New Zealand vs Australia Test series all too rare due to decades of indifference

It's almost fitting that this Test series between New Zealand and Australia starts on as obscure a date as February 29.

There have only been five Tests in the 2,531-match history of Test cricket, encompassing 36 leap years, that have started on a leap day, with Thursday's match being the sixth.

It's a rarity that is in keeping with the scarcity of Test matches between the two nations.

That might sound incredible — surely these two neighbourly Test-playing nations, geographically removed from the rest of the world's cricketing powers, would embrace their mutual isolation with regular contests?

Apparently not.

When the two teams line up at Wellington's Basin Reserve on Thursday, it will be the first time in eight long years Australia's Test side has travelled to play a Test in New Zealand.

Just a short flight away, New Zealand's geographical proximity lends itself to the closest of ties — sporting, social and political.

So it might seem baffling that the neighbourly congeniality that extends between the countries across so many facets does not quite stretch to the number of meetings on the cricket pitch — at least not in the red ball format.

But the facts remain: In the 78 years of Test match cricket between the two nations, Australia has played New Zealand just 60 times.

An ambivalent one-way attitude 

To put that into perspective, over that same 78-year time frame, the Aussies have played 23 Tests at Lord's alone — only just shy of the 26 total Tests they've played in New Zealand.

Since the first official trans-Tasman meeting, Australia has played over three times more Tests against far-flung rivals England (218 matches).

Only against Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have Australia played fewer Tests — apart from, of course, Afghanistan or Ireland, who they, like the vast majority of full members, haven't deigned to play a Test against even once.

New Zealand have played far fewer Tests than Australia since 1946 — 692 to 454 — but most have been against England (100), making a mockery of the relatively easy transport between the two Antipodean neighbours.

Those numbers suggest that the early attitude of Australia to New Zealand appears to be of ambivalence, if not outright condescension — the near-27-year gap between the first and second official Test matches highlighting a remarkable lack of appetite for trans-Tasman contests in cricket.

Thankfully, the paucity of competitive fixtures is not shared among other sports: Australia and New Zealand are each other's most frequent opponents in international rugby union, rugby league and football.

And it's not like there was some kind of invisible force field that limited sporting travel between the two nations between 1946 and 1971 either.

The Wallabies and All Blacks met 33 times in those 27 years, with the Wallabies fitting in a further seven matches against the New Zealand Māori: 40 of the Wallabies' 109 matches in that time came against New Zealand opposition.

Australia were plenty busy enough within that lengthy gap on the cricket field mind you, playing England a whopping 71 times, India 25 times, the West Indies 30, South Africa 29 and Pakistan nine times — including making a remarkable 22 overseas tours between their first and second trips to New Zealand.

The inaugural Test between the two nations was something of a drought-breaker in itself — the Wellington meeting of March 1946 was the first Test to be played globally since England's Oval draw with the West Indies in August 1939, the last before the outbreak of hostilities in World War II.

It has to be said, the result in that first meeting — and the manner of how it came about — may have played something of a role in Australia's reticence to head to its nearest Test-playing neighbour.

Australia — without the ill Don Bradman, who didn't travel — won by an innings and 103 runs despite only scoring 8-199 at a soggy Basin Reserve ground as New Zealand were bowled out for 42 and 54 for the match — only afforded Test status retrospectively — to be over inside two days.

It remains the 10th shortest completed Test match ever played in terms of the number of balls bowled.

That suggested, perhaps, that the Kiwis — selecting from a population of just 1.6 million in the 1940s — simply were not up to the rigours of Test cricket, leaving the Australians to take on meatier opposition such as England and India.

'Vulgar' crowd abuse mars recent meetings

Despite results in recent decades showing that New Zealand are more than worthy international opponents, there has continued to be a desperate lack of fixtures against Australia in red ball cricket.

In the last 30 years Australia has played New Zealand in just 28 Tests, only the sixth-most regular fixture Australia has of the nine Test playing nations they have played (excluding Afghanistan and Ireland).

Interestingly, in an era or reciprocal tour arrangements, there has been a real disparity between the number of Tests hosted by Australia and by New Zealand in bilateral series.

Granted, that is also true in fixtures with Pakistan, but when you account for the fact that Pakistan did not play a Test series on home soil for 10 years between 2009 and 2019 due to security risks, it's pretty galling.

That is not reflected, necessarily, in one-day cricket: New Zealand has played more ODIs (142) against Australia than any other team.

For Australia, that is on par with the amount of games they have played against England (156), India (151) and the West Indies (146).

Perhaps more galling though, is the number of overseas Test tours that have taken place in the last three decades.

Australia has toured India (nine times), England, South Africa (both eight), the West Indies (six) and Sri Lanka (five) more often than New Zealand (four, prior to this series).

When you consider Australia has travelled three times to Pakistan over the past 30 years — including Pakistan's enforced nomadic decade of Test matches — New Zealanders might have a right to feel snubbed.

If you include Test series against Pakistan that were held in neutral territory (Sri Lanka, the UAE and England), Australia toured against Pakistan seven times in that period for 18 Tests.

That being said, the last time Australia toured New Zealand in 2016, the home supporters hardly rolled out the welcome mat.

David Warner described being "hounded for six or seven hours" daily during the Test matches in 2016.

"It doesn't matter if you're home or away, you're going to cop some form of abuse," Warner said.

"The upsetting thing was the fact that, I know if my two daughters were in the crowd I wouldn't want them listening to that sort of stuff.

"When they're talking about people's families and stuff it takes it a little bit too far and I think some of the boys raised the issue."

This, of course, occurring during the same series when Steve Smith and Josh Hazlewood were both fined for dissent after an aggressive LBW decision — correctly — went against the Aussies in the second Test.

Huge crowds show appetite for trans-Tasman tours

The lack of Test contests between the two nations is even more surprising given the crowds that witnessed the 2019/20 tour, the last time the two sides met in red ball cricket.

A crowd of 80,473 watched day one of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, then the seventh highest in Australian Test history and the second biggest for a non-Ashes fixture on Boxing Day.

In total, 203,472 watched the four days, bolstered by a huge contingent of New Zealand supporters watching the first Trans-Tasman Boxing Day Test in 32 years — and just the fourth appearance of the Kiwis at the MCG in a Test.

With those numbers, it's almost impossible to reconcile the apparent apathy Australian authorities have had to the fixture.

On the field, there's no doubt that New Zealand underperformed in that series, losing all three Tests by soul-destroying margins of over 200 runs.

Of course, the crowd numbers in New Zealand are not even going to come close to that heady summer four years ago.

The maximum number of spectators that can be housed in Wellington's homely Basin Reserve ground is just 11,600.

Hagley Park in Christchurch, which will host the second Test, has a standard capacity of 9,000, which can be boosted to 18,000 if required with temporary seating.

Why don't they play more often?

As ever, if a sporting decision doesn't make sense, one should look at the finances. 

New Zealand, population 5 million, simply does not have the same income-generating potential as more lucrative trips to the subcontinent.

Then there's the time zone — a minimal two hours, sure, but the wrong way — the climax of each day's play ends well before prime-time on the east coast of Australia.

But in truth, perhaps it's the time of year that's the problem.

March means football in Australia, with cricket consigned to distant dreams and far off lands at least until Christmas decorations start reappearing in the local shopping centre.

Where do these Tests fit? Are they a part of the summer of cricket? Should we be playing cricket in Autumn at all?

In a formulaic sporting calendar, this series simply doesn't fit in to the neat and prescribed boxes cricket has been allocated within the year.

As such, there is a risk that the entire series could pass the sporting public by — much in the same way that Australian cricket has seemingly spent most of the last seven decades ignoring its little cousin across the ditch.

That would be a fundamental error: New Zealand, while not quite as strong as the team that won the inaugural World Test Championship — a trophy now held by the Aussies — still pose a clear and ever-present threat that deserves far more respect than it is often afforded.

Australia may have ended their domestic summer with a 4-1 record, but that does not tell the true story of two series that surpassed the minimal expectations placed upon it when the fixtures were confirmed.

What had been written off as a hum-drum summer of easy victories was anything but, and if not for a couple of butter-fingered Pakistani slip fielders, a 4-1 overall scoreline could have been very different.

New Zealand have warmed up with this series by smashing an understrength South Africa in consecutive Tests, with Kane Williamson proving once again that he is one of the world's premier Test match batters. 

One must hope that there is more interest in this series than the mismatch New Zealand just endured against South Africa, which plunged Test cricket back onto its death bed just a handful of days after the West Indies and England administered to it the kiss of life.

After all, this is a series that deserves more than to be a post-summer sideshow, despite what the schedulers think.

ABC Sport is live blogging every ball of Australia's Test series against New Zealand from Thursday, February 29. Follow all the action from Wellington's Basin Reserve ground from 8:00am AEDT.

ABC Sport will also have ball by ball coverage on the ABC Listen App from 0845 AEDT each day, just look for the red cricket ball.