Mark Pirie’s new poem on Imran Khan

The latest issue of the Journal of the Cricket Society, Spring 2026, arrived over a month or so ago. It carries articles on the imprisoned Imran Khan as well as a piece on Garry Sobers, who has since passed away in July. There is a large section of cricket book reviews.

The articles on Imran are by his biographer Christopher Sandford and Johnny Barclay. Sandford’s letter discusses his plight in Adiala Jail. Imran is currently serving a 14-year sentence for what the state describes as ‘land corruption’. Sandford says he is not in good health.

Barclay’s article offers some thoughts and reminisces of Khan as a player and cricketer in England. He compares Imran to Holding, John Snow the cricket rebel and poet, and Jofra Archer. Barclay is the President of the Cricket Society and a former Sussex player. Khan was lured to Sussex by Tony Greig. Barclay writes: “I once compared him to Nijinsky, so fluent was his bowling action from beginning to end.” (Nijinsky was a Russian-born ballet dancer and choreographer.) After cricket Khan entered politics working for a better world: ”Let us salute him for that.” Barclay ends with a message of hope for Imran continuing to pray.

Imran played 88 Tests and 175 ODIs for Pakistan, and is well remembered as a legend on and off the field and was adored by women.

I wrote a new poem (a triolet) thinking of Imran.

MARK PIRIE

Imran Khan

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.
A World Cup win, 1992, over Sir Ian.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty
compared to Nijinsky. His bat plundered.
Now a political prisoner, lost from sight.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.

Poem © Mark Pirie

Anonymous 1925 English cricket poem

A poem I found while researching the Christchurch Star newspaper was an anonymous poem on raising the seam of the ball in England. It was published during the 1925 season. A county team was skittled.

I sent it to The Cricket Society News Bulletin in 2018. It was particularly topical that year with three Australians serving out their sentences for ball tampering. Cameron Bancroft had been caught by TV cameras trying to rough up a side of the ball with sandpaper. Captain Steve Smith and David Warner were also involved. The match was the Third Test, Australia v South Africa, in Cape Town, March 2018.

I’ve found no details on the match in England the 1925 poem refers to.

ANON

Cricket Magic

English bowlers are alleged to have “skittled” out a county team by raising the seam of the ball.

Now, did the bowlers raise the seam,
  Or make it seem to rise,
And foozle with a magic gleam
  The luckless batsman’s eyes,
As, sharply spinning from the pitches
  The leather shot or skied,
How have the batsman wished those stitches
  Were in the bowler’s side.

But since the art of tit for tat
  Is every batsman’s cue,
Perchance to herringbone the bat
  Might pull the striker through;
If cricket hangs upon a thread,
  Perhaps ’twere not in vain
To knit and purl the splice instead
  Of promptly raising Cain.

(From the Christchurch Star, c1925)

André Surridge’s NZ cricket haiku

Andre Surridge (1951-2019) appeared recently with a prose poem written in 2014. I also found a haiku sequence on cricket he wrote in 2015 in the same magazine, Valley Micropress. Surridge is mostly known as a haiku poet internationally winning the Kyoto Museum for World Peace Award (Japan), the Jane Reichhold International Prize (USA) and the Janice Bostok International Haiku Award (Australia). Enjoy.

ANDRÉ SURRIDGE

First XI

vital toss

the coin lands

in the umpire’s hat

slip cordon

the shape of a sickle

wheatfield beyond

fast bowler

his run-up starts

at the sight screen

a snick

spilt at second slip

the bowler’s teapot

a nervy prod gully gobbles the catch

sharp bouncer

the star batsman

seeing stars

later…

change of pace

the leggie spins one

out of his beard

escorting the ball to the boundary a portly fielder

over the fence

& out of the ground

a towering six

record partnership

batsmen meet mid-pitch

for a fist bump

close of play

happy to sign anything

the smiling centurion

Poems © André Surridge

(from Valley Micropress, November/December 2015)

Previous posts on Andre Surridge: 

André Surridge’s new cricket tanka

André Surridge’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

Other haiku posts:

Cyril Childs's NZ cricket haiku

Tony Beyer’s NZ cricket haiku

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 words for 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 Wings for You: Selected Poems 1968-1990 in 1993, and wrote 15 one act plays. His final book One Hundred Petals was haiku and senryu published the year he died.

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

Richard Langston’s Brendon McCullum 302 poem

In 2021, I sent a poem by Richard Langston to The Cricket Society News Bulletin.

Langston is a Wellington poet and journalist, well known for his collection The Newspaper Poems, and producing Country Calendar on TV One. He published a music book on Dunedin band The Clean this year.

Langston also tried his hand at cricket poetry appearing in A Tinging Catch.

The poem of his I sent in to the bulletin coincided with the New Zealand tour of England that year. It’s written on Brendon McCullum’s feat of scoring the first test match triple century by a New Zealander in 2014. This eclipsed Martin Crowe’s previous record of 299.

My own poem on Baz’s feat ‘Triple Glory’ is the most popular post on this site.

RICHARD LANGSTON

Brendon McCullum, 302

The whiff of a great deed lingers
in the stillness days later,
in the wide stare of the grandstand,
in the midday shadows of the trees
pooling on the grassy terraces,
in the faint breeze passing from the north gate
to the south.

A country felt it in that hour,
for a moment, summer cloudless.
People rose & clapped
stood & witnessed
a solitary man, alone,
take the final run beyond himself,
only a blade of wood to raise
to acknowledge what he had done.

We sent him approving thunder
clapping around his ears
as he walked across the mown grass,
able to believe for a moment
this applause without end.
But days of glory do drift away,
& the once-exultant live as we live
within the confines of our own shadows.

Poem © Richard Langston

(from the collection, Five O’clock Shadows, Cuba Press, NZ, 2020)

Mark Pirie’s poem on McCullum’s 302: 
Brendon McCullum triple ton poem

Other blog posts featuring Richard Langston: 
Richard Langston discusses A Tingling Catch

Check out Richard Langston’s new music book The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul published by Auckland University Press.

C A J Williams’ NZ cricket poem

C A J (Chris) Williams (b. 1970) is a Wellington poet that has been in touch with me in the past ten years. He published a book 35 Short Poems (The Buttress Press) in 2016 and was published in Landfall, and my journal broadsheet. He reviewed my book of rugby poems and appeared with his Tana Umaga poem in my booklet Sevens (2020).

Williams has also written on cricket and I sent his poem in to The Cricket Society News Bulletin in 2020.

It’s an experimental form poem about his father and cricket at Lord’s, London. It mentions players like Denis Compton and Don Bradman.

C A J WILLIAMS

At Lord’s, St John’s Wood

my father / & I / sat / down the hill / old father time / behind us / in front of us / where Nugget Miller used to field / out of the way / just to scatter my father / re-told / the time / Nugget & Denis Compton / marched / through the Grace Gates / arm in arm / in dinner suits / then changed / into white fannels / then / tipped / glasses of champagne / & returned / to the day’s play / & Nugget to field / at long leg / the sun / on his back / everyone / wanted to be Nugget / to flick his fringe at the top of his mark / to be the brilliant Brylcreem poster model / to throw the ball back to Bradman when asked to bowl / to shoulder arms first ball clean bowled / & stride off the ground / to a race meeting / they say / he knew / of a secret back door / to Buckingham Palace / & Princess Margaret / blushed / at dinners / & after-match functions / & private room / meetings / when she shook his hand / her eyes / never left him / when she smoked / that / blue-dove smokey intent

Poem © C A J Williams

Check out Williams’ review of my rugby poems at The Reader (Booksellers New Zealand Blog): Sidelights Rugby Poems | 

Williams’ poems were also published in Poetry Notes, Spring 2018: Newsletters | Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa

Bill Sutton’s 2019 NZ cricket poem

Bill Sutton (1944-2025) was a Napier poet and poetry enthusiast. After a career as a politician (Labour MP 1984-1990) and scientist, Sutton turned his hand to the craft of poetry with some success. He became known as an organiser of events (National Poetry Conference, Havelock North 2013, East-West Poetry Fests 2016, 2018 in Palmerston North).

Sutton started publishing his work in literary journals from around 2007 and published three collections of his poetry. Notable was his interest in sport, writing poems on tennis, netball, running, rugby and cricket.

His cricket poem ‘Spirit of Cricket’ was published in The Cricket Society News Bulletin in 2019, the year that New Zealand played their World Cup final with England – lost by the narrowest of margins with scores being tied.  

Sutton’s poem mentions the string of narrow losses by New Zealand: in 1992 under Martin Crowe; then the 2015 World Cup with Grant Elliott’s six taking them all the way to the final; and finally, the Lord’s final in 2019. He interestingly brings in the changing history of free-to-air and pay-to-view broadcasting of the period.

BILL SUTTON

Spirit of Cricket

I was there for the 1992
World Cup, following the games
on free-to-air TV, back before
we sold our sports for money.
The best games were as exciting
as any cricket I’ve witnessed.

Martin Crowe, our batting master
and strategic genius, told Greatbatch
to blast boundaries from the first ball
then opened our bowling with Patel!
He took us right to the semi-final
and ready to win it. But Pakistan

had prepared to prove us fallible
and won that vital game. Waiting
23 years for our second chance
under Mike Hesson, our best coach
and Kane Williamson our captain
we made it back to the semi’s again

where a huge 6 beat South Africa
but we lost in the final to Australia.
This time we’d waited just 4 years
and had to pay to follow the games
so watching our cricket cost us, but
it seems the same excitement stirs us

whichever technology one chooses.
This time we took a crucial first step
forwards by facing down India’s team
backed by their thousands of Manchester
supporters, an Indian player’s dream –
but despite some confident assertions

and journalistic prognostications
our Black Caps won that tough semi
and got to play England in the final.
So how would that play out at Lord’s –
the home of English cricket? The few
predictions by players were cautious.

After hours of following the final
I watched it for free on TV again
as another twist in the media saga
returned us to where we’d all started,
but no matter which side won or lost
both had needed to do their best

and the England team knew it too.
I may not be back to see it through
next time our team makes the final
but I hope my children will follow it
and recall how much we all loved it –
blown away by the spirit of cricket.

Poem © Bill Sutton

An obituary can be found at the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa website: Bill Sutton 1944-2025 | Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa. Bill Sutton’s best known book was Jabberwocky published by Steele Roberts.

Francis Cloke’s 1931 NZ cricket poem on Don Bradman

Francis Cloke (1860-1941), an early heritage poet in New Zealand and mostly unrecognized, wrote a cricket poem on Australian great Don Bradman. I came across his book doing the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa in Wellington.

Cloke’s only collection (privately printed), Songs of New Zealand and Various Verses (Auckland, NZ: Dawson Printing), appeared in three editions: 1924, 1925, 1931. A regional Auckland poet, Cloke wrote popular verses on various Kiwi themes: sport (cricket, rugby, league, yachting, etc.), the landscape, towns and bays, and celebrations of church, political, historical and military figures, including aviator Jean Batten. He was a contemporary of other New Zealand poets like the recently republished Robert J Pope (1865-1949).

FRANCIS CLOKE

The Greatest Batsman

Don Bradman is a masterpiece,
            Outstanding far above the rest;
To see the strokes he can release,
            When he is playing in the Test;
He has a stroke for every one,
            If fast, or medium, or slow;
They’re all the same to Master Don,
            His cuts and drives doth plainly show;
His judgement is remarkable,
            His footwork there none can surpass;
His sight so keen that sees the ball,
            It finds the boundary ’mid the grass;
He guards the wicket with all care,
            And plays the ball so gracefully;
But when he hits he drives it where
            No man was placed by captaincy.

Poem © Francis Cloke

Poem from Songs of New Zealand and Various Verses, 3rd ed., Auckland, 1931

I wrote an article about Cloke’s rugby league poem on Carlaw Park for National Poetry Day 2015: National Poetry Day poem: Carlaw Park by Francis Cloke | Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa.

Previous posts on his contemporary Robert J Pope, a cricketer, known for his rugby poetry, are:

Robert J. Pope - NZ poet and cricketer

New selection of cricketer Robert J Pope’s poetry

Robert J Pope's King Willow reissued

Reviews of Robert J Pope’s King Willow

Cricket Society Journal reviews King Willow

Dorothy Wharehoka’s 2015 NZ cricket poem on Kane Williamson

Dorothy Wharehoka (d. 2022) was a Hawke’s Bay poet and sent me a cricket poem (an acrostic) in 2015. I had it published in The Cricket Society News Bulletin.

Wharehoka’s poem is written about the World Cup that year, New Zealand v Australia. Williamson won the match with a six. The Aussies would end up beating New Zealand in the final under Michael Clarke’s leadership. I also wrote a poem about it, ‘The Anatomy of Kane Williamson’s 6’ in my book Slips (2021).

DOROTHY WHAREHOKA

Howzat!

Crikey, Captain Fantastic, a blistering start;
Run rates this high could tear the Ockers apart.
Into the bowling attack came left swinger Starc
Clunk! The death rattle of wickets heard through the park.
Kane’s time now to step up and be ‘unspectacularly good’;
Eleventh man’s in, need the sweet touch of leather with wood.
The tension. The strike. The relief. The victory six!

Poem © Dorothy Wharehoka

Wharehoka was known for poems used as teaching aids. ‘Maui Chant’ by Wharehoka was based on the legend of Maui and the Giant Fish, and the lesson focuses on verbs, repetition and te reo Māori.” Verbs & repetition. 'Maui Chant' poem with worksheets + craft. | Teaching Resources. She published the poetry book, Peninsula Pieces (1994), with photography by Jocelyn Penny, and was part of the Hawke’s Bay Live Poets, with Sonia MacKenzie, Bill Sutton, Jeremy Roberts and others. She is included in regional anthologies like Seasons’ Voices: 30 Years of Hawke’s Bay Live Poets’ Society (2022).

Richard Reeve’s NZ cricket poem Butterflies on Martin Crowe

Richard Reeve, a prominent poet of my generation in New Zealand, sent me a cricket poem for my journal broadsheet back in 2018. I sent it on to The Cricket Society News Bulletin. It’s an interesting poem that draws on the late Martin Crowe’s attributed quote by Ross Taylor, his batting protégé.

It’s a cricket poem in traditional structure and form. Reeves excels in word-magic and neo formalism as a poet, and not many poets in New Zealand compare to him. He has been represented in Best New Zealand Poems a number of times and published seven collections of his poetry. His collections are well worth seeking out at bookshops and public libraries in New Zealand.

RICHARD REEVE

Butterflies

‘If you see a butterfly out there, that’s me’
 ─ attributed to Martin Crowe

So he was, then was not. Martin Crowe dead,
a detail from his brief life resurrected.
This his protégé, novus homo, said,
our latest greatest ever. Undetected,

the talent grew inside him like a cancer;
he cultivated genius for the bat,
not contemplating any other answer
to elevate a sportsman’s requiescat.

Nor are answers in any case required
for life to be lived as it may be lived,
men having achieved what they have desired
incompetent yet eager in their shift.

Certainly, there are butterflies out there,
they flutter in the slips, or after games
superintend the crowds, in post-match air
inspiring fans with afterlives of names;

yet they are not our champion now gone,
not Crowe nor Cronje, Tendulkar, Taylor.
Fleeting ascendance, forewing, abdomen,
they float on dreams then sink in failure.

Poem © Richard Reeve

Reeve’s latest collection of poetry was released in 2024: About Now - Richard Reeve - General Editions Studio.

Also check out Best New Zealand Poems for 2024.

Margaret Jeune’s 2020 NZ cricket poem

Margaret Jeune is a contemporary New Zealand poet and photographer. She has published about 8 publications of poetry, some with others. She has also published a book of her photographs.

In 2020 during the period of bush fires in Australia and the summer cricket season, Jeune wrote a poem about New Zealand and Australian cricketers called ‘Brotherhood’.

It’s a nice, short piece depicting the concern shown by New Zealand players for their Aussie counterparts outside the field of play. It was published in The Cricket Society News Bulletin in England that year.

MARGARET JEUNE

Brotherhood

Black clouds drift across the sky
The wind has blown smoke across the Tasman Sea
From the massive bush fires in Australia
The tragedy is depicted daily on the TV News
It is translated into a visible poignant reminder
Of what is happening in Australia
An Australian cricketer is interviewed on the radio
He says that he is lucky to play international cricket
While so many of his fellow Australians are suffering
The New Zealand cricket captain says that losing to Australia
Is put into perspective by the sheer scale of suffering in Australia at present
This tragedy is unfolding in front of our eyes

Poem © Margaret Jeune

This poem is in Jeune's Selected Poems available internationally online at lulu independent bookstore Shop the Indie Online Bookstore | Lulu.

Kane Williamson’s retirement poem

This year during the New Zealand tour of England in June, Kane Williamson announced his retirement from the game. Sad news for cricket fans in New Zealand.

Kane will go down as the greatest New Zealand batsman, with 9515 runs at 54.06 and 33 centuries. No one else from New Zealand gets close to these stats.

His highest score was 251 v West Indies, 3 December 2020. He scored six double centuries. I always remember his century against India on tour there in 2010. Williamson scored 131 and it really showed he had the makings of a player who would become great.

Batters who compare to him are Joe Root (England), Virat Kohli (India) and Steve Smith (Australia).

I’ve written two poems for him ‘A Song of Kane’ and 'Anatomy of Kane Williamson's 6', and 'A Song of Kane' was republished in The Cricket Society News Bulletin, July/August 2026 after his retirement was announced. I also mention him in my poem celebrating the World Test Championship final victory.

MARK PIRIE

A Song of Kane

Captain Kane, glowing with runs,
can’t put a pad or glove wrong.
I try to get my bat around it
but it’s seaming impossible.
I always miss, or get edgy about it.
his tip is to watch the ball
on delivery, out of the hand.
His focus on seam stitches up the play.
In life, in cricket, a stroke
of genius comes your way.
Bowie sang the song of KW,
We can be Heroes, just for one day.

Written after Kane’s stellar Test season with the bat 2020/21 in New Zealand.

Poem © Mark Pirie

The poem and 'Anatomy of Kane Williamson's 6' appear in my book, Slips (HeadworX, 2021). Slips is available internationally online at lulu independent bookstore Shop the Indie Online Bookstore | Lulu.

Mark Pirie’s new edition of Slips: Cricket Poems published

In June 2021, my publishing company HeadworX released Slips: Cricket Poems in paperback and hardback.

The book contains 145 pages of my poetry on cricket written from 1994-2021 and divided into sections like 'Édges', 'Matches' and 'Tributes'. It captures many moments in cricket history, makes tributes to notable players (Kevin Pietersen, Joe Root, Sachin Tendulkar, Phil Hughes, Aravinda Da Silva, Garry Sobers, Chris Gayle, Kane Williamson and other former Black Caps including the ICC World Test Championship Final in England) as well as the more social aspects of the game and imaginary fictions like Outer Space Cricket.

Slips includes a nice foreword written by The Cricket Society’s News Bulletin editor John Symons, also a MCC Cricket Book of the Year Judge. John writes that: “Our summer game is fortunate to have found such a good and talented friend and chronicler in Mark Pirie.”

The book has been reviewed in Landfall online review and the NZ Listener magazine.

For more details on the book and sample poems, please visit the HeadworX website:

Slips: Cricket Poems by Mark Pirie

https://headworx.co.nz/poetry/slips

Paula Green featured audio poems of me reading on NZ Poetry Shelf:

Poetry Shelf celebrates new books: Mark Pirie’s ‘Slips: Cricket Poems’ | NZ Poetry Shelf

Here is a list of reviews for this book:

Kerry Lee, Regional News, 28 September 2021, p 26.
Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf, 19 November, 2021.
Nicholas Reid, New Zealand Listener, October 2021, October 16-22, p 55.
John Symons, Journal of the Cricket Society, Vol 31, No 2, Spring 2022, pp. 73-74
Robert McLean, Bowled Basilisk, Caught Agdistis - The Landfall Tauraka Review, 1 May 2022
Nicholas Reid, Reid's Reader – A Blog of Book Reviews and Comment.: Something New, 25 October 2011

Slips is available internationally online at lulu independent bookstore Shop the Indie Online Bookstore | Lulu.

New anthology Catching the Light features New Zealand cricket poems

This month I received my contributor’s copy of a new anthology of cricket poetry issued by leading cricket book publisher Fairfield Books in England. 

The editors Nicholas Hogg and Tim Beard are poets and members of the Authors XI. It is titled Catching the Light: A New Anthology of Cricket Poetry, and features major poets Simon Armitage and Ted Hughes, along with a haiku by Sebastian Faulks. Well known English cricket poets like Norman Gale, Simon Rae, John Arlott and Alan Ross are represented. John Agard gives it a Caribbean flavour. John Kinsella, Les Murray and Chris Wallace-Crabbe are some who represent Australia.

At first glance I noticed the English cricket poets Arthur Salway and David Fine were missing along with Australian Peter Fenton. Salway wrote a book of cricket poetry, Fenton wrote Cricket in Verse in Australia and Fine’s ashes poems followed the Ashes and was featured in The Guardian newspaper online Poet goes into bat for Ashes tour | Books | The Guardian. New Zealand cricket writers Harry Ricketts, Brian Turner and Michael O'Leary warrant inclusion.

I don’t intend to make a list of poets missing but congratulate the editors on their considerable reading work done. Luckily I was only selecting New Zealand related poems for mine. They read hundreds of poems for the book, selecting work from several countries and continents, and any selection is subjective as they state. I have enjoyed reading through it and will receive much pleasure from the book for years to come. It is already added to my list of favourite cricket books on my blog.

My poem included is ‘Summer Days’ which is almost a haiku type poem which was used as an introductory poem to my collection Slips in 2021 published by HeadworX my publishing company and sold on lulu internationally.

I am given a mention in the editors’ notes for producing the “powerful anthology” A Tinging Catch. There are about 10 poems from the book included. It is good recognition for my editing and publishing work in England in the cricket community there.

Poems chosen were ‘Brett Lee’ by Nick Whittock (an Australian), ‘Karori Park’ by Nelson Wattie, ‘The Outfield’ by James Brown, ‘How does your sun?’ by Nicola Easthope, ‘From the late great Blackball Bridge Sonnets’ by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, ‘Bowl a Maiden Over’ by Anne Louise Philpott, ‘The intense disciple: Richard Hadlee shade and light’ by Robin McConnell, ‘Under Cover’ by Jenny Powell, and ‘Cricket Song I’ and ‘Cricket Song II’ by Cyril Childs. Congratulations to all those who were selected.

Jenny Powell also contributes a new cricket poem especially for the anthology. A nice recognition for a writer worthy of international attention. I first published her work with HeadworX, and she has gone on to be a well-established writer in New Zealand. Her new book Biology Field Trip has been released by Cold Hub Press this year.

Here’s a link to the publisher’s website in England: Catching the Light - Fairfield Books. Fairfield's Matt Thacker deserves commendation for this attractively produced volume, which is about 300 pages, hardback, and a smaller size publication which fits into a mail bag easily.  Like the Everyman's Poetry Series.

Catching the Light appears to be in Paper Plus, Bateman Books and Bruce McKenzie Booksellers in New Zealand, but is retailing expensively here, and I would advise people to order through Amazon or Fishpond. Here are links to reviews:

CATCHING THE LIGHT: A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF CRICKET POETRY | Wisden Cricket Monthly Issue 96

Derbyshire Cricket - Peakfan's blog: Book Review - Catching The Light: A New Anthology of Cricket Poetry

CATCHING THE LIGHT edited by Nicholas Hogg and Tim Beard :: Book Review