``We have our squad for the first two one-dayers and the players' jobs will be on the line. We have done enough talking. Now is the time for the guys to front up.''
No doubt followers of the game here feel the same after England's four-wicket win in the first game in Christchurch on Thursday. The one-day game is, however, so widely marketed and well publicised - as it was in Australia 10 years ago before they began to realise that the balance should shift back to Test cricket - that selling tickets is not a problem for New Zealand Cricket, the name by which the game's ruling body is now known. Not so much a sport for them, more a business, despite the appointment of a former New South Wales all-rounder, Neil Maxwell, as marketing director.
Christopher Doig, the former opera singer of international repute, who was ``head-hunted'' to become the chief executive of the reconstituted and streamlined New Zealand Cricket Board after the financial embarrassment and subsequent upheaval of the old body in April 1995, is predicting further sell-outs at Napier and Wellington for the third and fifth matches of the one-day series. Eden Park, where today's match - which starts at 9.30pm GMT - and the fourth one next Saturday are to be staged, holds more than the other grounds, 43,000, and, according to their ticket agent, seats are ``selling like wildfire''.
Closer examination suggests, however, that this is all part of the selling technique and that the actual number of tickets sold is still short of 10,000. The weather tomorrow will have a strong bearing on the final figure - gate sales here are traditionally large - but if England should, by that strange process of success breeding further success, wrap up the series before next weekend, national loyalties might be truly tested, even in a country less jingoistic than Australia. Here, they incline to the perfectly reasonable, but unsophisticated, view that one-day cricket is a fun day for all, whoever wins.
The crowd at Lancaster Park on Thursday, 25,000, was the biggest for a cricket match there since 1982, when England were again the opponents immediately after the first telecasts to New Zealand of World Series matches from Australia and interest was still intense after the famous underarm ball by Trevor Chappell to Brian McKechnie.
As an occasion, Thursday's game was a mixed blessing. We called it Kerry Packer's Circus when all this hyping started and a circus it has surely become, with all the atmosphere of the big top which used to pack in the crowds before television. It was an idea born in England to limit the overs in order to get a finish in one day. The Rothmans Cavaliers on Sundays begat the ``knockout cup'' of 1962 and the Gillette Cup of 1963 but, a generation on, the sideshows have almost overtaken the cricket.
The costumes get more tastelessly garish - New Zealand's black boots are a particularly hideous innovation this time - the rock music louder and the accompanying entertainment more bizarre with every series that passes in this part of the world. It is a little surprising, in view of the concern expressed by Inspector Bob Mather of Christchurch police about the drunken state of many spectators and the decision to close the bars halfway through the game, that only 10 arrests were made. The offences included streaking (of course), assault and urinating in public. More than 30 other people were evicted from the ground for ``disorder offences''.
I suppose 25,000 people cannot be wrong, but the more New Zealand cricket sells its soul to the marketing men's idea of how the game should be presented, the harder they will find it to fill grounds for Test matches and, probably, to breed Test cricketers. Already they are locked into the vicious circle. The 1,500 or so England supporters who have crossed the world to support the old country might have helped New Zealand Cricket to make a modest profit from the Test series, but the internationals will be the games which generate big money. Also the ones which will be instantly forgotten, even when batsman play as well as Alec Stewart and Graham Thorpe or bowlers as well as Phil Tufnell.
England are due to practise this morning after flying here yesterday. Chris Silverwood or Andrew Caddick might be preferred to Alan Mullally, and Tufnell might be left out on this ground with its short boundaries at third man and fine leg. The new catchphrase amongst the planners, however, is ``always play the best five bowlers'' and both Tufnell and Robert Croft come into that category. None of England's bowlers are as effective, mind you, as Gavin Larsen, who lived up to his reputation by bowling eight overs for 23 runs under extreme pressure on Thursday. It is amazing what can be achieved by anyone who bowls a consistently good length.