Cricket triumph lauded

Press, 7 December 1985, Page 80

Cricket triumph lauded

NZPA staff correspondent London

Smiles of satisfaction in every other cricketing nation greeted New Zealand’s series win over Australia, said a “Daily Mail” article yesterday. “The years Australian cricket dismissed their

neighbours as nothing more than country bumpkins not worth playing came back to haunt them with New Zealand’s 2-1 triumph inspired by Richard Hadlee’s 33 wickets,” the “Mail” said.

“The celebrations will have stretched well beyond Auckland and Wellington. There were smiles of satisfaction in every other cricket playing country after the way Australia belittled New Zealand’s efforts to become a cricketing power.” The “Daily Express” said in an editorial: “Small is beautiful — and successful. Look at New Zealand.” “Not content with defeating Australia in a test match on the Aussies’ home ground, they have gone on to take the series.

“It is a magnificent victory for a country of only three million people.” In East London, South Africa, the rebel Australian cricket captain, Kim Hughes, yesterday sympathised with his successor at the head of the official team, Allan Border, over Australia's test series loss to New Zealand.

Hughes said there was absolutely nobody else who could take over the job from Border. Border said after the loss in Perth that he was starting to wonder whether he was the right man for the job, but said he did not think he had a replacement. “Nobody could have led from the front the way Allan has done,” Hughes said. "The question is where do they go from here?

“I know the sort of pressure he is under and it’s tremendous.”

And from Perth, an NZPA staff correspondent, Kevin Hart, says that posterity will bestow on the 1985 New Zealand cricket team a treasured place in the annals of New Zealand sport. The first test win ,on Australian soil guaranteed the side enduring fame, but with the follow-up, a 2-1 series win, the team had fashioned arguably New Zealand cricket’s finest hour, he wrote.