OUTSIDE of car racing, Cricket is absolutely my favorite sport.
I’ve grown up with it being a staple of each Aussie summer and outside the likes of Peter Brock, the likes of Gilchrist, Ponting, Waugh and Border are my real sporting heroes.
This week Australia and New Zealand commence the first game in a three-test series that is sure to be one of the most compelling in some time. Australia are coming off the back of trouncing Pakistan in two test matches last month, while the Kiwi’s are on a high after their remarkable World Cup campaign and with the Number two ranked test team in the world.
Not many would admit it, but I love the Kiwi Cricket team. Sure, I’m not going to barrack for them in a game against Australia but outside of that, they’re my number two team.
I love the way they play; I love their attitude and I love a heap of the players the Kiwi’s seem to find.
One of the best games of Cricket I’ve ever watched was the World Cup semi-final in 2015, when the Black Caps took on South Africa to compete for a spot in the Final.
In front of a massive Eden Park crowd, the Kiwi’s won a thriller with Grant Elliot hitting six to win the game in the final over. It was pulsating, thrilling Cricket.
It was only topped by Mitchell Starc bowling Brendan McCullum in the first over of the final a few days later. As I said, they’re my second team..
I was gutted when they cruelly lost the World Cup final this year; but the way the team conducted themselves at the end of that incredible game was a testament to the way they represented their nation. Certainly, it was a better show than some of the Aussie performances in recent years.
It all begs the question, how the hell do you Kiwi’s do it?
This is a country with a population almost three million less than New South Wales has. Victoria and Queensland each have more people than the land of the long white cloud and yet, as good as they are, you wouldn’t put the state cricket teams as Number two in the world like the Black Caps are.
I think that’s part of the reason the Kiwi Cricketers are so admired around the world at the moment: People love an underdog story and New Zealand sides sure punch above their weight.
Which brings me, finally, to racing cars because the story is much the same – but I think even more significant.
If anything, New Zealand Motorsport and the drivers it produces are more like the All Blacks rather than the Cricket team – they’re the benchmark.
In Australia, Kiwi products are currently driving three of the best four cars in the championship and are arguably the best around. In Scott McLaughlin, Shane van Gisbergen and Fabian Coulthard, Kiwi’s generally lock out the pointy end of the field.
Scott Dixon, of course, needs no introduction and what he has achieved in Indy Car racing is phenomenal. I’m sure that in thirty- or forty-years’ time we’ll all look back at the Dixon era of dominance with the same reverence that we look back on Mario Andretti or AJ Foyt today. And the list goes on.
The biggest shame about all of this is that while the Black Caps can sell the underdog story and the All Blacks are the absolute benchmark, Kiwi racing drivers don’t seem to get the same kind of love anywhere.
Like the country itself, they tend to fly under the radar with their accomplishments only noted when someone mentions that they just so happen to be ‘New Zealand-born’.
This, of course, is all down to the fact that Motorsport remains a much harder proposition to sell to media outlets than just about any other sport.
This is a massive shame. Scott Dixon should be a national hero in New Zealand. Scott McLaughlin should be given the Kiwi-equivalent of an Order of Australia medal and SVG should be on the front page of the paper every week.
As it turns out, in the short term we’ll have to live with the fact that while Kiwi drivers should be like the Rugby team, they are in fact more like the Cricketers; Properly good, world beaters – but not as many people know about it as perhaps they should.
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