Fill the Basin for Christchurch

A couple of weekends ago my mum, dad & nana came to stay. Dad had a meeting in Wellington so mum & nana decided to come & stay as well. They arrived in the morning & dad went off to his meeting & mum & nana enjoyed a tour of parliament before catching the bus to our place. The weather Saturday was superb so mum & nana put themselves to work in our garden. They are always incredibly helpful whenever they come to visit.

On Saturday afternoon we went to watch Andrew play cricket for a couple of hours. It was really nice catching up with Anna & Ross & the girls.

On Saturday night we went to the rugby with dad as it was the Hurricanes versus the Chiefs. It was a close game, but unfortunately for dad the 'Canes came out on top.

On Sunday we dropped the family off at the airport for their early afternoon flight back to Hamilton. It was a really nice visit as it had been a good few months since we last saw them. Later that afternoon Will & I headed to the Basin Reserve for the charity cricket match to raise funds for Christchurch. Initially I was too slow to get tickets & missed out. However one of my friends from school ended up with a couple of spare tickets which she offered to us.

It was a brilliant afternoon out & incredibly well-organised, particularly in the short time they had to put it all together. As you can see from the scoreboard above, the line-up was pretty awesome! Who would have thought you would ever see all those names on the same card...

Richie McCaw & Conrad Smith did a brilliant job as umpires, & Tana Umanga showed just what a good all-round sportsman he was with a pretty impressive bowling, fielding & batting display, even managing to dispatch Shane Warne over the boundary! Speaking of Warney, I wonder what he & Russell Crowe are discussing in the pic below...

Between innings we had the very entertaining spectacle of John Key facing an over from Shane Warne. To his credit the Prime Minister did a great job, dispatching the ball to the fence on several occasions. To be fair though, Warne was being pretty generous to Key, going fairly easy on him. I was impressed by what a good sport Shane Warne was, he really entered into the spirit of the match & was even prepared to put up with a bit of banter & references to Liz Hurley! Below you can see Key in action...

Will & I spent the first half up the top of the hill where we had a great view. One of the highlights was when Sir Ian McKellen (aka Gandolf) came & 'worked' our bank, collecting for Christchurch. He was very impressive, working our part of the crowd for close to an hour. He was incredibly obliging & prepared to chat & pose for numerous photos with all & sundry. What a lovely man.

For the last part of the match we headed over to the other side of the ground to sit with some friends of mine from school. We were seated on the grass in front of the scoreboard inside the usual boundary rope so the view wasn't great, but it was cool to catch up with my friends. The boundaries were put right in for the game in order to fit more of a crowd into the ground. Of course it also made it more entertaining with a huge amount of 4's & 6's hit throughout the match.

All in all we had a brilliant time, it was probably one of the most entertaining live sports events that I have ever attended, plus it managed to raise half a million dollars for Christchurch.