So what are New Zealand sport’s JFK moments? Here’s a few to get started, and where I was at the time; get into the comments and tell me what I’ve missed.

1930 Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup – not born

1956 All Blacks beat South Africa: “I’m absolutely buggered!” – not born

1960 – Peter Snell wins in Rome – as above

1983 Graham Thorne presents the Cricket from Australia with a perm – watching sportreview sr. pissing himself laughing, not fully understanding what a girlyman ex-All Black Thorne was making of himself on the national box with this unexpected, bold hairstyle choice

1985 Coney and Chatfield hold out Pakistan at Carisbrook – bouncing up and down on the couch in Hamilton, about as excited as a 12 year old could be

1995 “The America’s Cup is now New Zealand’s cup” – down at the Viaduct, in its pre-Viaduct incarnation at 8am on a Sunday morning, with half of Auckland, seemingly

1999 The greatest fucking Rugby comeback of all time – in a Cricklewood flat in cloud of stunned silence with a mate. We didn’t go to the pub to watch, assuming we’d be there next week for the final. I’d spent about eight months talking the All Blacks and their ‘fast, mobile’ pack up to work colleagues. The croissant on my desk on Monday bought a lump to my throat

2006 Tana Umanga’s handbag goes for twenty odd grand on TradeMe – at my desk, head in hands, rocking gently back and forth

Day one went fantastic for the Black Caps, who dismantled India’s star studded batting order like a 21st marquee due back at midday. The sun shone, and we had one more wicket to get at the close before getting stuck into the (big) total.

Day two. I walked into the Basin for the first time ever just after 12. After saying g’day to Graeme and son, and holding my breath through the field of bad vibes and disturbing weirdness that surrounds Sonny Shaw (don’t explore that site at work, team), Hadyn and I, and soon Dan were parked up on the bank. For those of us to used to ramming our knees behind a plastic Eden Park seat, stretching out on the grass was a real treat. The Basin Reserve is a fantastic park, the  elevated view from the requisite down-the-ground angle gives a great perspective.

Then we started watching Cricket, possibly the down point of the day. To me, the crisp (I’m being nice) breeze made it tough to bat, but just as tough to bowl in, especially into into the breeze. Ross Taylor was quietly playing to the conditions, waiting for bad ones and putting them away with sweetly timed on and off drives. No-one else wanted to do that, and our top order used the walk from the sheds to the pitch to the sheds again like a revolving door.

Ryder was more interested in staging a one man outlandish helmet exhibition than batting, much to the disgust of bloggers staying up late in the UK, and was soon back in the sheds, followed by pretty much everyone else. It was depressing, slow going – this Indian team may be full of rock stars, but they fuck around between balls and overs like Keith Richards trying to change a string. The over rate was disgraceful, and made the day tough going at times.

The tail enders weren’t about to let the crowd turn blue without getting their money’s worth, though. Every blogger’s favorite Ian O’Brien got his highest test score in front of his home crowd, while Chris Martin, yes, ‘Learn to Bat‘ Chris Martin hit Harbhajan back over his head for four. Good on him.

The final potential high point of the day was watching Sehwag knock it around, but turned to custard as Martin claimed him after only a couple of token swipes. From then it was shut up shop time until, I admit, we sneaked off early with beer and a heater top on the list.

It was one of those days that add to the purists’ sense of worthiness, but despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The great company of all the above, plus Fraser and Robyn, a couple of beers and great conversation made a challenging day’s play for Black Caps fans go by too fast. I was hugely impressed by the Basin, especially the ‘let everyone run around at the lunch break and smack balls at each other’ policy, and can’t wait to come back.

I have to note that I arrived in the capital Friday to a stunning day and extremely kind welcome from the Wellington digerati. I’m not sure if it’s the strong coffee or daily caviler laughing in the face of earthquake-induced certain doom, but the capital has easily the warmest web / community spirit around – the locals were incredibly welcoming of Auckland based half-arsed sports bloggers blowing in for the weekend. I even got free beer in classy surroundings. Ta.

I can’t stress enough the *awesomeness* of meeting up with the *actual people* we’re reading / writing to / twittering with over the intertubes. Let’s not forget it’s about connecting with people – there doesn’t always need to be a modem involved, eh.

Not content with making those ghastly NZ Cricket uniforms, Canterbury have done a WStar (who still have S. Fleming and L. Vincent on their homepage) and released a shoddy ’shaft the Beige Brigade’ shirt. This is cynical bullshit of the highest order, NZ Cricket gets a HUGE amount of free publicity, enthusiasm and goodwill from ‘ver Brigade, and deliberately cutting their lunch is unbelievably low. So – avoid this shit quality (and the shirt itself IS shit quality) cash-in like an Australian plague and DO NOT BUY! Go to the Beige’s site and get a real one.

When me and a mate were trying to name the 1987 WC winning XV, John Drake was the last name we came up with – I only knew him much better as a commentator and columnist. I rate him alongside Tony Johnson as NZ’s best. Almost everyone paying tribute said he ‘had interests outside Rugby’, which is a sign of sanity.  We’ll miss his thoughtful, forthright style in our house when Stu Wilson starts levering foot into mouth again next season.

Iain O’Brien’s blogging on Cricinfo now, and while JRod bemoans him jumping ship, it seems that Cricinfo are re-blogging Iain’s blogspot site, not the other way around. As Emma Hart said on Hadyn Green’s PA discussion, ‘I was listening to O’Brien getting the hell bounced out of him that day and thinking, wow, can’t wait to read his blog about this’. Too right.

Cockfighting aside, there’s no crueler game than golf – it was excruciating to watch Hamilton’s David Smail mess up the Australian Open yesterday evening. Brother of sportreview has played with David, and even with a hugely successful career in Asia, he’d have wanted to nail the Australian Open to go with his NZ Open. Still, Smail handled himself with dignity throughout, in that situation I would have definitely vomited.

Ben from Mike on Cricket now has his own pad @ Crucket. Get in there.

Sorry I missed Links on Friday this week. If I’d got around to it, the Wunder Boner would have probably made the cut.

The ARC bought Izzy, a computer animated character with the ability to morph into different forms, to Auckland to play an exhibition football match between the ‘MonstaBurga Izzy All Stars’ and the ‘Boobs on Bikes ARC Stars’. The match finished 0-0.

Headcount was estimated at between nine and ten people, pushing out to thirteen if quadrupeds are included.

ARC spokesperson Simon Flashpen said “Sure, you can nitpick that the players outnumbered the crowd, but Izzy’s zany antics really delighted the dozen or so mammals there.” Flashpen denied the match was a shoddy third rate copy of Mr Blobby’s successful Invercargill visit.

Match itself dreadful bore, but networking top class

Here’s two vids to keep you going from the ITM fishing show. One. Two. And we’re off.

Fleming famously asked Richard Boock to write his biography, after Boock spent the previous year waging a campaign against Fleming’s captaincy in the Herald as bizzare as it was savage. This was a typically pagmatic move. The book contains plenty of turmoil under its dreadfully cheesy cover, from Glenn Turner’s iron rule prompting Paroroe and Cairns’ hissy fit rebellions, the human ego Chris Cairns being in the dressing room generally, the Sri Lankan bombing and NZC’s disgraceful insistence the tour go ahead, and Dion Nash, Matthew Bell and Flem being hung out to dry for smoking grass in South Africa when others were involved. It’ll be interesting to read his side of the Bracewell era if he publishes another.

He was an atypical New Zealand batsman – graceful, not bludgeoning, preferring to guide the ball to the cover or straight boundary than slogging to cow corner. As the Napier radio commentators never tired of saying, it was typical that in his last test he passed 50 twice but missed out on 100s. I would have liked to see him ride it out for a few more years in the test team without the armband and rack up some big scores, and slyly digging at the opposition as a senior pro. He did this in Hamilton to great effect, hinting the Black Caps were the only team playing cricket going into the final day, helping pile pressure on England like a collector’s pin through a bug. We’ll miss his catching alright, and I was dying to see where his endorsements would head next, having flogged heat pumps like they were a new religion backed by country and western singers, and wandering Cuba Mall dressed as a giant deodorant can accosting passers-by. It could have only got better.

I was at the Oval in 1999 the day we clinched a test series win in England, it sparked the most productive period of his captaincy, taking in the the ICC trophy win, culminating in summer of 2001, when he toyed with Australia in Australia, knocking them out of their own Tri-Series, and so nearly winning a test series, which would have been the crowning glory.

Fleming was a thinking, pragmatic captain (Cricket with Balls went so far as to describe him as Noam Chomsky-like) and got the best out of the resources he had – this is New Zealand cricket after all, we don’t have a county championship to make professionals like England, or teams of potential Bradmans queueing up for their shot like Australia. Fleming was too intelligent, too sure of himself, too graceful in his strokeplay, too willing to say what he thought, and probably too handsome for yer average Kiwi to fully accept. He wasn’t the ‘gee, shucks’ humble bloke we love so much, and he copped it for that. If he’d been born in Sydney or Perth, the Aussies would have loved him.

Links on Flem
Fleming and Macca take to Shane Warne in 2001
The famous Richardson interview
THAT century v South Africa in 2003