Some 25,000 Christchurchers came to see the lights, and with the novelty came bright new clothing, dark new shoes, see-through sightscreens and policemen balded by barbers in the worthy name of charity. To top it all, military helicopters flew in low over the play - ' la Apocalypse Now - to give the television cameras their ever-increasing privilege. Call it surreal, call it sensational but don't doubt for a minute that That's Entertainment.
Ten minutes before play began the players lined up in front of the Hadlee Stand while their anthems played. New Zealand's cricketers sang about God defending their country in their uniform of powerful Pacific Green which was splashed by the beloved black and highlighted by the silver fern which proudly covers their chest.
England sang of God and Queen in shades of light blue, and stripes of claret and white. Blazed across their hearts were the three lions and writ large beneath the lions was the future, the ECB logo that will take a reshaped English game into the millennium and beyond.
It would do English cricket no harm to examine the shenanigan in Christchurch last night, to take stock of the unashamed approach in giving the consumer a good time and to rid itself of the devotion to tradition that one-day cricket does not have anyway. New Zealand are no commercial cowboys but they understand the Nineties, the people who live in them, the competition from other less searching entertainment, so they are turning one-day cricket into a party.
In this series of five one-day internationals the marketing men have decreed that each player shall have his own choice of music to accompany him to the crease. Being modern millies, all 22 on view went for rock or pop, or rave or soul, or acid or disco.
Some revealed themselves: man-of-the-match Phil Tufnell avenging the accusations of the past 48 hours with the Oasis song Cigarettes and Alcohol; Darren Gough planning to bop with Katrina and the Waves singing Walking on Sunshine.
Gough was not required to bat or to bop but Glamorgan's Robert Croft was and with whom did he bow as he thumped consecutive winning boundaries through cover? Tom Jones, of course, and Delilah, circa the Sixties.
ALEC Stewart chose Summer of '69 to announce his flamboyant display. Not that Bryan Adams had a touch on the New Zealand Board's choice of mid-over motivation that included Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones and The Eye of the Tiger, which were used to galvanise New Zealand's game attempt to get back into the match.
It didn't work, much like Lee Germon's choice of KC and the Sunshine Band chorusing with That's The Way I Like It fell a little flat, but then it's teething time in the Tinsel Town of cricket that should be lauded for its efforts to take the old game to the new people.