Dawdling to the pavilion

Here’s an overdue update on the career situation – in May 2015 I left New Zealand Cricket for Fonterra. I wanted to wrap up the two years before it all disappears in a fond, summery haze.

Working in cricket was a bit of a dream come true – I thoroughly enjoyed being part of it and was constantly pinching myself that I was in the thick of it for a remarkable couple of years, comfortably two of our best ever, culminating in that world cup.

I was Digital Manager at NZC for that time, basically looking after the website and social media, as well as helping with PR and comms as required, including media management for the team on a couple of overseas tours and a handful of games in New Zealand.

Professionally, the highlights were:

Overhauling blackcaps.co.nz, both the front and back ends over the two seasons. We did the front end first, making the site mobile responsive and stripping it all back to make the content, text and words, the stars. Then in the second off season (the off season is when you do the ‘proper work’ in sport team!) we moved the CMS from a bespoke but vintage system we used to Umbraco, and went onto the new Microsoft Azure hosting, for all that sweet CWC traffic – there were a hair under a million page views on the site during the six weeks of the cup.

Being part of the online cricket community. People on Twitter love cricket, it’s the ideal sport to watch with the phone or the laptop. I wanted the national team’s account to be part of the conversation and show we were prepared to use Twitter as it’s meant to be, with personality, genuine engagement and to show off our fan’s love for the game (we used Storify to bring the social stuff into the website, hopefully to good effect.) It’s meant to be fun and I hope that my enjoyment came through.

There’s too many people to mention that helped make the BLACKCAPS community what it was – special mention to Jamie Bell at the NZC Museum, who tirelessly brought stats and history to life, as well as Jess, Ruth, Graeme, Andrew(s), Moog, Aotearoa XI, Toby, … it was a privilege to get to meet everyone at the ‘tweet ups’ and at the grounds.

Vine went really well for us, cricket kind of lent itself to the six second clips – here’s one from training before the CWC quarter final at the Basin, I was sifting around taking photos as per usual, when I was instructed to stand in the umpire’s position to see if any of the bowlers overstepped – and so got to see Kyle Mills, Grant Elliott, Corey Anderson and Dan Vettori bowl close up. Seeing professional athletes do their thing so close up was quite  an experience.

I got to know one end of a video camera from the other, and how to edit. Kind of. I have much respect for the skill it takes to do this properly.

Launching the NZC mobile app – full credit  for the technical stuff goes to Tim McConnell, Gus Pickering and team at NV Interactive’s Christchurch office, I highly recommend them and their work.

Cricket-wise, where do you start? How about

• The drawn Test against England at Eden Park in 2013
• Somehow ending up in a taxi from Dunedin airport wedged between Darren Sammy and Richie Richardson in late 2013
• Beating India at Eden Park in the first Test in 2014 – then being at the Basin for Brendon’s 302. The drawn ODI v India was tremendous too
• Being at the Basin for Kane Williamson’s first double century in the second Test v Sri Lanka in early 2015, and seeing the team come from way behind to win that one
• CWC15 – Hagley, beating Australia at Eden Park, the Guptill quarter final, THAT BLOODY SEMI FINAL WIN and going to Melbourne for the final

In terms of results, the two trips to Bangladesh were not highlights, but the experience of traveling with the group and being part of it all will stick with me for a long time. Believe everything you read about the team being made of good people. It’s extremely well lead by Brendon and Mikes Hesson and Sandle and I was made to feel very welcome on those trips and whenever I was with the team back in NZ. I’ll miss that a lot.

Couple of snaps from Bangladesh – I was pretty green, but luckily these guys are real pros.

If you haven’t had enough of What I Did, you can read a review of summer 2013, Bangladesh trip one, Bangladesh trip two, a review of summer 2014, a photo review of 2014, and the Cricket World Cup report.

Cricket in New Zealand is run by some incredibly enthusiastic people, who give up their summers to bring you this magnificent game. It was very hard to leave the dream job, but the time was right to move on for me, it was nice to go out on the high of the world cup.

I would like to thank NZC’s James, Callum, Richard, Joanne and David, the cool kids at the back of the office-bus (and Nicki!) and everyone else there for putting up with me, as well as the support and opportunities. See you at the grounds in the summer.