KEY POINTS:
LONDON - The man who will lead New Zealand on to the field at Lord's in the Test match starting tomorrow, subject to his injured spinning finger recovering in time, is a grizzled veteran on the international cricket stage.
It is more than 11 years since Daniel Vettori made his test debut, and the 245 wickets he has subsequently taken include career-best match figures of 12 for 149 against the mighty Australians. Nor can anyone claim more Test dismissals of Shane Warne than Vettori.
He's no slouch with the bat, either. He is one of only three Kiwis to have achieved the test double of 200 wickets and 2,000 runs, and he has two Test centuries to his name.
One was 137 not out against a formidable Pakistani attack, in 2003. The other, picked off in 82 balls against Zimbabwe, remains the quickest test match hundred by any New Zealander, ever.
Yet perhaps the most significant figure relating to the lanky, bespectacled, studious-looking Vettori is his age: he won't be 30 until next year. He looks less like a gnarled old pro than a kindly young prep schoolmaster.
We meet in the members' lounge at The Rose Bowl, on a glorious Hampshire day of billowing cumulus in an otherwise deep blue sky. Brendon McCullum is leading New Zealand against England Lions, giving Vettori a day off. The irony has doubtless not escaped him that the Rose Bowl is now the home ground of Shane Bond, the accomplished fast bowler whose contract with New Zealand Cricket has been terminated, following his stint in the rebel Indian Cricket League. Vettori must also cope with the absence of Stephen Fleming, his erstwhile captain, now retired. But, understandably, he prefers to focus on the players he has, rather than those missing.
"It's an incredibly important tour for us, coming off a series defeat against England at home," he says.
"But we're all excited by the prospect. Most of the guys are relatively new to it. There's myself in terms of test experience, then a big drop to Chris Martin, 35 [tests] or so, and that generally breeds more excitement, coming to England for your first test series. I'm sure they won't be overawed, but Lord's is a pretty big occasion for any New Zealand cricketer. You grow up thinking about it. Everyone talks about the place with such reverence."
It is not quite the blue riband occasion for a Kiwi cricketer, he adds. A home debut has the edge, and so, perhaps, does a test in Melbourne or Sydney.
"But a lot of our cricket derives from the English game. Our guys have always dreamt about playing at Lord's, The Oval and Trent Bridge. That feeling maybe subsided a little as we got our own identity as a cricketing nation, but still, to walk into the dressing room and see those names on the honours board [of players who have recorded a test century or five wickets in an innings at the ground]. That excites most cricketers."
I ask him whether he will be looking for the name of his distinguished compatriot and chairman of selectors, Sir Richard Hadlee, on the honours board tomorrow.
"Yeah. I think he's up there three times." A short laugh. "You ask him. He'll tell you."
It is conceivable that Vettori might yet eclipse Hadlee's Black Caps record of 431 test wickets. Is it an ambition of his to do so? "That's a hard one. At my current rate I'd have to play 130 or 140 tests, and anyway it would be nice if he keeps the record. He was such an amazing bowler and probably our greatest cricketer. It's a long way off. There are other things I want to tick off first."
One of which is captaining his country to a series victory in England. But the portents aren't good. Not only is his team shorn of much of the talent that has glittered most over the past few years, but the opposition will be buoyed by their 2-1 win earlier this year in New Zealand.
On the up side, there's no Andrew Flintoff to worry about.
"Yeah, and we have our own Andrew Flintoff in Jacob Oram. We know how important it is for the balance of a side to have a great all-rounder."
But the Englishman who most troubled him and his players in New Zealand was Ryan Sidebottom, who is not only fit for Lord's, but in ominously good nick.
"Yeah, he was the real difference between the two sides in the last series. Not just fast, left-arm swing bowling, but in long, long spells. He had a 14-over spell in the Napier test match, and he kept the pace up. It seemed that every time England needed a wicket he was summoned and did the job. Twenty-four wickets in a Test series is some achievement."
The one England bowler he has watched more keenly than any other, however, is Monty Panesar, like him an orthodox, left-arm spinner. And Vettori declares himself a fan.
"He keeps it simple, and it's nice to watch him. If he stays consistent he'll have a lot of success, and actually he can be a very good one-day bowler as well if he gets a prolonged run at it. It took me 50 one-dayers to learn how to bowl in one-day cricket."
Vettori studies other cricketers intently; that cerebral look is no facade. Moreover, anyone who played under Fleming for as long as he did knows that cricket is a thinking man's game. I ask him what he learnt from his canny predecessor?
"Stephen's calmness," he replies. "He never fluctuated with the emotion of the game, and that's important for a captain. With 10 other players riding the highs and lows, you can't have the man in charge doing that as well. I'm not quite as emotionless on the field, but that's more a bowling thing. There are a lot of similarities in the way we captain, but with him being a batter and me a bowler, there's a different dynamic. The greatest thing he did for me personally was let me captain my own bowling. He recognised that I had an innate understanding of my fields."
Not too many spinners down the years have also been great test captains, I venture; Richie Benaud, Ray Illingworth and Bishan Bedi spring to mind, but not many more. Why does he think this is? "Because there's generally only one of you in the team, and there's a perception that you have an understanding of your own game, but not how a fast bowler thinks, or how a batsman thinks. A spinner is generally his own man, not thought of as the captaincy type. But I've been in this team for so long that I hope I've evolved to become more than a spin bowler."
He was only a fortnight beyond his 18th birthday when he made his Test debut, and his debut test wicket, caught first slip, was that of Nasser Hussain, who just three weeks earlier had also been his first first-class victim. It was a dramatic launch on to the world stage, and Vettori benefited from the speed of it.
"It came as an immense surprise, and I never really had time to feel nervous," he says.
The ever-generous Warne was the source of much early advice, which perhaps Ferntree Gully's finest later had cause to regret; Vettori bagged him nine times in Test matches.
"But he got me out plenty too," he says, with a smile. "A lot of spinners are aggressive with other spinners, and he always tried to hit me a long, long way. Outside of New Zealand he's been one of the most influential people in my career. For an 18-year-old to talk about the game with him, the greatest bowler there's ever been, was fantastic. That developed a lot through the years. He gave me advice on technical stuff, like how the shoulder not being in the right spot leads to this or that. What I admired most about him was his ability to work batsmen out. I try to do that, although obviously I'm not as talented as him and I'm not a great turner of the ball, but I think I understand what batsmen are trying to do and try to counter it."
I press him for an example. He cites Adam Gilchrist, on a bouncy wicket in Perth.
"Before he even came to the wicket I decided I'd bowl him two quick ones and a third slow one, and get him caught close, and it came off. But there are countless times they don't come off."
Vettori is a modest fellow, and seems happier talking about the negatives of a mostly gilded career. His face positively lights up when I ask him who has walloped him for the biggest six. "Mark Waugh," he says immediately.
"It's brought up probably once a day within this camp, and I'm grateful Chris Cairns is not still in this side because he brought it up more than once a day. That was also at Perth. Waugh hit me over the Lillee-Marsh stand, and there was a graph in the paper the next day giving its trajectory and projected distance. It's folklore in our side."
I suppose he can expect more of the same treatment, with the explosion of Twenty20 cricket. Vettori played for the Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League (a legitimate enterprise in the eyes of the New Zealand board) and has comforting words for all the anxious traditionalists in the egg-and-bacon ties tomorrow.
"I still see test cricket as the pinnacle," he says. "But I'm a realist, and the New Zealand cricket team is not financially as secure as some other nations round the world."
His own value in the IPL auction was a cool US$625,000 ($819,000).
"Which was hugely surprising," he says, "but none of those guys was there just for the money. It was highly competitive, and it gave me a great insight into other cricketers from around the world. I'd played against Glenn McGrath for 11 years, but now I know what it's like to sit in a dressing room with him. As long as it's balanced with the Test and one-day programmes, it's great for the game. It's an exciting part of the cricket trilogy, and Brendon's innings [of 158 in the IPL's inaugural match last month] gave the competition the credibility it was crying out for. As a New Zealander I was really proud of him."
Would he swap it for a test-winning McCullum knock of 158 this week at Lord's, though? I don't bother asking the question, because I'm pretty sure of the answer.
- INDEPENDENT
