Last week we gave each other for Christmas a Kindle electronic reader. And what an astonishing piece of equipment it has turned out to be.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, an e-reader is a mini computer. Our Kindles measure 19cm deep by 12cm wide, with a screen 1.2cm deep and 9cm wide, complete with computer-type keyboard and weighing about the same as a paperback book.

Into this little piece of magic we can each load up to 3500 books, enough to fill a small suburban library — on top of the dictionaries and user guides which are preloaded. Our Kindles are tied to amazon.com, from which we have been buying conventional books for years. Amazon has 950,000 e-reader books available to buy, and another million free.

The other night I logged in to Amazon on my laptop (the keyboard on the reader is a bit small for my big hands but can do the job, too), called up a book I wanted to buy and clicked a button on the screen. I did that three more times for three more books.

By the time I strolled back to the lounge from the study, all four were loaded in my reader via our wireless internet connection — at a cost of about $25, charged automatically to my credit card.

To read them, all we have to do is start the device, click on the relevant book — and there it is on the screen. Page-turning requires a mere touch of a button without moving my hands and if I put it down for an hour or a day in the middle of a read and the device turns itself off, when I restart it, it will open at same place I left it.

This incredible gadget has all sorts of other functions to make reading easy. Amazon reports that it sells 105 kindles for every 100 conventional books and statistics from the US reveal that at least half of the owners are 50 or over and a quarter aged 60 to 80.

I can understand that. The readers are particularly good for older people since they can change print size at the touch of a button, and using one is easier than turning pages in a conventional book if you have damaged hands.

You can never permanently lose an e-book. Annoying as it would be to drop your e-reader in the bath, or leave it on a bus, once bought the books you have downloaded are always yours, available to re-download free.

Best of all, perhaps, even those of us who are limited in our understanding and operation of computer gear find e-readers are pretty simple to use.

Getting an e-book doesn’t mean printed books become a thing of the past. There are a number of my favourite authors whose novels are not yet available in Kindle editions so my visits to the library, while less frequent, will still be necessary.

But when I go on holiday, I will have to take only one “book”.

And now for another favourite subject of mine. You have to have a skin as thick as an elephant’s, eternal optimism and endless patience to be a fan of the New Zealand cricket team. And every one of those was tested to the limit in the first test against Australia at Brisbane over the weekend.

The New Zealanders played like a bunch of schoolkids having a knock around in the back yard. It was a disgraceful performance by professional sportsmen and to see team members grinning and joking in the stands while their side was being demolished by a tyro fast bowler was enough to make me squirm.

There is something seriously wrong in the upper echelons of New Zealand Cricket for this sort of debacle to happen. The constant changes in personnel, positions and policies in team management and coaching need to be looked at rather hard.

I have admiration for and faith in coach John Wright but I wonder how much his proven ability (think India for five years) is being undermined by questionable changes in management and selection — and particularly their “scientific” and mind-bending dimensions.

The last thing these young men, all of whom have a natural talent for the game, need is someone getting into their heads and trying to change the way they think.

None of this was deemed necessary in the heyday of New Zealand cricket when the likes of Hadlee, Chatfield, Turner, Coney, the Crowes and co provided us with a respected, internationally competitive side.