David Leggat: Sri Lanka tests give chance of redemption

Cricket in April? It sounds almost as barmy as rugby in February. But that's what we've got next week when New Zealand's seemingly interminable international cricket season lurches on against Sri Lanka in Napier, then Wellington.

This, remember, was the rearranged test series after the Boxing Day tsunami ended the Sri Lankan tour after just one ODI.

New Zealand Cricket were obviously boxed into a time frame to play the two tests. Provided the weather holds, it will be a series watched with interest by officials.

If McLean Park and the Basin Reserve provide good pitches, it should give NZC food for thought. There's no reason why they should hop back in their hole and hibernate bear-like until October as rugby spreads its girth around the calendar.

Why not further blur the lines of the sporting seasons a bit more?

A few weeks back I asked a prominent Super 12 player how he had enjoyed having a few weeks' break around November and the start of December.

There was a long pause down the phone line.

"I don't know what break you're talking about," he said, before pointing out that pre-season Super 12 training had begun shortly after the NPC had ended. Silly me.

So what sort of state will our leading players be in when they complete their Northern Hemisphere trip on November 26 in Edinburgh? About rearing to get into another bout of pre-season training I suppose.

Years ago - and I suppose something similar happens these days - you knew when the rugby season was approaching.

Before Christmas, the lunch interval during the cricket season would be spent eating, resting or reading the paper. When it restarted in mid-January, out came the rugby ball for a few punts round the outfield.

The Sri Lankan series offers a chance for redemption for some players who were put through the wringer by the Australians.

The batsmen won't have someone rocketing the ball past their nose at a zillion km/h; or have the robotic Glenn McGrath dropping the ball over and over on the same handkerchief.

The bowlers won't get cricks in the neck twisting to watch the ball sail into the crowd, although Sanath Jayasuriya is something of an expert in the art of "go fetch", as in "you bowled it, now you go fetch it".

But we should get an idea if New Zealand really have dropped off the pace, or if the Australian series was just an unpleasant blip.

Setting aside what happened in the ring, my biggest beef with the David Tua comeback was the television commentary.

American commentator Bob "The Colonel" Sheridan has been ringside for hundreds of big fights and he knows his left hooks from his left jabs, and we knew he wanted Tua to win well but even so, talk about stating the obvious.

Ad nauseum. Time after time. It felt like the fight had been rewound and we were hearing the same commentary from round three in round seven. That's because we were.

I'd like a dollar for every time I heard "sense of urgency", as in "David needs to show a sense of urgency" or "now David is showing a sense of urgency".

A shame that urgency wasn't in evidence in the first couple of rounds. If it had been, good old "Two Guns" Talmadge would have been tucked up before midnight.

To be fair, it was hard going for the men with the mikes as what was expected to be a couple of minutes' work dragged on and on.

Yes, it's good to have a bit of colour and something a bit different, even if different in this case is the familiar "let's get ready to ruuuuuuummble" of announcer Michael Buffer.

But a few seconds silence every now and then would have been preferable to more "urgency".

The final word goes to Tua, who said afterwards that "a good victory is better than not having a good victory". Dead right too.