History in the Old Grandstand

Even as New Zealand discontinues daylight-saving on Sunday, and moves all its clocks and watches behind by one hour, time will continue to stand still at the Basin Reserve. It is an old-world venue, situated bang in the centre of modern and hectic Wellington, almost oblivious to the mad traffic outside. There has been talk a few times of bringing it down to facilitate smoother flow of traffic towards the airport, the eastern suburbs and the south shore, but the Basin, protected by the Act of Parliament, has defied modernity.

If any more proof of this is needed, just step inside the New Zealand Cricket Museum in the Old Grandstand. From the triumphant to the funny, from the tragic to the quirky, from the brave to the under-hand, from the Addington bat (the third-oldest bat ever, used in 1743 and bought for 1600 pounds in 1987) to the aluminium bat (one of the few Dennis Lillee got made, he may or may not have used this dented piece of furniture), it’s all here.

And then there is David Mealing, the curator of the museum, whose beard rivals WG Grace’s. David tells every tale depicted in the museum so delightfully as if he has just come to know of it.

The Museum tour starts with the quote, “Cricket is a game for the low and for the great”, from The Jovial Cricketers, along with other various other definitions of cricket, for the uninitiated. They have the “substitute ball” that the Australian and New Zealand war prisoners in Italy used. The ball's core is made of corks from champagne bottles that their officers gave them, and the outer cover comes from twine (something between a thread and a string) from the Red Cross parcels they used to get. The shape is a perfect sphere. Talking of balls they have the one that Noel McGregor caught to take New Zealand to their first-ever Test victory, in 1956 against West Indies.

The rare DVD footage at the museum is the real gem. There’s Bert Sutcliffe talking about the legendary last-wicket partnership between him and Bob Blair at Ellis Park against South Africa in 1953-54. “Seven sixes later they [the crowd] were still going wild,” Sutcliffe says. “One of those lovely stupid things.” He talks of the “eerie hush” that surrounded the ground when the crowd saw Blair come out to bat. It is a story, as Dick Brittenden mentions in The Finest Years, that “every New Zealand boy should learn at his mother's knee”. But Sutcliffe, in a moist voice, says, “It was a day that never should have been.”

There is Peter Petherick talking about his hat-trick on debut, and it was three fine batsmen he picked: Javed Miandad, Wasim Raja and Intikhab Alam. Ian Smith, the interviewer here, talks like a wicketkeeper should. “It is rare footage [as on the big screen Intikhab Alam walks to a bat-pad appeal] to see a Pakistani walk.” Petherick remembers looking at the umpire in despair, and then at Intikhab in pleasant surprise. “It was really good of Intikhab to walk. I would have been surprised if I had got him lbw.”

Talking of umpires, they have Fred Goodall’s boots too, and also the footage of Colin Croft shoving him out of his way as he went close to the stumps to deliver. Goodall stood his ground there, but the stumps that Michael Holding kicked didn’t.

The teams of the 80s, New Zealand’s most successful, is given a different section. John Wright remembers his debut, when a charitable decision by the umpire let him off, and he played a part in New Zealand’s first Test win over England. “I went on to thrill the Basin crowd, with 55 in a day [at a strike-rate of 22.54].”

Another section tells the story of how Clarrie Grimmett was “brought home”, when the museum bought every memorabilia put on auction. Grimmett’s Bodyline blazer now hangs proudly there.

The most interesting and amusing wall of the museum is the one covering the New Zealand players’ experiences on tour, outside cricket. The base of a case has the tiger skin that the Maharajah of Vizianagram gifted to John Reid on the 1995-56 tour to India. There is a ticket to the Foolish Kings by the Crazy Gang in Victoria Palace from an England tour.

The players talk of how the New Zealand administrators didn’t know anything about India’s culture or weather when they sent the team out, in woollen pants. Harry Cave, the captain, was a keen diarist, and his hand-written diary extracts are there. Some of the players remember wearing the towels as nappies and playing, one remembers putting in too much effort in the delivery and s***ing his pants, and running straight through to the pavilion. The longest follow-through ever.

Don Neely, former first-class cricketer, historian and now the NZC president, Frank Cameron and Gavin Larsen have selected an all-time New Zealand XI, whose pictures and stats take one section of the museum. In batting order, according the New Zealand Cricket Museum, the best-ever New Zealand XI is: Glenn Turner, Stewie Dempster, Bert Sutcliffe, Martin Crowe, John Reid, Martin Donnelly, Chris Cairns, Richard Hadlee, Ian Smith, Daniel Vettori and John Cowie.

There’s a theatre inside where “Great Moments of India Cricket” is playing, to cater to the Indian audience that the Test attracts. The theatre’s seating is like it would be in a dressing room of the old, wooden benches lined up opposite each other. The theatre is where the groundsman’s seed room at the old Basin Reserve would be. The rest of the museum was the change room, the lunch room, etc. until the ground was reformed in 1981. Don tells the interesting story of how the museum came about.

“[After the reform] So now we got an empty room over there. Local umpires used to meet there once a fortnight. It wasn’t until another benefactor of Wellington cricket, John Oakley, went over there one wet day, and saw the umpires had decided they’d get some ties from different parts of the world and stick them on the table, some old books. It rained. If it rains, people have got to get some shelter, so people went in there, and thought it was a museum. Hopefully looking for shelter, and maybe going into a museum. And at the same time John Oakley walked over, and thought this could be turned into a museum. He was a businessman, and he spoke to a handful of other businessmen, and we started working and finding bits and pieces and we have added to it.” That was in 1987.

For 16 years, the museum was run by volunteers, and in 2003 Don found David Mealing. David had worked previously in a museum, was a cricket nut, and his beard made him an automatic choice. “When I hired him, I said to him, ‘There’s one thing David. You cut off your beard and you are fired.’” The beard is still there, quite happy to take visitors around, telling every tale as delightfully as if he has just come to know of it.