Tony Chad’s magazine Valley Micropress.

He is known as a haiku and tanka writer. Tanka is a Japanese form of five lines, two more lines than a haiku. He published his Selected Poems 1968-1990 in 1993, and wrote a number of one act plays.

I came across another cricket poem of his, a prose poem. It’s about a boy’s imaginary world with cricket while doing his homework: an essay on the French Revolution.

I liked it and will include it here.

ANDRÉ SURRIDGE

It isn’t cricket

It isn’t cricket. Well, how could it be? Where’s the first eleven, where’s the opposition? where’s the cricket bat, the ball, the bails, the stumps, the umpires, the pavilion, the crowd, the scoreboard and the commentators waving from an upstairs window?

It’s just a bedroom and a boy procrastinating over an essay on the French Revolution.

He’s kneeling on a mat between two single beds, one his, the other his younger brother’s. He thinks his bat is this wooden foot ruler and the ball a screwed up first page first attempt on the storming of the Bastille, one leg of the chair behind him is his all important wicket. He throws the ball at the bedroom wall and whacks it onto the candlewick bedspread. It’s a six, naturally.

The umpires call lunch and he rises from the pitch on one hundred and two not out.

What’s not to like?

Except the essay isn’t done and his stepfather will threaten him with a thick ear.

(from Valley Micropress, July 2014)

Poem © André Surridge

Previous posts on André Surridge:

André Surridge’s new cricket tanka

Bill Nelson’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

Bill Nelson (b. 1979) is an emerging poet. He has studied at the IIML. He’s published a poetry book, Memorandum of Understanding (2016) and a verse novel, Root Leaf Flower Fruit (2023), with Te Herenga Waka University Press.

I’ve written a verse novel myself, so am always on the lookout for fellow verse novelists.

His publisher’s blurb says of Memorandum of Understanding: "In his debut poetry collection Bill Nelson steps into John Coltrane's body and wears it around. He is a turtle disappearing into the sea. He plumbs the depths of business jargon. He takes singing lessons in Berhampore. He takes his grandfather roller skating. Funny, strange and arresting, these poems test our understanding of understanding".

I recently came across a cricket poem he wrote about watching cricket which his grandfather wasn’t into. I liked it and will add it to the Tingling Catch archive.

BILL NELSON

One day cricket

Like origami, oyster soup
and obscene phone calls

this is something your grandfather
was never into.

Ultimately it was up to you
upside down on the sofa

your head lolling on the floor
the net curtains lifting

and resetting, ready to catch
whatever comes hurtling in.

(From Sport 42, 2014)

Poem © Bill Nelson

Memorandum of Understanding by Bill Nelson,
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2016

Harry Ricketts’ NZ cricket triolets

Harry Ricketts is an academic, biographer, poet and editor who turned his hand to cricket writing when he published How to Catch a Cricket Match, a guide to getting the most out of day’s Test cricket. It’s in my list of favourite cricket books. He also edited an anthology of New Zealand sports writing, which I reviewed on this site.

In 2024, he followed up this one-off cricket publication with a very impressive book Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes, co-written with historian David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury. It received the Cricket Writers’ Club Derek Hodgson Book of the Year. It gives Ricketts some international notice for his cricket writing.

Ricketts is a former Wellington club cricketer and a former schoolboy cricketer in England. At Wellington College, he broke the school record for wickets in a season. He has a life-long association with cricket through playing and now writing on the game.

He contributed several poems to A Tingling Catch and has continued to write on cricket since then. His Bob Woolmer poem was included on this blog, and he has also written triolets on cricket.

Triolets are still a relatively rare form of poetry dating back to the 13th century. Thomas Hardy and Wendy Cope are well known writers of the English triolet. Both Ricketts and I have tried the triolet in New Zealand cricket writing. My book Slips (2021) includes a number of triolets. Cricket poet George Francis Wilson once wrote ‘An Over of Triolets’; one for each ball bowled.

The triolet usually has a repetitive element to it, the opening two lines being repeated at the end. The novelty can wear thin after a while but it’s still a form that’s interesting to me. I was brave to put out a book of triolets Old Hat in 2012. Rather than just putting several triolets in a collection as Ricketts did with Half Dark and Bonfires on Ice.

Here are Ricketts’ two cricket triolets:

HARRY RICKETTS

Wellington, late summer 2014

On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds;
cicadas click-click their castanets.
Listen to the money’s slow, withdrawing roar.
On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds.
‘Wellington is a city that’s dying,’
says the man with cold snapper eyes.
On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds;
cicadas click-click their castanets.

(From Half Dark, VUP, 2015)

Cricket

Man, I never hit it, straight off the pad;
That was absolutely plumb, would’ve knocked out middle.
Just for a moment we’re Hadlee or Brad-
man then, never hit it, straight off the pad.
Quite why a neat late cut should make us glad,
and sad a slow full pitch to leg, is a great riddle.
Man, I never hit it, straight off the pad;
That was absolutely plumb, would’ve knocked out middle.

(From Takahē 80, December 2013)

Poems © Harry Ricketts

Harry Ricketts’ cricket book Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes is available on Amazon. Here’s a link to the publisher’s website: Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic: David Kynaston: Bloomsbury Publishing - Bloomsbury

Previous posts on Harry Ricketts:

Harry Ricketts’s cricket poem for Bob Woolmer

Summer Reads: The Awa Book of NZ Sports Writing

Mark Pirie’s triolets:

Tingling Catch congratulates the All Blacks

Mark Pirie’s Martin Guptill poem

Mark Pirie's new cricket poem Norwood Room

Rob Franks’ new book with Ronald Cardwell: Every Picture Tells a Story, after Rod Stewart

Review by Mark Pirie of Every Picture Tells a Story: New Zealand Cricketers in the United Kingdom 1931 by Rob Franks and Ronald Cardwell (The Cricket Press Pty Limited, Cherrybrook, Australia, 2025).

Rob Franks is the official Kiwi Cricket Pages bibliographer, so his work is invaluable for checking his lists of New Zealand cricket poetry and cricket fiction. He keeps track of new books published and updates his bibliography.

Franks is also a researcher and writer and included one of my poems on Martin Donnelly and Keith Miller in a book of his. This year he sent me a beautifully produced book. It is published by Ronald Cardwell’s The Cricket Press Pty Limited, Australia, who know how to design and print cricket books like no other. He has been doing it for 50 years. This latest book Franks is co-author of with Cardwell is on the 1931 New Zealand team that toured England about a year after New Zealand received official Test status. It’s like an art catalogue of photos on the men who toured and has critical insights into a number of the key players, and what they got up to on the tour back then.

What got my attention is that Cardwell has used Rod Stewart’s album title Every Picture Tells a Story for the concept of the book. Stewart is best known as a footy man with his own football pitch at his house. Cardwell says he is also a cricket observer.

The players I most recall are Milford Page the vice-captain, Stewie Dempster and Roger Blunt the batsmen, and Tom Lawry the captain. The photos offer a rare glimpse into the team at the time, besides stills of actual play against the English. My favourite photo is “Links golf” where skipper Lowry is seen ‘smoking’ the ball with a wooden driver. Nowadays plenty of New Zealand cricketers play golf too.

The image of “Play on day one of the First Test at Lord’s on 27 June 1931” is dramatic. The batsman has just played a shot. Stewie Dempster is the man hitting down the leg side. The photo “Gunn & Moore – bat inspection” has all the men in suits, stylishly attired and dapper. Roger Blunt examines a Gunn & Moore bat. My own bat in club cricket in Wellington was a GM Canon, liking the tradition of GM bats.

The series of photos is preceded by detailed biographies of the players. John Mills is interesting as he scored the first Test century in Wellington 1929-30. His career fell away. A batsman with talent unfulfilled. Stewie Dempster was the 'star quality' averaging 59.26 on the tour. He scored seven centuries on tour and was impressive.

The authors state at the beginning: “Each era reveals its own distinctive characteristics. It is insightful to spend time exploring the past, as it helps to contemplate the future. Look through the camera lens with us and learn about the players, their personalities and happenings that took place on a long-forgotten tour.” It’s a great piece of memorabilia, thanks to Rob for sending it my way.

Review © Mark Pirie 2026

Every Picture Tells a Story by Rob Franks and Ronald Cardwell (The Cricket Press, 2025)

As an addendum to this review, I offer my own poem I wrote for rockin’ Rod. Stewart was influenced by hard rock and blues with his good friend Ronnie Wood a guitarist and collaborator. I collected Stewart’s Gasoline Alley along with his Faces work and have a few double CD collections of his full career, as well as his recent albums.

MARK PIRIE

Rod Stewart

women go crazy
       for that hair
tousled and blond.

I like his voice
an injection of British soul
that maybe Sammy Hagar
gets close to in American rock

imagine if he had
taken up the apprenticeship
at Brentford Football Club

music wouldn’t be the same
without that Face
or ‘Maggie May’…

*

some nights
I’m on a downtown train
there’s hot legs
and a mandolin wind

some guys have all the luck.

(From Valley Micropress, August 2016)

Poem © Mark Pirie

Mark Pirie’s new poem on the White Ferns

This year I spent a frustrating time following the White Ferns at the World T20 in June while the men defeated England in a test series. We were knocked out and should have done much better with the team we had being former champions in 2024.

The tournament also marked the departure of three key players: Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and Lea Tahuhu. Bates and Devine are all-time greats.

Bates finishes with 5982 Women’s ODI runs and 4758 Women’s T20I runs. Playing over 180 games for the White Ferns in both formats from 2006-2026. Bates finishes as New Zealand's record run-scorer in women's internationals, and the outright leading run-scorer in women's T20Is.

Devine is an all rounder and finishes with 4279 Women’s ODI runs and 3817 Women’s T20I runs. Devine picked up 111 Women’s ODI wickets and 158 Women’s T20I wickets. Playing over 150 games for the White Ferns in both formats from 2006-2026.

Impressive numbers for both players. Devine retires as the woman who led New Zealand to their first global title. Devine will also be remembered for her six-hitting exploits in Australia in the WBBL.

Tahuhu took 125 wickets in Women’s ODIs and 100 wickets in Women’s T20Is, quite a career and achievement.

Melie Kerr talked about how the White Ferns fared saying: "I remember my first World Cup was over here in 2017 and again we underperformed as a side, but you learn so much from loss and defeat and disappointment.”

MARK PIRIE

White Ferns Thoughts

The White Ferns bowed out of the World T20,
three players retiring from the game.

Devine and Bates the two all-time greats.
The White Ferns will be depleted

but with the rising star Izzy Sharp
they have genuine batting talent.

Melie Kerr wasn’t the dynamo in this
tournament that she has been in the past.

Coming off the back of her match-winning
performance at the Basin, she averaged 24.80.

New Zealand fans will be left to rue what might
have been, a narrow loss to the Windies,

a surprising defeat to Sri Lanka,
and the final defeat at the hands of England.

Last time, we were champions, a real feat in
White Ferns cricket. We hold on to that memory.

Poem © Mark Pirie

Eileen Van Trigt’s NZ cricket limerick

Eileen Van Trigt of Greytown, Wairarapa, is a New Zealand poet I came across doing the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa.

Van Trigt has a talent for succinct description and evocative imagery, and also a sly sense of humour, and well developed satirical skill. I made a selection of her poems up till 1995 for Poetry Notes, Autumn 2016. The following biography is given by the author:

“Born in England, Eileen has been writing all her life – poems, sketches, pieces for radio, music and drama reviews. Living in the Wairarapa for 50 years, she is much influenced by the natural attributes of the region. Eileen has published three slim volumes – one of animal stories, a book of sporty limericks, and Beneath the Oak Trees, poems relating to the Wairarapa region. She was also a contributor to the anthology Five Poets (South Wairarapa Poets’ Corner), with Helen Jacobs and John Horrocks, published in 1993. Eileen founded this group.”

Van Trigt wrote a cricket limerick in her collection Sportin’ Life (c1995)

EILEEN VAN TRIGT

Cricket

While seeking lost balls in a thicket,
A batsman kissed Emily Bricket.
His ardour aflame,
She cried, “I know your game
And believe me young man, it’s not cricket.”

Poem © Eileen Van Trigt

Check out more of Eileen Van Trigt’s poetry in Poetry Notes, Autumn 2016:  Newsletters | Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa