Michael Walker’s 2016 and 2018 NZ cricket poems

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

Day three at Headingley

After staying up till midnight to follow the first session of day three, I was beginning to enjoy New Zealand’s batting again. I thought too soon as England’s Steven Finn struck twice removing both openers, Peter Fulton and Hamish Rutherford, just before lunch. A good start of 55-0 quickly became
62-2.

In the morning, checking the score, I found another mediocre New Zealand batting display, with the opening wheels of the innings well and truly fallen off: 174 all out.

Reviews by commentators of the day’s play were fairly scathing of New Zealand’s batting. Two stanzas from Michael O’Leary’s witty ‘Ballad of Reading Oval’ (a rewrite of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’) came to mind in the case of Hamish Rutherford, Peter Fulton, Martin Guptill and Dean Brownlie:

Some play careless strokes when they are young

And some when they are old

Some leave such a gap twixt bat and pad

That the ball, like an arrow of gold

Straight to its target blindly goes

Leaving the batsman out in the cold

Some hit too little, some too long

Some wait for an extra or a bye

Some leave the field almost in tears

And some without a sigh

For each man pulls the stumps on himself

Yet none can answer why

Guptill, a very good bat, always looks the part and stylish, and he did look the part again, showing his front foot defensive technique as he leaned forward to defend the ball from Swann. Just one problem: he left ‘such a gap twixt bat and pad’. Oh well.

But you know something definitely isn’t right when Trent Boult’s tail-end slogging is the main highlight of New Zealand’s batting in news footage from a Test. His three sixes off Graeme Swann were clearly T20 shots rather than Test level cricket. Good on him, however, for helping avoid the follow on, which Cook didn't enforce.

2.

I can’t see New Zealand squaring the series from here. England’s well placed to set a big run chase, and Boult is now injured.

I said after the Lord’s Test that our batsmen need to find the ‘necessary mettle’ and today’s play highlights that comment. In good batting conditions, they needed to make much more of their first innings in a must-win match.

It’s difficult to say how poor our current 2013 batting is. I can remember sitting through a number of batting disasters at Basin Tests in recent years.

Another poem came to mind again, written ahead of the 1937 England tour:

Cricket Ballade

(Written after witnessing some “highlights” recently on the Basin.)

Glumly I sit by the Basin rail.

  The play’s so poor I’ve a mind to quit;

A feeble stroke and a flying bail,

  Or else it’s caught off a woozy hit!

And as the batsmen process, I grit

  My teeth in despair, and groan: Oh dear,

This isn’t the cricket we “uster git”!

  Where are the players of yesteryear?

Where are the men whose bat, like a flail,

  Beflogged the ball, till it well nigh split?,

Who seldom knew what it was to fail

  To lift on the score a tidy bit!

Who scorned to potter and poke, or sit

  On the splice, if the wicket was somewhat queer.

Hiddleston, Dempster, McGirr, to wit!

  Where are the players of yesteryear?

The prospect’s gloomy. No stars prevail.

  Dull is the cricketing sky, unlit!

The bowling’s weak and the batting “tail,”

  And that’s about all there is to it.

Send forth these crudies with fern and kit!

  Absurd! The Pommies would grin and jeer.

Scarce one of ’em’s worth a “thrippenny bit.”

  Oh, where are the players of yesteryear?

Percy, the fans to your care commit

  Their woeful case. If you’d raise a cheer,

Prevail on the gods—can you smooge a bit?—

  To give back the players of yesteryear.

C.V.L.

(From Postscripts, The Evening Post, 6 February 1937)

Percy, in the poem, is Percy Flage [aka C A Marris, editor of the “Postscripts” column]. I’m unable to uncover who the author ‘C.V.L.’ is.

It’s a very pertinent poem (after Villon’s French ballades) outlining a New Zealand cricket fan’s past frustrations. Of course, the bowling for New Zealand (unlike in this poem) has been the strong point on this current tour. Trent Boult’s five-for was a standout today.

Yet despite the poem’s protest, it’s never as simple as just wishing for a Bert Sutcliffe, Martin Donnelly, Stewie Dempster, Herb McGirr, Glenn Turner or Martin Crowe to materialise again.

I believe we have the nucleus of a good batting line-up in the young Hamish Rutherford, Ross Taylor, Kane Williamson, Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill. They do need to show more application at international level than they are currently doing but they do have the talent and class when you see their better shots, such as Rutherford’s cover drive in the first session.

Not much hope left for this Second Test. We can wish for rain. 1-0 is always better than 2-0 on a tour of England. A bit like the 1958 Test series, which New Zealand lost 4-0 with one match drawn. 4-0 was a lot better then than a 5-0 whitewash.

Article © Mark Pirie 2013