The highlight of my sporting week.

The South Africans are here, and after Martin Guptill tried to redecorate the upper reaches of the Cake Tin using his bat and the South African bowling attack in the first T20, things were looking up. Of any of the top teams in world cricket, we must fancy ourselves against the Proteas – they’re good but mentally flaky, kind of like the All Blacks were.

So it’s a shame we totally rolled over in Hamilton and Auckland. Seddon Park, like Hamilton night life, is packed with delights and dangers. The small boundaries mean you can rack up a big score in no time, but if your bowling attack is not on its game, you’re going to struggle. And we did. It’s rare that I agree with Ian Smith on anything, but yes, what could Southee have possibly said to Richard Levi, while he casually smacked the fastest T20 century ever. “Har, you totally missed my car”? Ahem.

Auckland, on the other hand, was special. To say we had it in the bag is like saying Graeme Smith isn’t very funny. Yes, Jesse took his foot off the gas when it mattered, but our other batsmen were guilty of playing shots that were, to borrow a phrase from Wisden, fucking stupid. It’s only T20, but if we’re looking to build and hang on to momentum, we should have won from there and made it look easy. It’d be great if we could back up the Black Caps’ reported sledging by being good at cricket. The worst part of the defeat for me was watching the news the next day and seeing Graeme Smith, Dale Steyn and Jacques Kallis sifting around the team hotel – now we have to beat SA with those guys in the team too. I’m still looking forward to these tests, but.

Because I’m on holiday, and because I haven’t been blogging much, here’s some links to keep you going:

Hadyn also picked up on the greatest rugby story ever written

Bill Murray hangs out with sports people – photo gallery with mostly golfers and basketballers

Lionel Messi never dives

Richard Hadlee makes Ian Botham look like a piece of cheese holding a cricket bat

If you love fishing, but can’t be arsed with all the rods and that, turns out all you need is a helicopter.

Single? Get yourself a Wolf T-shirt.

Nasty Andy Muray has a scrap with Del Potro. By ‘scrap’ I mean *wussy* verbals at end changes. Umpire does very well to keep a straight face here.

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

After football on a Saturday, I’m often parked up in front of TV3′s three (three!) fishing shows waiting for the cramps to kick in – The ITM Fishing Show is definitely the best, new episodes are on now.

Some League guy kicks a goal. Is this news? He’s a prop, so yeah.

Bugger GTA IV – did you know it came out originally on the NES? I’m still stuck somewhere in between San Fierro and Las Venturas in GTA San Andreas.

I was a bit nervous, frankly. My preparation for a new sport is usually sitting down with a book on it, and having read about epic man vs. fish battles lasting several hours I wondered if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I went on a fantastic fishing trip off Great Mercury Island earlier this year, pulling up Snapper by the bucketload, but Marlin the size of horses would be an entirely different (ahem) kettle of fish.

Handily, it’s a quick trip out of Vanuatu’s harbour to the open ocean, and we quickly went from gently rolling seas into big old swells in 100-150 metres of ocean, and the Nikita, an 8 metre fibreglass boat started pitching up and down. I’m generally OK at sea, but wondered if repeated viewing of ‘Jaws’ and an overactive imagination were the best way to settle the nerves. Stefan had quickly organised 6 rods with impressive reels and brightly coloured lures looking like SpongeBob Squarepants’ mates – and we were fishing.

Vanuatu is renowned for its Marlin, Sailfish, which is like a Marlin with different fins, MahiMahi, a big fish with a weird round head, and Wahoo, “very agressive fish, teeth like Shark” explained Fabrice in his thick French accent. We trawled through the swell for an hour or so, before hitting Pointe Diablo, an impressive place where the ocean swell smacks the coast hard from very deep water – Nikita started bobbing more erratically than a Wallaby walking home from a team night out.

We followed the coast back into the bay, and just as we were headed out to sea Fabrice started shouting “Fish! Fish!”. I leaped up and into the chair, heart pounding… 30 seconds later I sheepishly pulled a thin little Tuna of no more that 30 centimetres on board. This was a great sign according to Fabrice, as it was our prey’s favourite snack, but Stefan gave me a quizzical look as I snapped a photo – surely it was too small to waste pixels on?

It was back out to sea, and my little Tuna was quickly speared with a big hook and chucked overboard to add variety to the menu we had on offer. The swell was just as big, and despite Fabrice’s constant pleading “Where are the fiiiish?”, we had no luck. He was on the radio to other fishermen, and of the four or five boats out that morning, only one caught a fish, a 22kg Wahoo. It wasn’t my day, and as we went back to the harbour, I thought technically, I’m not a big game fisherman yet (I’m on my way though – on observing Fabrice and Stefan’s bare feet, I quietly kicked my jandals off under my seat – smooth). I enjoyed being out in the ocean and listening to the tales of better days and bigger fish, I’ll be back out there for sure.