CRICKET - Cunis on cricket, and what follows

Stephen Cunis' invitation to play for Northland in Saturday's charity match fitted like a glove because it happened to coincide with another special occasion.
"My best mate Bryce Hackett got married yesterday and so I was coming up for that, so it linked together really well," he said.
Cunis, son of Northland cricket legend Bob Cunis, has reached the end of his long first class cricketing career with Canterbury with more than 100 first grade games and 40 first class matches under his belt and he is now turning his attention to other things.
"I didn't play so much last year (for Canterbury) and I'm not too sure whether I'll be involved at all this year, and anyway I've become a player-coach at St Albans Cricket Club and I'm really enjoying that," he said.
New Canterbury coach Dave Nosworthy had brought in new procedures, he said, that hadn't suited the older players on the Canterbury team.
"It's quite hard to get the time off that he was asking us to, because we have to work and pay off mortgages, so that was pretty much that," he said.
The 30-year-old bowler is a former Northland protege, debuting for the province when he was just 14. He struggled to break into the Northern Districts side however and was given a chance to play first class cricket by former Canterbury coach Gary McDonald.
He has no regrets about going south, saying Canterbury Cricket had helped him enormously. But he still sees Northland as home.
"Life's been good to me down there. I met my wife Kara at teachers college - in fact if I hadn't, I might still be studying there. She was responsible for getting me through," he said.
He is now the sports co-ordinator and PE teacher at Christchurch South Intermediate School, a school with a roll of 550, and is gradually heading towards a management roll in education.
"I think I'll be down there for another few years still, I'm really enjoying my teaching down there but there are plenty of schools in Whangarei as well, so it's not as if I'm stuck there, I mean Whangarei is always going to be home," he said.
"I'd like to think that I will come back at some stage and put something back into the game. We were given our chance by guys like Barry Cooper, Murray Child, Brian Dunning, Karl Treiber and my old man, and I guess I'd like to help the kids playing now get the same opportunity that I did," he said.
Christmas this year, free of cricketing commitments for the first time in what seems an age, is looming as something special for Cunis.
"It'll be my first Christmas day up here in eight years and that's largely because of cricket. Even though I get up here maybe three or four times a year to catch up with family it's going to be special," he said.