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This story rightly begins in Albury, NSW, on January 9, 1998, en route to a family holiday in Victoria. Sash and I had begun our cricket fandom in earnest with the Boxing Day Test, but the first ODI we ever watched was New Zealand v South Africa at the 'Gabba that night. In the course of that unbelievable game, we adopted New Zealand as our favourite team, and as the last ball soared in the lights and Kluesner took the catch, Dion Nash was firmly entrenched as our favourite cricketer. I literally did not sleep that night, kept awake by noises, a cold, and the horror ending of the cricket. As I wandered out on the Hume Highway, in the rain, in my pyjamas, in the middle of the night, I was deeply affected and I suspected this was the start of something important. The next morning, our family changed our Melbourne hotel booking at the last minute, to the Stamford Plaza. I spent the rest of the drive catching up on sleep, and the next thing I remember is arriving at the hotel. My parents went to check in, and when they emerged, they had news for us. "Guess who we're staying in the hotel with us!" they said..... The New Zealand Cricket Team, having flown down from Brisbane that morning. Their bags were in the foyer of what is, I was later to discover, one of Stephen Fleming's two favourite hotels. The coincidence was remarkable. Naturally, sharing a hotel with our new idols gave Sash and I plenty to do, much of which seems quite degrading in retrospect. First, we wrote a letter to 'Mr Nash', and asked the profoundly unfriendly reception staff to pass it on. We think it quickly found a home in the wastepaper basket. We kept our eyes peeled in the hotel corridors, and even went as far as to check the names on any room-service breakfast orders that were hanging on the doors. None of them were cricketers. Most degradingly, Sash followed some poor man into the sauna, and asked him if he was a New Zealand cricketer. His embarassed answer was, "not me, I'm too old." But then, on the morning of New Zealand's match against Australia A, luck came in the form of Chris Cairns. He was being rested, and was in the restaurant with team management for breakfast and two iced chocolates. Being so recently initiated to the world of New Zealand cricket, it took our father to recognise Cairns. It was Sash, the braver and more outgoing of the two of us, who plucked up the courage to ask for his autograph, with paper and pen kindly supplied by the waiter. Her opening phrase is to this day a painful memory: Sascha:
Are you Chris Cairns? And he signed "Best wishes, Che Cairns." Lame! Quite how we managed to finish our breakfast I don't know. We must have looked ridiculous - "Are you Chris Cairns?" Looking back, Cairns took it pretty well. Our last night at the Stamford rolled around. New Zealand were playing Australia A at the MCG. We headed down stairs for hot chocolate in the lobby. Our mother was chatting with a man named Michael, from Birmingham, who was, it emerged, a friend of Shayne O'Connor's. He was waiting at the bar to meet up with Shayne for post-match drinks. The team would be back soon, he said, and they usually go to the bar to relax after a game. Sash and I looked at each other - perfect! We dashed back to the room and found paper and pens, then back to the lobby to await our first sighting of the team. It almost didn't eventuate, however. Two other girls had come to the hotel after the match, and were removed by the hotel manager. Somehow he got the wrong impression about Sash and I, and almost asked us to leave as well. Our mother had to inform him, much to his embarassment, that we were legitimate guests at the hotel. Then the team arrived, in what is now a blur of team gear and cricket bags. Chris Drum was first, then a group, with Stephen Fleming to the fore. Three stragglers followed: Shayne O'Connor, a young Daniel Vettori, and twelfth man Dion Nash. Sash approached Dion Nash. "You're the greatest cricketer ever," she told him, as we had planned. He was typically modest. "Oh, yeah, sure," he said, in his drawn-out, gentle way. "Now you're just going to go and say that to O'Connor." "No, it's true," I threw in. Then, Sash holding the sheet of paper on which he had scrawled his signature, we stepped back, and watched as the team filed into the lift, up, away, and out of sight. We had seen New Zealand play only once, and in his first game back, Dion Nash couldn't quite do the impossible and win it for New Zealand. Our encounter was brief, and few words were exchanged - but it was enough. At home, on the internet and in newspapers, Sash and I devoted ourselves to the New Zealand Cricket Team, and one brilliant but injury-prone all-rounder.
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