And two of the players who scored centuries at Dunedin this week - Ross Taylor (217 not out) and Brendon McCullum (113) were also centurions in that game at Napier. But there were three of them during that memorable couple of days.
The stylish Taylor hit 115 and the ebullient McCullum 163, but the star of the innings was the young Jesse Ryder, who tapped, stroked and whacked a nonchalant 201.
This young man has since battled, too often publicly, the demons of alcohol and gave up the game a year or so ago. But he is back playing for Otago and my prayer is that he will rejoin the national team ASAP.
One of the most comforting features of the Dunedin test was to watch Taylor and McCullum spend several hours together at the crease, racing one another to 100, and, I hope, healing the angst that has existed between them since Taylor was removed from the captaincy and McCullum took over.
Nothing else could have been as therapeutic for these two talented cricketers than that intimate joint effort, and I expect the entire New Zealand team will benefit from it. I look forward to the side once again becoming a cohesive unit and to the results of that in a sorely needed improvement in performance.
It seems a shame that so few people bother to attend cricket tests these days. I suppose it is just another example of the decreasing attention span of the populace in general in these times of instant this and instant that.
That explains why Twenty20 cricket, which takes but three hours, has been such a success, surpassing even the 50-over, one-day game in popularity.
People these days don't seem to have time for the finer things of life - such as five-day test cricket - unless they can have them right now, or preferably 10 minutes ago.
I never go to wham, bam, thank-you fans Twenty20 or one-day games.
They were invented for television and that's where they are best watched, free from the aggravation of loud music, boozed and bad-mannered patrons and crowded, noisy grounds.
It seems to me that New Zealand Cricket has become so enamoured of big-money sponsorship and television coverage that it has forgotten about attracting sports-lovers to the grounds for test matches.
The English dramatist, the late Harold Pinter, once observed: "I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on Earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either."
Could be, I suppose, but I tend to think he had his priorities seriously back to front.
- garth.george@hotmail.com
