91Èȱ¬

My sympathy goes out to the pilots and passengers on board that flight from Blenheim to Christchurch, as it was clearly a frightening and disturbing incident.

A number of media were due to be on early flights out of Christchurch, including Test Match Special’s Bryan Waddle, and they had been evacuated from the terminal and were waiting around in car parks.

The England and New Zealand teams were far removed from it all, though. I went down to breakfast, where a number of England players were tucking in.

None of them had year heard about the incident, nor that the airport had closed.

However, England manager Phil Neale and security man Reg Dickason were already making phone calls, and during the next few hours, as players emerged to check out as normal at 10.30am, they simply found they had to wait around in the hotel lounge to see when they might be able to go to the airport.

No panic, no worry, just the prospect of a potentially long, tedious wait.

Cue the laptops, iPods, and in Jimmy Anderson’s case his guitar, to keep themselves amused for however long it took.

Aggers, Arlo White, producer Adam Mountford and I were also waiting there, surrounded by our suitcases, waiting to hear when the airport was reopening. We didn’t have to wait long.

By 11.45am we were on our way to catch our flight – scheduled for 12.15 - with no idea as to whether it would be going at all.

With such a backlog of flights, the queue for check in was horrendous. Several of the English media had already given up hope and hired cars to drive the four or five hours to Picton, in the hope of getting a place on the three-hour ferry trip to Wellington (the flight takes a mere 30 minutes).

Luckily for us, we stuck with the queue, and unbelievably our flight was suddenly called.

By 2.30pm we were safely in Wellington. I’m still not sure where some of our media colleagues have got to. Perhaps they’re on a long, remote road somewhere in the South island or heaving up and down on the choppy waters of the Cook Strait!

As for the England team, they boarded a plane soon after us with no waiting around in the airport, as they tend to arrive and get whisked straight through.

The only impact on the team was that they missed their scheduled practise session in Wellington. Ryan Sidebottom didn’t think it would duly unsettle them ahead of the first one-day international on Saturday.

However it does mean an opportunity missed for those players wanting to impress in practise ahead of team selection for the opening match.

Certainly there are some interesting choices to be made in the middle order with Ravi Bopara challenging Dimitri Mascarenhas and Owais Shah, who both played in .

Alastair Cook was in great form with a century in a warm-up match early in the tour, so should come back in to open the batting at the expense of Luke Wright.

As for me, I was never keen on the ferry option. I sailed from Picton to Wellington a few years ago when the swell was up to five metres. My ferry was the last allowed to leave the port, as the weather was so bad.

Unfortunately it only got worse and the swell bigger as we headed into open water. It was like being on a Pirate Ship ride at the fair. The heaving was relentless, it took an hour longer than usual, and almost every passenger was seasick.

As fast as the crew were picking up used sick bags they were having to hand out fresh ones. To make matters worse, the time it took us to cross these unforgiving seas meant that darkness fell during the journey.

Up until that point, watching the horizon had been my only hope. When darkness fell, that too, soon disappeared.