Modest, hard-working, undemonstrative – the world’s top-ranked Test team are shaped by their self-effacing skipper
It’s not clear exactly how much mind Christina Rossetti paid to the ins and outs of the New Zealand club cricket scene, but when the old sports journalist Sir Terry McLean wrote his short history of the sport in the country he still opened it with a quote from one of her poems. “Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end.”
It was, McLean reckoned, “an exact and prophetic statement” about the way the game has been played in New Zealand, where they spent 90 years fighting for the right to play Test cricket, another 26 waiting for the first win, and 13 more for their first series victory. Now, another 51 years on, the team have finally made all the way up to the summit.
Related: New Zealand leapfrog Australia as top Test team after routing Pakistan
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