Nagpur: New Zealand team will not feel out of place at all at the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium. Snaps of their greatest pacer Richard Hadlee can be seen on the walls of the stadium. A huge picture of Hadlee appealing for his 300th Test wicket at Wellington in 1985-86 is there framed very well. The colour of this black and white picture has started to fade. It is a 30-year-old snap and adjacent to it is another picture of Hadlee waving to the crowd.
As much as New Zealand’s renowned batsman Martin Crowe, who passed away recently, had an influence on the New Zealand team players so is allrounder Hadlee’s influence on some of the players. Last month during the New Zealand cricket award function in Auckland, it was Hadlee who personally presented the Sir Richard Hadlee Medal to New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson, who was named as the New Zealand Cricketer of the Year.
Hadlee also presented the award for school boys’s first XI young cricketer of the year award to Rachin Ravindra, an Under-19 New Zealand team cricketer of Indian parenthood, who is expected to represent New Zealand senior team soon. Rachin’s parents are from Bengaluru but migrated to New Zealand before their son’s birth.
Among the other photographs on the ground are three unsporting incidents from the history of cricket: Michael Holding of West Indies in the 1979-80 series against New Zealand kicking the stumps in disgust, Javed Miandad jumping up and mimicking Kiran More’s constant appeal behind the wicket, and also Miandad and Dennis Lillee coming close to blows at Perth in 1981-82 series.
A lovely portrait of the handsome Imran Khan, getting ready to face a ball, also adorns the walls of the press box.
