It's my website so if i like I can put in a favourite cricket photo I took in 2015!

2 January 2016

Starting off 2016's favourite photo section with a cricket pic instead of rugby? Why not? It's my website! But read on with the slight rugby connection!

In November 2015, just after the end of the 2015 Rugby World Cup my wife and I took a trip to Adelaide to watch the first-ever day/night cricket test.

And it was money well spent!

We loved the game between New Zealand and Australia and its three-day excitement (and also the two days of wine touring South Australia which therefore followed!)

I took my camera to the ground and pointed it at the (historic?) moment when Brendan McCullum packed in seven slips (or four slips and three gulleys) as his NZ team pressed ever aggressively for late wickets to fall by the Aussies on the third night.

The wickets didn't tumble and Australia won - but I think the photo has merit. The seven slips were only in place for about 3 balls.

There was a slight rugby connection for me at the famous Adelaide Oval. For about five years I was part of the broadcast team which commentated sevens there on the IRB tour. But on those occasions I was dumb and numb. Each year the media had, as their working room, the Australian cricket team's dressing room. Around the hallowed walls were honours boards with great cricketing name's achievements listed (including D.G.Bradman's many times)

But in those five years did I take one photograph to possibly include here?

No - not one!

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Every day there is Rugby History 3 June 1936

Click to show Colin Earl Meads was born in Cambridge, New Zealand.

And there's a many a Kiwi who has rung him on this day in the years since - after he grew to be one of our greatest All Blacks.

A-Z of Rugby

Click to show VAN VOLLENHOVEN, TOM

VAN VOLLENHOVEN, TOM
Northern Transvaal and South Africa
7 internationals for Sth Africa 1955–56

Acclaimed as a man who might have become South Africa’s finest wing, van Vollenhoven indeed fashioned a reputation as a great try-scoring wing – but it was for St Helen’s at rugby league.

His international rugby career was cruelly brief. After his debut as a centre against the 1955 Lions, van Vollenhoven moved to the wing and promptly became the first player to score three tries in a test in South Africa. In the second test in Australia the next year, he kicked a dropped goal – it was only the second time he had ever attempted one – but his form fell away in New Zealand and while he played eight of the first nine matches, he played only the third test.

The crew-cutted van Vollenhoven was reckoned to be inconsistent, but there was nothing unreliable about him in the matter of scoring tries. In his 19 matches on that long tour, van Vollenhoven scored 16 tries, but was such a natural and instinctive player that selectors found him difficult to fit into a team pattern.

He certainly proved them wrong, or misguided, with St Helen’s.