From the Basin to the Cabbage Tree Swamp: NZ's grounds ranked!

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Peak living = a nice day of test cricket at the Basin. Getty Images

Stuff syndicated this harmless Daily Telegraph space filler, where a doyen of the press box, Scyld Berry, has ranked his 10 favourite test cricket grounds. It’s difficult to argue against his personal taste, although the charms he sees in Trent Bridge largely escaped me.

Bay Oval is the only New Zealand entry at No 9, but of course you all want to know, where does it fit on my ranking of all New Zealand’s test venues still in operation? I’ll give you the tip, it’s not number one (yet).

1. Basin Reserve

It’s the easy walk from the CBD, the history, the pohutukawas, the shape, the most knowledgeable and humorous crowd in the country, and the tantalising and more often than not out-of-reach prospect of a perfect weather day. It has hosted the most tests by a mile and has a lovely split of 23 NZ wins, 22 NZ losses and 24 draws.

It’s not perfect. The traffic noise can get a little grating by day’s end and the ground’s only semi-modern viewing structure, the RA Vance Stand, houses some of the most inhospitable, pneumonia-inducing seats in sport. But why would you sit there if you could be on the bank? Exactly.

2. Hagley Oval

Like the Basin, it can get cruelly cold, but also like the Basin it is a pleasant stroll from the city, it is a beautiful shape for cricket and has wonderful embankments. It doesn’t do draws — just one in 14 tests — but it does do plenty of home wins, with nine.

It’s hard to believe there was a significant portion of Cantabrians who did not want any corner of Hagley Park spoiled, but the cricket oval has only enhanced its reputation and there remains plenty of room to walk your Pomeranian. With that in mind, the ground could really use a tasteful extension of the pavilion to get more permanent, shaded seats.

3. Bay Oval

I suspect Bay Oval will eventually make its way to No 1 in my affections as I tend to make my way there each summer, but it needs a couple of significant nudges to get there. First, it needs more shade, whether that be the natural kind from maturing flora, or the unnatural kind that requires significant construction costs. If they go for the latter, a decent stand could also shield the viewer from the unattractive port activity in the background. Second, it needs a better pitch (its defenders will say there is yet to be a draw in five tests on the surface, but too much of the cricket has been of the attritional kind).

The pros significantly outweigh the cons, however. All you need to say, really, is it’s summer at the Mount.

4. Seddon Park

It has the most dysfunctional and pointless pavilion/main stand set up and the boundary to the ground staff’s shed is too short (for some reason the wicket block is not centred), but despite that, watching cricket at Seddon Park is a joy. It is hemmed in by busy arterial roads and is not far from Hamilton’s Central Bogan District, but when reclined on the bank you feel like you’re in tranquil parkland.

The wicket is curated by New Zealand’s only celebrity groundsman, and KJ usually gets it right. He’ll be the first to admit, however, that it has gone spectacularly wrong once or twice.

5. University Oval

I quite enjoy watching cricket at University Oval, but it wasn’t always this way. I covered the second test played there — against the West Indies in 2008. As was the norm in those days, if you worked for the Sunday paper you’d fly down for the first two or three days of the test and fly back on Sunday morning leaving the mop-up to the dailies.

The first day, a Thursday, was disrupted by weather and the second day was lost completely. Saturday, my deadline day, dawned fine but a damp patch on the outfield contrived to keep the players off the field for an extraordinary length of time and saw ground staff scattering kitty litter across the outfield to try to soak up the moisture. It was a ridiculous situation, unbefitting of a ground with test status, and I might have mentioned so rather intemperately in a sidebar to the next day’s report. This so enraged then-Otago Cricket CEO, the late Ross Dykes, that he came storming around the ground to the press tent to confront me, only to be informed by a reporter of local persuasion that I had “gone and done a runner”. While not inaccurate, it did somewhat misrepresent longstanding travel plans. Dyksey, a great bloke, and I soon connected via phone and exchanged frank views on both the quality of my report and the efficacy of the ground’s drainage. The argument was a draw, as was the test. In fact, five of the eight tests there have been draws, which are increasingly rare these days and point to the fact that University Oval’s issues often come from the sky, rather than the soil.

6. McLean Park

Sunshine stops play. If you’re going to have a claim to fame as a cricket ground, and McLean Park really doesn’t have anything else to fall back on, you might as well have something utterly ridiculous.

Having been used for tests just 10 times since debuting in 1979, it is obvious New Zealand Cricket has little love for this dual-purpose blight that has produced a single positive result for the home side (against Zimbabwe, long after Zimbabwe were any good). It’s a shame there’s nothing better in the area because Hawke’s Bay should be a cricketing paradise. It churns out an abundance of talented young players, hosts annual Riverbend cricket camps that are the lifetime highlight of many a young wannabe, has the right conditions for fast and bouncy strips and plenty of local vineyards that an enterprising soul could motivate to create a biannual test-cricket-meets-wine-and-food-fest event.

That would require a venue, however, that isn’t to cricket grounds what soggy chips and a warm Double Brown is to gastronomy.

7. Eden Park

Wretched. Both way too small (playing surface) and way too big (stadium). And way too concrete, if the word ‘concrete’ can be used an adjective. For decades after the old Cabbage Tree Swamp was drained, it was a serviceable park for cricket, but it has long since ceased to be.

It’s not much worse than McLean Park, but it’s certainly no better and gets points docked because there’s no excuse for the country’s biggest city not having a dedicated international cricket ground.

At 50 tests, it’s the country’s second-most prolific hoster, but only three have been played since the ground was redeveloped for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Ironically, two of those three tests were excellent and the one that wasn’t at least had a relatively dramatic end due to weather. It doesn’t alter the fact, however, that it is an abominable place to watch test cricket. It’s not just the worst test ground in New Zealand, it’s probably the worst in the world (although the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex in Greater Noida is making a late run for that title).