In the moments before the first Test started in Christchurch last week the television cameras alighted on the new Crowe-Thorpe Trophy, the prize that awaits the winners of the ongoing series between New Zealand and England. On TNT Sports Alastair Cook grew effusive. “It’s not often that boards get things absolutely spot on but that is a brilliant trophy,” he said, “and whoever came up with the idea, it’s fantastic.”
That will be the Maori artist David Ngawati. ““I did different concepts and drawings for New Zealand cricket,” he says. “I guess it’s a co-creation really. People tell me the story and then I create concepts from that, then they decide what they want to go with.”
What they ended up with was anything but your standard silver cup. The final taonga (a Maori term for a highly prized or treasured possession) has an auburn wooden base that holds a sculpture made of two particular and special pieces of willow – the bat Martin Crowe used to score a century against England in 1994 and the one Graham Thorpe used to score two against New Zealand in 1997. From various angles it appears to be shaped like an upended canoe or a toucan’s beak. It is decorated with a simple, flowing pattern and inlaid with one circular pieces of jade on each side, specifically a stone the Maori call inanga, a kind of pounamu.
“It’s a pinnacle, the highest mountain or the highest viewpoint, and then the very base of it is the foundation of them being able to get to the highest point,” Ngawati says. “So that incorporates in particular their family members on each side, their clubs, their community, everyone who supported them is the foundation for them to be able to go up the mountain, walk the path towards the highest achievement. The pounamu for us is the really top place, the treasured gem in the mountain.”
The process of creating the Crowe-Thorpe Trophy took about a month, starting with discussions with New Zealand Cricket about the design, continuing with them liaising with the two players’ families about getting their bats, and finally the creation of the taonga itself.
“It was a long process for New Zealand Cricket to talk with Graham’s wife around getting the bat,” Ngawati says. “They’re still in the grieving process, right? It’s still early times for them in this. We’re just really thankful for them to entrust in us, to be able to create a wonderful trophy and tribute to them both.
“There’s a lot of depth in it, there’s a lot of thought. There’s a lot of conversation that can come through. I’m a bit of a hermit so I sat down with this trophy and went through a really long process with it. I received these two bats and I have to think of them as being weapons really, the weapons they used to fight the different countries.
“To have those bats, there’s a process in that too. I talk to them, I feel the energy that’s there, I can smell the sweat and my senses start feeling.
“The best word would be connect. I connect with the people I’m working with as best I can. Although I had limited time I still had the opportunity to build that relationship. Especially with willow – I’d never used willow before, usually I use indigenous woods, but Kookaburra sent me a few bits so I was able to get a bit of a smell of it, get a feel for it. And I go into my personal side of things, like my grandfather was English. I never got to meet him, nor did my mother, but he was from Aldershot. I know nothing about this place but my whakapapa, my genealogy, is really important for who I am now, so I start stepping into that.”
Ngawati also created the Tangiwai Shield, which New Zealand won by beating South Africa in last year’s Test series. That trophy commemorates a deadly train crash on Christmas Eve 1953, while the Crowe-Thorpe trophy commemorates two beloved and hugely missed former players. They are objects of celebration and also of mourning. “I guess that’s part of the healing, right?,” says Ngawati, whose company, Mahu Creative, specialises in making custom taonga of all kinds.
“I’m a co-creator, I’m merely the vessel. I tell this to my clients. You’ve got the story and a lot of it is deep, it holds a lot of weight. It does take its toll on me but I’ve experienced a lot of grief and loss, so it’s been part of my journey and is part of life’s journey. We’re humans on a human journey, we’re not fully spiritual so that transition, when we go on to, we say the other side, that’s the spiritual journey.
“The very top of the trophy is them ascending to … whatever people want to call it. I talked to New Zealand Cricket about that as well. Letting them go is important. They’ve done their time here. For the younger people coming up, in the game of cricket or just anybody really, it’s for them to start on their journey now.”
Ngawati is already working on some more projects with CNZ. “In New Zealand once you establish trust with a carver, in particular a wood carver, who’s connected to the land generally you’ll keep giving them opportunities, but I’m only as good as my last creation,” he says. Having never been to a first-class game before, Ngawati was in Christchurch for the start of the first Test.
“It was really good, really welcoming. I enjoyed the English supporters, the Barmy Army, wanting to see the trophy and get many pictures of it,” he says. “I was able to meet some of Graham Thorpe’s family friends. I enjoyed it. But I’d say it’s not my scene – I wouldn’t spend money to go and do something like that, that’s for sure.”
Seales and a record that will stand test of time
Some records seem to belong to another time, and Jayden Seales’s on the first day of West Indies’ Test against Bangladesh in Jamaica was one of those. In the tourists’ first innings the 23-year-old bowled 15.5 overs, took four wickets and conceded five runs, all singles (there was, to be fair, also a leg bye), going at a miserly 0.31 an over. At one point he bowled 43 balls, equivalent to a little over seven overs (one for the times tables fans there) without conceding a run, a sequence that included one wicket and a dropped catch. “It’s not something I tried for, I just tried to bowl in good areas,” he deadpanned at stumps.
Given Test cricket’s Bazwards shift in recent years a lot of records for expensive bowling have been set of late. Of the 20 worst innings economy rates in the Tests 16 were delivered this century, including all the top 10 but Rodney Hogg’s 59 from six overs for Australia against West Indies in 1979. Joint top of that list is Hasan Mahmud’s 66 from six for Bangladesh against India a few weeks ago.
Before Seale’s intervention just three of the 48 best inning economy rates had come this century (two of those in the same innings, Ravindra Jadeja and Umesh Yadav for India against South Africa in Delhi nine years ago this week) and nobody had bothered the top 10 since April 1977.
That list is still topped, surely for all eternity, by Bapu Nadkarni’s five runs from 32 overs, including at one stage 21.5 without a run being scored, for India against England in Madras in 1964. During the afternoon session on day three, England managed to score 23 in two hours (plus four extras; the first run after lunch came off the second ball of the 12th over) as Ken Barrington and Brian Bolus focused on protecting the several members of their side who were suffering from stomach bugs until the close of play and the rest day that would follow. This was successfully achieved and an inevitable draw followed.
Seales sits at No 7 on the all-time list and it could well be another 47 years before that top 10 is bothered again. As for the all-time all-comers first-class parsimony charts, three of the top 15 in that were bowled since Nadkarni finished that spell 60 years ago, including one that came a few months later. It is hard to imagine anyone bettering the most recent: Manish Majithia’s 20 second-innings overs for Railways against Madhya Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy in November 1999 when, having conceded three runs in 12.3 first-innings overs, he went, well, three better in the second by not conceding at all.
Quote of the week
The panic in the Australian ranks is palpable, what with former players calling for heads to be chopped off and some even hinting at cracks in the Australian team after Josh Hazlewood’s media interview at the end of the third day’s play, where he suggested that it was up to the batters to now do something. Now, a few days later, Hazlewood is out of the second Test and possibly the series too with a supposed side strain. Strange, that, since nobody had noticed anything wrong with Hazlewood at that media conference. Mystery, mystery – the like of which used to be common in Indian cricket in the past. Now it’s the Aussies and like old McDonald, I’m simply loving it” – Sunil Gavaskar on the state of the Australia squad before Friday’s second Test.
Memory lane
Virat Kohli decides to throw some shapes as India celebrate their victory over England in the final of the 2013 Champions Trophy at Edgbaston. Reduced to a 20-overs-a-side game due to rain, the hosts were in control with 20 to get from 16 balls and six wickets in hand, Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara ticking things over in the middle. Cue a collapse and another title for the defending world champions. It remains India’s last victorious ICC campaign.
Still want more?
No panic and a brilliant ball striker – why Jacob Bethell’s England call may be inspired. By Mark Ramprakash.
Leading Afghan cricketers have urged the Taliban to reverse the ban on women’s medical education.
And Don Bradman’s sun faded and worn baggy green cap has sold at auction for nearly half-a-million Australian dollars.
