KEY POINTS:
Those who take Daniel Vettori at face value have him all wrong.
The New Zealand captain is amiable, polite and well spoken. When he made the national side at 17 he could have been confused for a choir boy.
Even now at first glance you might think swotty
brainbox rather than top professional cricketer.
But those assuming his mild demeanour translates to a gentle-minded leader, reluctant to speak his mind, should think again.
Vettori displayed a firm and forthright tongue during New Zealand's poor Chappell-Hadlee Trophy campaign in Australia.
Not for him the "boys tried hard" line. If he felt a player had not done his job he said so, and publicly.
Take Mark Gillespie's performance in the final ODI at Hobart on Thursday.
Whether Gillespie deserved the spot ahead of Chris Martin is irrelevant to this issue.
Gillespie's eight overs went for 68 as Australia rattled up a match-winning 282 for six. He'd been picked to do a job and he didn't do it.
There was an easy option for Vettori as he assessed the wreckage of a desperately ordinary display. Instead he admitted with hindsight "it wasn't the right decision" to pick Gillespie and put his own hand up.
"Mark probably didn't perform the way he wanted to. In a lot of ways I backed him to do a job and I think it's the prerogative of the captain to do that. It didn't work."
And then there was Lou Vincent, who was dropped for the Hobart match after a poor run of low scores going back through the South African leg of the trip.
Vincent's awful run since his century against Canada at the World Cup in April has produced 94 runs in nine innings in all three forms of the game.
Five days earlier, Vettori had still backed Vincent because he had good form previously in Australia. A bit more thought and he was out.
"It just got to the point where we'd given him a lot of chances and he hadn't scored runs for a period of time. If more guys had been knocking on the door we would have dropped him earlier."
Bang. Talk about cutting to the chase.
The top order batsmen and the seam bowlers didn't impress Vettori at Hobart either on an occasion he felt his team, having been handed a surprise late chance to save a series they cherish, should be right up for the challenge.
This is an admirably straight-talking man. If Vettori maintains his upfront philosophy he will be a refreshing presence.
It has been the captaincy initiation from hell. South Africa, then Australia on the road is as demanding as it gets, both as a player and skipper.
Vettori, a New Zealand player since 1997, had led in the occasional ODI when Stephen Fleming was unavailable. Now it's his hand on the tiller and he wants to do it on his terms.
Vettori has been in charge in 17 ODIs and had his first two tests as skipper in South Africa on the just-completed trip. And it's been an awkward few weeks. New Zealand lost both tests in South Africa, the ODI series 2-1, the Chappell-Hadlee series 2-0 and two Twenty20 internationals at Johannesburg and Perth.
Offered a choice, he might have picked a double helping of Bangladesh, then Zimbabwe at home, looked to fill his boots before settling into the sterner stuff.
Instead, he has discovered the full extent of the task before him.
Bangladesh are next up, starting at Eden Park on Boxing Day. But being on the road for the past couple of months has given Vettori a good indicator of what the job entails.
"Obviously it's been pretty tough, purely from results," he said.
"But I've enjoyed the role on the field, being able to take over and run things the way I've wanted to along with other guys in the team.
"I'm pretty content with my own form, so I suppose that's always the question over bowling captains, whether he can continue to perform."
Off the field, 28-year-old Vettori had to contend with the Shaun Tait throwing controversy and the Adam Gilchrist story, when coach John Bracewell put it about that there might be more to the star Australian missing the Hobart match than the "resting" line from Cricket Australia.
Taking the whole package, on and off the park, Vettori admitted it was probably more demanding than he had envisaged. "You don't realise how much you live and die by what the team is doing when you take over the role fulltime.
"You're always thinking about ways to make the team better, make yourself better.
"That never leaves you until you go to sleep at night.
"When you're that entrenched in it you realise it's a gruelling task, but pretty rewarding, too.
"I know we haven't had too many wins but when they do come along it's one of the better feelings you can have in cricket."
And Vettori's own game? In South Africa, the batsmen didn't get enough runs for him to attack. Too often he was leading a holding operation.
In the two games which were completed in Australia, his left arm spin was tidy, if not penetrative.
So it's a start. Things will get easier.
But the first steps have been taken by a new captain who appeals very much as his own man, with his own way of doing things.
DANIEL VETTORI
* Tests: 75
* Wickets: 232 at 34.71
* Runs: 2328 at 25.58
* ODIs: 207
* Wickets: 208 at 33
HOW TIME FLIES
Vettori's ODI debut
v Sri Lanka, Christchurch 1997
Bryan Young, Nathan Astle, Matt Horne, Stephen Fleming, Chris Cairns, Adam Parore, Chris Harris, Gavin Larsen, Simon Doull, Vettori, Heath Davis.
