"I'm a pretty boring bloke to be honest. I have never been the life of the party, I am pretty focused on what I want to try to do." Photo / Paul Taylor
"I'm a pretty boring bloke to be honest. I have never been the life of the party, I am pretty focused on what I want to try to do." Photo / Paul Taylor
He's the quiet but firm thinker driving the revival of our national cricket team. And yes, he could play a bit too, New Zealand coach Mike Hesson tells Steve Deane.
Heard the story about the day Mike Hesson and Brendon McCullum combined in a fighting 99-run stand to dig their side out of a nasty hole?
Of course not.
Everyone knows the Black Caps coach and captain are close; the absolute trust, complementary natures and skillsets of the master blaster and scholarly facilitator have forged the country's cricket team into a unit rated a genuine chance of winning the World Cup. But everyone also knows the diminutive, bespectacled, baby-faced Hesson was never good enough to play alongside the likes of international batting superstar McCullum, or against the likes of Chris Cairns, Kyle Mills and Daniel Vettori.
Except, of course, he was - grafting a patient 67 from 248 balls in that game for Otago B in 2001, as McCullum smacked 65 from 87 balls from the other end, against a Northern Districts attack that included six-test seamer Brent Arnel and Black Caps ODI bowler Alex Tait.
Hesson has spent his coaching career fending off criticism of his own playing skills, including the persistent rumour that he once scored a century against the Otago women's team - and was so proud of the achievement he listed it on his CV. Some suggest it's a malicious fiction circulated by his detractors, many of whom belong to an old boys' club of former players who believe an international career is a prerequisite for the country's top coaching job.
The truth, in fact, is somewhere in between.
Hesson scored his century for the Otago Women's team - against Australia at Carisbrook in a warm-up match for the 2000 Women's World Cup.
"Australian women, yeah," says Hesson when the Weekend Herald mentions the anecdote. He's aware the story is used to belittle him but, regardless, has never felt the need to defend his playing ability.
"I guess I'm not a guy to ... one of the things I don't do in my current job is throw out 'this is what I used to do when I played'. Players quickly turn off if all you can offer as a coach is what you used to do as a player.
"Look, I played enough. I opened the batting against guys bowling 145km/h. I know the feeling. I could play a bit. Aged 18 to 20 I was a decent player. I'd scored a lot of runs in England, still got a few records over there now. But when I came back I was 21, I'd bought a house and needed to forge a career and I chose to go down the coaching path. Looking back that seems like the right thing to do."
The 'who is Mike Hesson?' story has been penned a couple of times already, the tone and content varying as his career has progressed from remarkably youthful-looking unknown (who is that guy and why have NZC appointed a child?) to much admired former captain Ross Taylor's executioner (who does this guy think he is?).
Now, with the Black Caps having bucked the weight of a crushingly mediocre history to emerge as a world cricket power, it's time for another, perhaps more considered, version of the Hesson narrative.
Otago Cricket chief and neighbour Ross Dykes has had as much to do with Hesson as anybody. On his first day on the job around 10 years ago, Dykes had to appoint a successor for departing coach Glenn Turner.
"We had three candidates," says Dykes. "The other two probably had higher profiles than he did but it only took about 10 minutes of listening to him to realise Mike was the right man for the job."
Hesson was extremely organised, thorough and clear. He had a vision, and a plan to achieve it. He quickly established a disciplined work ethic within an Otago squad that would go on to achieve domestic success for the first time in decades.
"Before the Hesson era, some Otago cricketers made the headlines for the wrong reasons," Dykes said at a function to mark Hesson's departure in 2011 to take up what would be an aborted two-year contract as coach of Kenya. "Mike turned a bunch of country guys into a very good and well-behaved team. He had the ability to communicate the facts of any situation without offending anyone."
Coach Mike Hesson with Martin Guptill at a Black Caps' training session in Napier. Photo / Warren Buckland
That view would appear at odds with how Taylor's removal as captain went down. Hesson was widely lambasted for telling Taylor he wanted to replace him with McCullum just four days before a test match against Sri Lanka. Taylor would later say he felt Hesson had never supported him. Their was a widespread belief that Hesson had always wanted his close friend McCullum as captain and the pair had conspired to make that happen. It was a dreadful look.
"The timing wasn't great and he might have been ill-advised," says Dykes. "But what didn't surprise me was that he made a considered decision and had the strength to stick by it. He believed in himself and believed in his ideas. I don't think he lost credibility and I don't think he ever let himself down.
"He didn't waver and history, I think, has proved him right."
Alex McKenzie runs High Performance Sport NZ's coaching accelerator programme. Now into its seventh year, the programme aims to take the country's finest coaches and make them even better. Hesson and the likes of All Blacks coach Steve Hansen and Cycling NZ track coach Dayle Cheatley were part of the inaugural induction in 2009. Despite being one of the less experienced coaches, Hesson was particularly impressive, says McKenzie.
"He's very reflective, very thoughtful. But, having said that, he was quite a strong character, never afraid to express his views if he disagreed with anybody, and was very articulate in being able to argue his point of view. He wasn't backward in coming forward when he felt he needed to. I think you can see that in his coaching. He is not afraid to make hard calls."
The public backlash over Taylor's removal hurt Hesson deeply ("It came as a bit of shock to suddenly have people looking at me sideways in the street," he said at the time) but McKenzie never doubted he would hang tough.
"There were some pretty dark moments in some of what the media were portraying him as. He stayed the course, if you like. He's a got a vision. He knows what he wants to achieve and he is prepared to do what it takes to get there without compromising his values."
Hesson's parents separated when he was 3. His mother, Cecilia, largely raised Michael and his older brother Karl. Cecilia was a successful management consultant and the family travelled a lot, living for periods in Australia, Denmark and Britain.
The regular upheaval came with its challenges. For the Hesson boys, and Michael in particular, cricket was a welcome constant.
Stories he penned at school as a 5 and 6-year-old learning to write were always about cricket. In between backyard games with Karl, he devoured books about the game.
"I was always known as a cricket nut from a young age," he says.
While Mike was pursuing his cricketing dreams, Karl Hesson forged a career in Sydney as a chef. Karl had recently returned to New Zealand with his family to set up a restaurant and function centre when he was diagnosed with terminal melanoma at the age of 33. Mike took time off from his job coaching Otago to be with his dying brother.
"We were very close. Things all happened very quickly. It was a very horrible time."
Cecilia found an outlet in art following the death of her son. She established a successful sculpture business and moved to Texas. Mike was never arty. He went back to being a cricket coach.
The trust, complementary natures and skillsets of Brendon McCullum (left) and Hesson have forged the Black Caps into a unit rated a genuine chance of winning the World Cup. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"I'm a pretty boring bloke to be honest. I have never been the life of the party, I am pretty focused on what I want to try to do. I enjoy being around guys having fun but I am not generally the centre of it."
Successfully critiquing one's own personality is not the easiest thing to do, but Hesson seems to have nailed himself fairly squarely.
A 21st birthday speech about his amusing escapades wouldn't last all that long, says his wife Kate.
A lawyer and mother of the couple's two girls (Holly, 8 and Charlie, 4), Kate was studying at Otago University and working as a waitress at Dunedin's Etrusco at the Savoy Italian restaurant when she met Hesson. He was the bar manager. Opposites attracted.
"I'm very loud and attention-seeking and he's ... um, he's not," says Kate.
Consistent, considerate and considered are the adjectives she uses to sum up her husband.
"With Mike you get what you see. He has got it together. He is quite a hard person but he will definitely have a joke. You can take the piss out of him and he is self-deprecating. He is just a good, steady bloke. He's quite a serious person, he's not like the class clown. He won't be the centre of attention but he is a leader. Because he is quiet, people gravitate towards him. And he is very fair."
When pressed, Hesson lists golf, cooking and experiencing different cultures and foods among his interests.
"I enjoy things like going out for a nice meal and spending time with the family. That's sort of about me, really."
His natural tendency to avoid the spotlight has dovetailed neatly with the more garrulous personality of Black Caps captain Brendon McCullum, who serves as the team's natural front man. The depth of the pair's friendship, however, has been overstated, particularly during the furore over Taylor's removal as captain, says Kate, who likens the relationship to office colleagues who might be more naturally inclined to go for a beer together after work.
"They are not best friends. They have got a really good working relationship, a lot of mutual respect. But they are not in each other's pocket. I think their social relationship has been overplayed. It is predominantly a professional relationship."
Even so, Hesson probably sees more of McCullum than he does his wife. At one point she totted up the number of days he'd been away in a year - the figure came to 311. The time commitments have eased off slightly, however Kate estimates her husband gets about one genuine day off every eight weeks. It's not a sustainable lifestyle long-term, but coaching New Zealand represents the pinnacle of Hesson's career ("he has always been passionate about cricket and he is a real Kiwi, passionate about New Zealand"), so sacrifices are made.
"It is something I have to thank her for every day," says Hesson.
Another person he has thanked for having a significant impact on his life is former New Zealand wicketkeeper Barry Milburn, his coach at the Taieri club when he first played senior club cricket as a teenager.
Now living in Australia, Milburn isn't surprised by Hesson's coaching success.
"He worked hard," Milburn says. "He was also a good listener. He thinks about what he says and was a very good wee thinker. He wasn't full of himself at all. He's not one of those mouthy types. He'll listen to the other person's point of view and then make decisions. That's very, very important about Michael, with his life and with his cricket.
"He was only a wee, short fella but a very good little club cricketer."
In case you didn't pick it up in those descriptions, Hesson is small, standing just 1.68m (5ft6). That stature, his youth and lack of an international career would have all counted against him in his quest to become an international coach. He wasn't the first choice for the job when he was appointed Black Caps coach in July 2012.
Six months later, as the captaincy saga unfolded, he was a distinctly unpopular choice. But he was the right choice. Heading into today's quarterfinal against the West Indies in Wellington, the Black Caps have won an unprecedented 15 out of their last 17 ODIs. They might just be heading to the top of the world.
In the end, the answer to the question of who is Mike Hesson is an easy one. He's a coach.
A pretty darn good one.
Mike Hesson
Born: October 30, 1974
Married: To Kate, a lawyer. They have two daughters, Holly, aged 8, and Charlie, 4.
July 2012: Appointed Black Caps coach, replacing legendary former NZ batsman John Wright.
December 2012: Replaced Ross Taylor with Brendon McCullum as captain in a drawn-out saga.
February 2014: Dropped public favourite Jesse Ryder after he was seen drinking at an Auckland bar the night before a test against India.
March 2015: Under his leadership, New Zealand head into today's World Cup quarter-final against the West Indies having won 15 of their last 17 one-day internationals.
