This November I'm playing for the Movember New Zealand XI in the 2026 Movember 5-Day Test: five full days of cricket against NZ Defence Force Sport at Weedons Cricket Club in Christchurch, from 25 to 29 November.

Five days is a long time to bat and wicket keep. It's also five days spent shoulder to shoulder with your mates, and that's the real reason I'm out there.

This matters to me personally. There have been stretches where I carried more than I let on, hid it behind a busy diary and a quick "yeah, all good", and told myself I'd handle it alone. What got me through were my partner, my family and friends and the moments someone asked a real question and stayed for the real answer, and the moments I finally did the asking myself.

That experience left me with a simple goal: I want to be someone other men can genuinely talk to. A mate who's been there himself, who can hear a hard answer to "how are you?" without flinching, and who'll stay in the conversation past the awkward bit. If backing this team helps even one bloke say out loud the thing he's been sitting on, the whole match will have been worth it.

Cricket turns out to be a near-perfect vehicle for this. A five-day match is full of gaps: between overs, at drinks, over lunch, in the sheds at stumps. Those gaps are where the real talk happens, because men tend to open up side by side rather than face to face, when hands are busy and nobody has to make eye contact. There's nowhere more side by side than a slips cordon.

The need is stark. Movember's Real Face of Men's Health report found that three in every four New Zealanders who die by suicide are men, and suicide is the leading cause of death for young men aged 15 to 34. Behind each of those numbers is someone's mate, dad, son or brother, and most of them never said out loud that they were struggling.

Your donation funds Movember's work in mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer: practical programmes that help men recognise when they're struggling, and help the rest of us know what to say and do when they are.

So here's my ask. Chuck in whatever you can, big or small. Come out to Weedons between 25 and 29 November and watch some (occasionally) decent cricket. And if you're a bloke reading this who's carrying something heavy right now, my inbox and my phone are open, and I mean that.

If things ever feel urgent, you can free call or text 1737 any time to talk with a trained counsellor.

Thanks for backing me, the team, and every man who needs a nudge to start talking.

Cheers,
Tim