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Written by KiwiPie
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Tuesday, 23 December 2003 |
It is nearly Christmas and we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the Tangiwai disaster that claimed 151 lives on Christmas Eve, 1953. A lahar caused by activity on Mount Ruapehu washed away the railway bridge, causing the Wellington to Auckland express to plunge into the Tangiwai river.
Whilst cricket is only a game, one of the finest cricket stories came about following the Tangiwai disaster. If after reading this, you don't get a lump in your throat or a tear in your eye, then you are made of tougher stuff than I am.
I stole this text from a couple of articles I found on the web, the links are included at the end. They were written at the time of Bert Sutcliffe's death a couple of years ago and I have included just the parts referring to Christmas 1953.
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Written by KiwiPie
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Wednesday, 17 December 2003 |
It is nearly 2 years since Nathan Astle's innings of 222 against England. Soon after it happened, I resolved to write an article about it for The Silver Fern so I am deeply ashamed that it has taken me so long. I finally got around to it as a break from writing about our one-day woes.
At the time, many people said that the innings would be remembered long after the game itself was forgotten and, in my view, this has proven to be true. If you can't recall anything of the game now, it was the first test of 3 against England early in 2002, England batted first in poor batting conditions and crawled to 228, mainly through the efforts of their captain, Nasser Hussain. The Black Caps were then skittled, mainly by Hoggard showing great control of late swing, for just 144. After losing 5 wickets cheaply, Thorpe and Flintoff then belted our miserable bowling attack of Drum and Butler (Cairns was injured) leaving a victory target of 550 in the 4th innings and over 2 days to get the runs.
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![1229med[1].jpg](http://www.thesilverfern.com/images/abs_157/1229med[1].jpg)
