Lawrence Patchett
Christmas in Rarotonga: the John Wright Story, with Paul Thomas
As Captain Cook and his celebrated Englishmen toured New Zealand, meeting a resistance from our cricketers that surprised many people, I picked up again this story of the gutsy left-hander John Wright. I'm not one of those who like to glorify such bygone heroes over our current cricketers. The game has changed, and our Blackcaps today are as dedicated as any, as the visiting Englishmen discovered. But I do love this book, for these three reasons.
1. The ghost who delivers death: Christmas in Rarotonga is ghost-written by the superbly versatile Paul Thomas, who in his other life writes excellent New Zealand crime. Last year's Death on Demand was his best so far, darker, leaner, and more subtly funny than the previous Ihaka novels. In that book his rugged protagonist Tito Ihaka has spent five years in exile from Auckland CIB, and it's as if the writing style has matured with him, trimming excess weight and refining its focus. I recommend it.
2. It's easy to be a knocker: Thomas also writes an interesting column on sport for the Listener. During New Zealand's last tour of Australia he dissected the tendency of our media to naively assess the performances of our sportspeople purely on a win ('heroic!') and loss ('appalling!') basis. As he pointed out, top-level sport, and particularly test cricket, can be more complicated than such analysis might suggest.
Wright echoes this view, gently extending it to the rest of us—the great army of armchair-occupying, Radio Sport - listening experts who've never played anything remotely as difficult as test cricket: 'It's easy to be a knocker and play it from the sideline but being in the game, you can see how hard a guy has worked and what he's put himself through … unless you get out and do it yourself, you don't understand.'
Having tried only once to elevate my cricketing status beyond that of a third-grade opener with a very limited range of shots—the forward prod, the leave, and a rather venturesome off-drive—without any success at all, I find this argument persuasive.
3. We like stubborn: Famously, Wright batted nearly six hours for 55 on debut, resisting Willis, Botham and Co, to help New Zealand defeat England for the first time ever. At the Basin in March my brother and I watched Kane Williamson make the exact same score. Like Wright's innings, this slow act of resistance was vital to his team and to the series. When he came to the crease New Zealand were following on and still 186 runs behind. Stuart Broad was whipping in with a handy breeze and six first-innings wickets behind him. At the other end it was Jimmy Anderson. There was no Graeme Swann (injured), but Monty Panesar was getting encouragement from the rough outside leg. If Williamson went cheaply he'd expose Ross Taylor, who'd fallen to a golden duck in the first innings, and a somewhat out-of-touch Dean Brownlie.
Like a good test No. 3, Williamson dug in. For 233 minutes he cut out the flash shots, maintaining a stubborn defence and concentration that seemed remarkable from the stands. It was an innings for the test match purist: slow, tense, and gripping. And, with the help of some obliging Wellington rain, it saved the game for New Zealand. In turn, securing this draw set the stage for the thrilling third test in Auckland, where New Zealand came so achingly close to winning the series 1-0. It was an important moment in a memorable series, and I felt privileged to witness it. Bravo.
3 things that interest me about books I'm reading or listening to.
Amy Head
Anti Lebanon
Ashleigh Young
Carl Shuker
Daniel Woodrell
Death On Demand
Elizabeth Knox
Frankfurt Bookfair
Helen Heath
It Can't Happen Here
Jim Shepard
Kirsten Mcdougall
Laurent Binet
Lynn Jenner
Patrick De Witt
Pip Adam
The Day Of The Triffids
The Exercise Book Live
Tina Makereti
Wild Nights!
You Think That's Bad