Well after my first trip to New Zealand I am looking forward to getting back there and playing some cricket. But, this trip has not started too well.
I set off from my parents house at 5.30am (yes…in the morning!) to get an 8.40am flight to Auckland to meet up with the Wizards. We boarded the plane on time then it all went very very wrong from there, to start with we were told the toilets where broken and they had to be fixed before we could leave and then after spending 10 minutes on board I started to realise the air con was also broken. Great stuff. Once the cabin got up to 40 degrees we all had to get back off the aircraft, we were told it would take 45 mins to fix, I won’t say much more than this… we were still in Sydney nine hours later! This wouldn’t happen on an Emirates flight!
We eventually got a flight at 7.00pm so was a long day and I was looking forward to getting there, getting into bed and playing cricket…but no, I then realised I had missed my connecting flight to where we were playing. It’s a 40 minute flight on a very very little plane, so I made a phone call to Bob Carter, who is the team coach who, luckily, had thought ahead and hired me a car from Auckland to Whangari.
It was a two hour drive in very bad, wet, conditions but I managed to get to the team hotel at 2.15am on the morning of the 23rd to find my room mate in the single bed leaving me the big double bed so that was a nice surprise after a very long day. I had my first one day game for Canterbury to look forward to in the morning so I needed a good night’s sleep.
Well the alarm clock went of at 8.00am and felt like I had been asleep for 5 minutes. I got up, got ready and just as most cricketers do I pulled back the curtains to check the weather, it was very dark and let me tell you very very very wet!
I walked into breakfast to see all the lads having a laugh at my expense from the day I had just had. No sympathy!
Our captain, Peter Fulton then said the coaching staff had just headed to ground to have a look, about 30 minutes later the returned with news that the game had been cancelled. After my journey yesterday I was not happy! We had a team meeting for plans for the rest of our time there and then we had a one hour gym session with Mad Max. We did the session in groups of four and then had to do a circuit session.
We then headed for a game of ten pin bowling which was won by me, and that’s all I’m going to say about it – a happy ending after all!
As we were leaving the team hotel at 9 o’clock we had to do a cardio session early. I was first in the gym groups doing a 30 min cycle session, it was hard work but felt good once it was done. We departed the hotel at 9 and had a 3 hour drive on bus to Auckland airport where the team was flying back to Christchurch. But not for me, the team I had been playing for in Australia has made the 2020 final so I am heading back to play in that on Wednesday before flying back to Wellington to meet the team on Wednesday for our next game, hopefully the weather will be nice and we can win that one!
Read Mitchell’s first update from New Zealand here http://www.durhamccc.co.uk/news/claydon-set-for-second-stint-in-new-zealand/