It's raining, it's pouring... let's play cricket

Holding a Test match in Wellington at the end of March is a pretty stupid thing to do.

It has rained more than half the days so far this month, and while the MetService often get it wrong, (the weather can change from rainy to sunny faster than Jesse can down a XXXX), rain is forecast from Friday through until Monday.

Who in their right mind would commit to that scheduling in a place where the weather is so reliably unreliable?

People who want the match to be rained out. Who would take a draw over a loss. I know, it sounds like an England thing to do, but when you consider how desperately NZ models itself on England in other ways, that’s not so surprising.

I’ll be shot down for saying this, because after all the Black Caps did beat us (in December, but here you’re always as good as the last time you defeated Australia), and that will be clung to for the next 20 years.

There will undoubtedly be a thousand apparently-legitimate reasons (read: excuses) for it, but whoever decided to schedule the Test at this time of year in this city had an agenda, and I don’t think it involved a genuine attempt at a five-day game of cricket.

Ah well. Given how quickly the Black Caps surrendered in Hamilton, it’s not like the Proteas will need more than a few patches of blue sky to finish them off here either.