Pie Chucker

Daniel Vettori, sat high in his bunker above Christchurch, must have cursed the coming of this windy day, and the second Twenty20 international at a brisk Christchurch. It was won by England in similar manner to the first.

Collingwood won the toss and batted. Today Mustard and Wright were yobbish for an opening partnership of fifty, stirring a sense of unease and crisis in windy Christchurch that may linger these next two months.

Wright went for thirty, and Pietersen entered, at last in the correct number three slot. He may have arrived in New Zealand intending to frequent Auckland’s nudist beaches in search of voluptuous bisexual women. But here in cloudy Christchurch he was needed to reproduce his fine knock there two days ago. Unfortunately today he was his own worst enemy (but only just), walking across his stumps to a straight one and trotting off without even looking at Bowden’s crooked finger.

Bell joined the brute Mustard. And Bell ran himself out. Nobody else walking off furiously, huffing up to the dressing room and planting a jack-o-lantern on Bell’s peg with a knife in the head and a dog-tag marked simply with the word “YOU”, for once. No one to blame this time, but himself. 

Collingwood and Shah squired England to a very useful 193-8 from their 20 overs.

Ryder opened up for the Kiwis. He is the largest man to play International cricket since MJ Gatting. He likes the night, and it was reported that an appeal had gone out to members of the public for information about how he got home the e’en before this international. He managed two fours, one of them nearly taking Umpire Bowden’s head clean out of it’s sod, before succumbing to the DT’s and sprinting back to the bar for Touhey’s and Lime.

Phil Mustard reaching down the leg side to gather a Broad loosener took it on the ball of the thumb, and, would you believe, twelve-thousand miles away, in the early morning watery light, his mum woke up in a cold sweat, clutching her thumb, and saying in a voice that was scarcely her own, “My little one has been injured, my boy has been damaged!”

As Mascherenas, piratical in his gold earrings, steamed in - the wind bellowing behind him - it might have seemed like he summoned this gale. He bowled How for 31. How having looked the most potent of this limp Kiwi XI, walked bare foot from the crease, muttering his own surname, to be handed a glass of poisoned lemonade by stand-in skipper McCullum at the Pavilion door. He will not represent New Zealand again after that stroke.

Styris, labile in mood and bovine in movement, was Dimi’s second victim, before Graeme Swann rolled over Flynn and Fulton. Kyle Mills rallied at the end for the Kiwis, with a useful 30, but the tourists pulled off another easy win. New Zealand 143-8.

After the game, in the New Zealand dressing room the cries of rookie Southee could be heard, as a fierce intiation ritual began. The experienced Fulton has recently been informed that Sodomy was legalized in New Zealand in 1987, and all these years he’s been screaming “you’ll never take me alive copper” out of the bedroom window he has been a law abiding citizen all along.

A tough series for the Kiwis?

Roger J Harbinger QC Bar (retd.)