Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

The announcement of the two Black Caps squads to tour Zimbabwe highlights the proliferation of New Zealand Cricket’s Major Association players who have made the step up to representing their country since the start of the new millennium.

Wind the clock back to the 1960s and beyond and test cricket was the only format available to players who aspired to represent their country.

One-Day International cricket (ODIs) started to emerge in the 1970s, with the Twenty20 game that consumes considerable attention today some four decades in the future.

The opportunities provided by the three forms of the game today have opened the floodgates of opportunity for players to break into the international arena.

We can only look back and wonder if some of the provincial greats of the 1960s and 1970s would have been selected for New Zealand with today’s opportunities.

One such Western Bay of Plenty cricket legend, who this writer believes would have worn his country’s cricket uniform with the three forms of today’s game available, is Michael John Edward Wright.

In the days when the Hawke Cup was looked upon with the reverence of the Ranfurly Shield, provincial cricket took a prominent place in regional daily newspapers throughout the country.

In the 1960s and 70s, the six Major Association teams earned the sporting headlines, with the Bay of Plenty team’s participation in the Northern Districts provincial competition also given plenty of media attention.

Wright made his Bay of Plenty debut against Poverty Bay in January 1967 as a promising teenage wicketkeeper and stepped aside some 25 years later.

During the intervening seasons, Wright rewrote the Bay of Plenty Cricket Association’s representative record book. Retirement saw him having set new marks for appearances (102), runs (3950), highest score (179no), centuries (four) and fifties (22).

Such is the impact that with his final statements made, the majority of his marks are still in the top echelon of their respective records today. He currently sits fourth on the appearance list, third on runs and eighth on the highest scores of all time.

Wright also made his presence felt in his time within the Northern Districts representative ranks. Sixty-five first-class encounters and 26 ODI appearances in the (then) newest form of the game established his credentials as one of the country’s preeminent wicketkeepers and top-order batters.

Such were his skills behind the stumps, he was selected as the wicketkeeper in the Hawke Cup team of the century in the paper selection announced by New Zealand Cricket in 2011.

Whilst it is wistful thinking about what might have or could have happened in the past, it is surely appreciated that Wright could/would/should have represented New Zealand in international cricket battles in today’s cricket world.