Another good piece Dylan. I was going to challenge the woke question but I’ll leave it for another day seeing as you didn’t rub my nose in the Captain Kane issue…!
Moving on to a tangent in this latest piece, but one I’ve seen close up - Otago cricket…let’s see. If there is a case study in mediocrity it’s the Volts over the last 30 years, save a 2-3 year bright spot when Baz brought everything he could to bear. The hub of Otago cricket is Dunedin - no worse than most of England but nevertheless a terrible cricket climate, and without the strong cricket culture to overcome it. The wickets are poor, the administrative culture dominated by cronyism, nepotism and petty politics and the system incapable of producing quality players. Most of the Volts team now and in living memory are cast offs from other provinces or imports (mostly South Africans) and although the association must know they’re not much shakes they’re obliged to take them anyway, as the best on offer.
Failure becomes cultural also, with the few good players not taking responsibility - a la Hamish Rutherford. It is a basket case and really only maintains a skerrick of credibility because of player transfers and imports - the internal system is broken and has been for a long, long time. Not that you’d know from reading the ODT, it’s such a small scene down there that the local cricket journos are more fixture on being mates with the players than laying out an intelligent critique of short term let alone long term mediocrity.
Another good piece Dylan. I was going to challenge the woke question but I’ll leave it for another day seeing as you didn’t rub my nose in the Captain Kane issue…!
Moving on to a tangent in this latest piece, but one I’ve seen close up - Otago cricket…let’s see. If there is a case study in mediocrity it’s the Volts over the last 30 years, save a 2-3 year bright spot when Baz brought everything he could to bear. The hub of Otago cricket is Dunedin - no worse than most of England but nevertheless a terrible cricket climate, and without the strong cricket culture to overcome it. The wickets are poor, the administrative culture dominated by cronyism, nepotism and petty politics and the system incapable of producing quality players. Most of the Volts team now and in living memory are cast offs from other provinces or imports (mostly South Africans) and although the association must know they’re not much shakes they’re obliged to take them anyway, as the best on offer.
Failure becomes cultural also, with the few good players not taking responsibility - a la Hamish Rutherford. It is a basket case and really only maintains a skerrick of credibility because of player transfers and imports - the internal system is broken and has been for a long, long time. Not that you’d know from reading the ODT, it’s such a small scene down there that the local cricket journos are more fixture on being mates with the players than laying out an intelligent critique of short term let alone long term mediocrity.