All cricket and no play
IT’S a good thing for Luke Woodcock that he’s pretty good at cricket.
The 29 year old Johnsonville player spoke of little else during our allotted 20 minute interview in the foyer of Wellington Cricket headquarters in the Westpac Stadium. Rain had meant the transfer of a training session from the Basin Reserve and Woodcock was among the players heading in to the cake tin for practice. Woodcock would have sooner joined them. He appeared genuinely reserved and uncomfortable being interviewed, especially when anything personal was approached. Like when I asked him if he had a partner. There was a long pause before he answered.
“I’m in a relationship,” he eventually says, “but we don’t want to go there aye mate. I’m really here to talk cricket.”
And Woodcock does seem to live and breathe the game. When he’s not playing it he’s watching it on television, or working at his small internet based company Buzzbats selling cricket gear sourced from India.
“I just enjoy the game so much. It’s all about being part of a team and getting to play with your mates.”
Woodcock is a Johnsonville boy, attending Newlands College. Sport was always his “thing” at school and as well as cricket he played school rugby.
“I really enjoyed the cricket the most, and I was better at it than the others.”
He went on to play club cricket at Newlands and Johnsonville, where in 2008 he reached the milestone of 4,000 club cricket runs. An all-rounder (he bats left-handed and bowls with a left-arm orthodox spin) Woodcock plays in all three forms of the game. His first season with the Wellington Firebirds in 2009-10 was outstanding. He scored 988 runs, breaking Wellington’s all-time single season scoring record by a hundred runs and winning the season’s Wellington Player of the Year trophy.
In the past season he made his international Twenty20 and One-Day debuts against Pakistan and then travelled with the Blackcaps as part of their One-Day World Cup squad. He did his second overseas tour in October in the One-Day and Twenty20 series against Zimbabwe.
I asked him what he’d be doing if he wasn’t playing cricket. His New Zealand Cricket online biography says he’d be a barista, but he admits this answer a bit “tongue in cheek”.
“I do like a good flat white, but it would have to be something in and around sport. Coaching young people maybe, or sports administration.”
He’s dabbling in this area already. He’s run Buzzbats for four years and now he’s planning a second small business either in coaching or administration. He also wants to complete a business course.
“Cricket’s pretty full time at the moment and I’ve hopefully got a few years left in me yet, but I’m thinking ahead.”
Meanwhile he does have some free advice for up and coming young cricketers.
“Don’t limit yourselves. Don’t get trapped into being a One-Day or a Four-Day, or a Twenty20 player. Get out and play in all three.”
And as the summer cricket season cranks up Woodcock is confident of the level of play at both a national and Wellington level. He says the recent rush of imports into the Wellington team is “exciting” both for the Firebirds and the New Zealand competition and with a recently new coach and a brand new chief executive he says Wellington Cricket can expect some glorious summers ahead.
So too can the Blackcaps. Woodcock reckons their recent test win against Australia is just a glimpse of things to come.
“The win was a massive boost to the Blackcaps and to everybody involved,” Woodcock says. “There’s a real good feel around cricket at the moment.”
Cricket at the Basin
HRV Cup Twenty20 returns to Wellington over the festive period, with the Hell Wellington Firebirds playing five home round-robin games at the Basin Reserve between December 27 and January 11.
The schedule is:
• Firebirds v Central Stags, 2pm, December 27.
• Firebirds v Auckland Aces, 2pm, December 28.
• Firebirds v Canterbury Wizards, 2pm, January 6.
• Firebirds v Otago Volts, 12noon, January 8.
• Firebirds v Northern Knights, 5pm, January 11.
• Final TBC, January 22.










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