ICC Cricket World Cup Fever takes hold in New Zealand   24 Mar 2015

Ahead of the first semi-final in the land of rugby, all talk is about cover drives and yorkers

Now is as good a time as any for cricket fans in New Zealand to get behind their team.

Something strange is happening in Middle Earth. Something odd has captured the imagination of those that live in the Land of the Long White Cloud. It’s been a little over a month, and yet, it’s hard to believe such a thing is possible.

In the land of rugby, all talk is about cover drives and yorkers. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 has taken over New Zealand in a manner previously thought impossible.

The front page of the New Zealand Herald ushered in the week with a letter from Brendon McCullum basically giving every Aucklander a carte blanche to leave work and fill up Eden Park for the semifinal against South Africa. This was a call to arms that might have happened with the All Blacks.

But, here was McCullum, leader of the Black Caps, standing tall for cricket was, for once, the talk of his country. While a first appearance in a World Cup final, and then a shot at ultimate glory, was what every New Zealand fan was after, what the tournament has done for the country was unmistakable. Sample what the journey from Wellington -- where New Zealand comfortably got past the West Indies – to Auckland, was like.

Here come the Black Caps.

It was a seven year old who set things off at Departure Gate 16 at the Wellington Airport. Fresh off their win against West Indies, charging towards a collision with South Africa in the semifinal of the World Cup, New Zealand’s cricketers trickled towards the aircraft that would take them upward and onward. While New Zealand’s finest were not exactly mobbed – the people of this country are far too polite to do that, irrespective of how much they love sport – their walk through the terminal was certainly not untrammelled.

Today's @nzherald front page in support of the sensational @blackcaps pic.twitter.com/WUhmlZ4x9G

— Shayne Currie (@ShayneCurrieNZH) March 22, 2015

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