Dunedin resident Dawn Ibbotson (98), of Roslyn, coaxed her daughter Ruth-Mary James (66), granddaughter Susanna Every-Palmer (38) and great-granddaughter Billie Every-Palmer (4) to fly from Wellington to watch the third day of the first test at the University Oval.
Mrs Ibbotson has gone to hundreds of international games.
A memorial for her late husband, Arthur Ibbotson, a past president of New Zealand Cricket, sits above the players' entrance on the Otago Daily Times stand at the oval.
Several international touring teams had dined at their Dunedin home after a day of play, Mrs Ibbotson said.
A fond memory was Kiwi cricketer Bert Sutcliffe playing the piano for guests to sing-along to.
''He could play anything.''
Another, the Pakistani cricket team, touring in the mid-1960s, asked her if they could cook the meal to ensure its spiciness.
The Pakistanis, including Khalid ''Billy'' Ibadulla, concocted a chilli-laden meal, she said, that was ''unbelievably hot''.
Her daughter, Mrs James, said her earliest cricketing memory was scoring a cricket game at Carisbrook when she was 6. Another Carisbrook cricket memory was a game momentarily stopped when her brother, Neal Ibbotson, took a fall doing his scoreboard duties.
Cricket was a part of life and she was grateful to have cricket to listen to in the garden, Mrs James said.
Her daughter, Dr Every-Palmer, said the radio made it easy to find her mother in the garden.
Dr Every-Palmer said the knowledge learnt from her ''cricket mad'' family had served her well when travelling.
When she was a student volunteering in India, it helped her connect with people and helped ''break the ice'' when travelling in a ''tense'' North Pakistan in 2004.
She enjoyed test matches but her daughter, Billie, was more a fan of the shorter version of the game: ''She has twenty/20 concentration.''
When debutant Hamish Rutherford scored his century yesterday, Billie asked her mum if she could give him her new Care Bear as ''she thought he deserved a prize''.
