It’s a tough lot being a New Zealand cricket fan, especially for my fellow Gen Ys. We were too young to ever really see Sir Richard Hadlee at his greatest, but old enough to remember the Young Guns era of the early 1990s. The under-arm bowling incident was long since ingrained in the national psyche, while later, on a bold, new era of Fleming, Vettori, Bond and Cairns delivered temporary bouts of brilliance to keep us dreaming of greatness.

So you can imagine my budding interest in this week’s Test at the Gabba between Australia and New Zealand. Two teams, both desperate to rebuild their stocks with New Zealand slightly ahead in this regard. For the briefest of moments, one almost dares to dream again.

However, this was but a distraction to the main event of the week.

Held on the iconic sands of Coogee Beach in Sydney, the Telstra 500 Beach Cricket Clash afforded the Kiwis the first bragging rights as our joint national summer sport gets underway.

Prior to the match, I was quietly confident that our captain, former Test star (and Young Gun) Chris Cairns, who was joined by two-time King of the Mountain Greg Murphy, Fabian Coulthard, and Carrera Cup aces Craig Baird and Daniel Gaunt would propel the Kiwi side to victory.

And why wouldn’t I be? The Aussie’s had called up that other Waugh brother (some guy called Mark, only had a test average of 41.81, I’m sure Cairns scored that once or twice) as captain, alongside V8 drivers Mark ‘Frosty’ Winterbottom, Will Davison, Lee Holdsworth, Michael Caruso and rugby league legend Bradley Clyde. It’s wasn’t a line up that scared me.

I’d heard the pre-talk about Frosty wanting to bowl beamers (apparently Australians call them beams, strange vernacular), national pride on the line, gaining a psychological advantage before the Sydney Telstra 500 this weekend, but what really matters was that I knew the Kiwis were going to win.

Why? It’s because we’re simply bred to win beach cricket. Our beaches are colder, they’re full of stones, the sand is more coarse, there’s shells and twigs and that just makes us tougher when it comes to sports that take place on the sand. It’s comparable to a couple of oval ball sports where we play in freezing wind, torrential rain and knee deep mud and are current World Cup holders of.

And my boys didn’t disappoint, easily accounting for their Aussie counterparts. You can check out the footage below for the full story and also to get a lesson in what makes a champion beach cricket side. Of course I had been prepared to use the video as a list of excuses had we lost, such as dodgy umpiring, illegal bowling techniques, sand got in my eye, etc etc.

Importantly, now that the serious business of Beach Cricket is out of way, the V8 lads can get back to the Sydney Telstra 500. Don’t forget you can follow all the Sydney Telstra 500 action on the V8 Supercars website www.v8supercars.com.au or on your compatible Telstra Next G™ mobile at ST500.mobi.