New Zealand fast bowler Blair Tickner has spoken of the perspective he has found on life and cricket since his wife Sarah went through eight months of cancer treatment following a leukaemia diagnosis in April 2024. Sarah came out of hospital on Christmas Eve, 2024, and has been in remission since.
"My life, I guess it's been up and down," Tickner said on the eve of the second ODI against India in Wellington. "It's amazing to have Sarah and my family [get] through it all, and I guess now I'm just trying to enjoy my cricket and I've probably been a bit more myself.
"I've had different parts of my career. I guess [at the] start of my career, I felt a lot of pressure. Then we had Sarah's cancer treatment, it was hard, and now I'm sort of at the back end, and I'm looking forward to just having fun, really, and it's what I'm trying to do, to [be] myself really."
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Tickner said the episode helped him realise that cricket had an important place in his life but not an all-consuming one.
"I try to play with a smile on my face, and it's a lot more than cricket, obviously," he said. "It's done a lot for me, but I know that at the end of the day I'm going to go home to my daughter and my wife and I'm pretty happy and pretty lucky to do that. So yeah, cricket's a little bit less than that."
The series-opener in Auckland on Wednesday wasn't the happiest one for New Zealand, with India dominating a rain-affected contest with ball and bat, but Tickner gave their fans reason to smile with an unexpected 23-ball 34 from No. 11. Tickner joked that he was due a promotion above No. 10 Jacob Duffy - with whom he put on 41 for the last wicket - and possibly even beyond.
"Yeah, there were a few conversations before I went out, because I batted alright against England last time I was here [in Wellington], so I gave him [Duffy] a bit of [stick] for that. I'm happy to move up to 10 - I just have to slowly make my way up to No. 3, I think."
That Wellington ODI Tickner referenced against England was a low-scoring game dominated by the seamers. Tickner was Player of the Match, picking up four wickets and scoring an unbeaten 18 in a two-wicket New Zealand win. Tickner hoped the conditions for Saturday's game would be similar, and that the trend of pitches offering bowlers more in the ODIs than in the T20Is would continue. The first ODI was played on the same pitch that hosted the fourth T20I, where New Zealand scored a record 259, but the seamers found considerably more seam movement and bounce.
"Yeah, we saw last year against England as well - there was a little bit more in the wicket then, especially here [in Wellington]," Tickner said. "As a bowler [I'm] hoping for that. I don't want to be at a game where 400 chase[s] 400, so I'm looking forward to a bit of extra bounce, hopefully a bit of nip off the wicket."
The outfield in the Wellington ODI will be of an entirely different shape to the one at Eden Park. Where team plans in Auckland tend to revolve around the exaggeratedly short straight boundaries, they will have to change at Hnry Stadium, where the straight boundaries are significantly longer than the square ones. India's seamers adjusted extremely well to this in the third T20I, bowling full and straight to restrict New Zealand to 198 on a flat batting pitch.
"Dimensions in New Zealand are different every ground we go," Tickner said. "Obviously this is a lot shorter square, and then straight's quite long, so it's completely different to Eden Park, so we probably take that [into account], especially in our death bowling, because one-day cricket you obviously try and take wickets early with more traditional bowling, but definitely at the death we talk about different plans - although I won't tell ya."