Our Jolly Roger toast of Britain

By Richard Boock

CARDIFF - The British press were hailing Roger Twose and the New Zealand cricketers yesterday after they pulled off what the England team have so often struggled to achieve - a World Cup win over arch-rivals Australia.

The only people who seemed to be enjoying New Zealand's win as much as the Kiwis were the long-suffering English, who can count their World Cup wins against Australia on two fingers.

Yesterday's five-wicket demolition of the Neighbours has turned the New Zealand team into everyone's pet World Cup team - the side that people hope will do the business if the unthinkable happens and England are eliminated.

About the same time the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers were being delivered to shop windows, the Kiwi invasion of just about every pub in the land with a satellite television feed was just beginning to disperse, following what seemed like an all-night Antipodean party the length and breadth of the land.

"Aussies get a Roger-ing," sang the Daily Star, which like just about every other paper paid most of its attention to former Devonian Roger Twose and his match-winning innings of 80 not out.

The Sun went with "Jolly Roger rocks the Aussies" and carried the Twose quote that the New Zealand Tourism Board could use as a promotional slogan, "I left England because I fell in love with a New Zealand woman, and then completely in love with the country."

The Daily Mail told the story of a player who had bucked the trend that brought so many foreign cricketers to English shores.