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This ground is Test cricket's most recent venue after hosting Bangladesh in a match just a few weeks ago. It became the 96th venue to host Tests and you can see why it was chosen.

The ground is one of the most beautiful in the country with a historic original grandstand which has been here since it was first developed back in 1930.

It is actually built on reclaimed land, the site formerly being Lake Logan.

We drove to Dunedin from Christchurch on Sunday, a journey which took about five hours with a couple of brief stop-offs to view what my fellow traveller, Radio 5 live reporter Alison Mitchell, had told me were "must see attractions".

However I may be forced to ask for my money back from "Mitchell Tours" as they did not quite deliver what was promised.

Our first brief stop was at Oamaru where Alison had told me we would see a famous colony of blue penguins. But when we arrived in the afternoon we were told that the animals would not be ashore for at least another five hours.

Then we moved onto the which the Mitchell Tour brochure described as "impressive ,huge spherical stones scattered over the beach". By the time we got there the vast majority of the boulders were under the water as the tide had come in.

However Alison redeemed herself at the end when we stopped off on the coast to send an interview via our mobile satellite. The picnic area we found just happened to be next to a large family of fur seals who watched on rather bemused as we played the studio an interview with England coach Peter Moores.

Dunedin itself is very much a student city with one fifth of the population studying at the prestigious
Students mingled with the Barmy Army to watch the opening day of England's warm-up match although some spent more time playing games of cricket on the boundary edge with wheelie bins as wickets than actually watching the game.

Out in the middle, Andrew Strauss managed to hit his own wicket as he attempted to prevent the ball from rolling back onto his stumps after making just four.

In contrast, Owais Shah rode his luck a little in scoring a fluent 96 including a huge six which had us diving for cover as it looked to be heading straight for us in the media centre.

Sharing our commentary box at the University Oval was the England media manager Andrew Walpole who admitted he was relieved not to be in the shoes of his counterpart with the New Zealand team.

It's been a busy couple of days for the Kiwi media relations team dealing with
The initial news was that Ryder would be out of action for three months after "cutting his hand attempting to gain access to the toilets at a bar".

Then we were informed that Ryder "is to apologise to staff in the Emergency Department of Christchurch Hospital after inappropriate behaviour in the department on Sunday morning".

Ryder will now be forced to spend some of his injury recovery time doing voluntary work.