New Zealanders like the barmy army

Like me Sportsfreak don't hate the Barmy Army, we have plenty of other things to hate like Delta Goodrem and the ICL.

Apparently there has been a test match on this weekend. It’s been an important test match too, in which England has squared the series and must now be favoured to win it.

But a lot of the play has been pretty ordinary. Most batsmen have fiddled around until they got to thirty then decided that was enough, and got themselves out in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. The fielding throughout has been poor; at least England managed to take this to comical depths on Day 4. Neither spinner has taken a wicket, although a lot of that can be put down to the previous point.

And any test where Oram and Collingwood have excelled with the ball will never go down as one of the great spectacles of all time.

However, none of this has really seemed to matter. What has mattered is that we have had 4 days of big crowds, and on Saturday the gates were closed just after lunch. The last time that happened in a test in NZ was when Muldoon was still in power, and a 16 year-old Rachel Hunter was deep-throating trumpets on TV ads.

A sudden upsurge in local interest in test matches? Not really; this was primarily down to the ever-growing Barmy Army in their various forms.

The Barmy Army is a pretty misused term generally referring to any England fan. They fall into 3 groups. There is the Jimmy Saville led bunch of paid-up, fully fledged fancy dress fans who get the songs going after tea. There are the NZ based supporters who don their 80s replica football shirts every time an England team arrives of town. And finally there are the slightly older travelling fans who appropriately took their Cross of St. George flags into the historically preserved old stand.

Obviously there is a certain amount of interchange between these groups depending on the time of day, but we want to concentrate on the core group, because they are the ones who provide the entertainment.

First, the bugler. From this distance the furore around his banishment from the Gabba last year seemed to be an over-reaction of preciousness from both sides. But having heard him an action, this banning was an anal, mean-spirited piece of home town nastiness.

This guy can play. Nothing could be further removed from the idiot kid sitting in front of you at the rugby who blows on his $5 warehouse foghorn. The bugler was note perfect; Jerusalem, God save the Queen, various Beatles numbers, and the rare ability to make the Coronation St. theme sound pleasant.

Most of the songs were nothing special, but the choice of Army favourite, Ryan Sidebottom seemed right. A fast bowler, quaint fashion sense, a footballing pedigree, the double-entendre name, coupled by the fact that he has been their stand-out player who absolutely tries his guts out in the field.

There was more than just backing of their own though. To a man they gave Taylor standing ovations when he reached the half-century. The Army was on its feet first, almost shaming the locals into following suit. And the style of ovation, normally reserved for an England wicket, they gave Fleming when he reached 7000 test runs was probably the highlight of the test.

Sportsfreak did a fair amount of market research in the beer queues trying to spot some whinging about the quality of the beer (Tui and Export Gold would normally provide grounds for complaint) but there was none. No All Black fan visit to a game in Britain is complete without a mention of beer temperature.

The man in the ape suit was great value wandering around the ground, although by the end of the day it was very obvious it must get hot under there.

And on a related note, Jimmy Saville’s skin tight white ensemble with the red cross is quite striking… But does he travel around with 5 of these, or does he wash it out in the hotel sink every night? Or neither?

Finally some positives on what their presence removes from proceedings. Despite the large crowd and often pedestrian cricket there was not a single Mexican Wave. And Sonny Shaw, evicted from his normal spot, looked a dejected figure has he gazed on with jealous contempt, offering the odd snide remark which were ignored. Perhaps he can learn from this.www.cricketwithballs.com "Sign our David Hussey petition"