Cricket: Fleming a batsman lost in translation

By STEPHEN BRENKLEY

LEEDS - The way it was going to be for Stephen Fleming was signalled early. In his maiden test he made a half-century, 92 to be exact, in the second innings.

He has revisited what happened in Hamilton 10 years ago a further 34 times. He has revisited it in seven other countries at 21 different grounds, including two in Colombo weeks apart.

He added Headingley to the list in New Zealand's first innings of the second test. When he made a porridge of a shot on 97, it was the 35th occasion on which Fleming had passed 50 without advancing to a hundred. This is a translation rate that suggests he needs a skilled interpreter.

Whatever his considerable merits as a captain - despite a supine demonstration of the arts in the first test at Lord's - he is as yet an underachieving batsman. He should, simply, have more than six test hundreds (and also more than six one-day hundreds, come to that).

If Fleming is aware of this, he did not dwell on it much after his failure to gather a measly three more runs.

"The past three or four times I have passed 50 have turned into good hundreds," he said. "I have learned a lot more about being in the 90s."

Well, not quite enough, obviously, about how to get out of them. It is as if he is a club player avoiding buying a jug for his mates.

Actually, the 90s have not usually been his major area of downfall. He has been there only five times in all. He has reached between 75 and 90 only six times, too. The critical period for Fleming has traditionally been from 50 to 75, where he has been out on no fewer than 24 occasions.

It is a strange kind of weakness. If he had been out regularly much closer to a century it might perhaps bespeak a tendency to feel nerves.

To depart so soon after reaching 50, when you are well in but the job is only half done, suggests lapses in concentration that do not square with his forensic skills as a captain.

But for all Fleming's urbanity, anxiety may have been at the root of his first-innings dismissal in this match. He was hurried into trying to turn a ball to the leg side and succeeded only in squirting a leading edge high to mid-off. He was unquestionably disappointed.

He likes the idea of getting to a hundred, and not simply for the obvious reasons.

"You can then settle back into the cadence of the game," he said.

That phrase has a pleasant rhythm to it, and it probably means that the closer a player gets to a hundred the more he becomes slightly fraught. Get there and things can become so much clearer again.

"I have started to convert a lot better," he said, and scores of 274 not out and 192 in the past two years support that.

It has become generally accepted that Fleming, at the age of 31, is now the best test captain in the world, although Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting would have their advocates.

Fleming, with the help of visionary selectors, has helped to make his team much greater than the sum of its parts. It could be said that it is a far better conversion rate than his 50s to hundreds.

That is why he was so disappointing at Lord's. New Zealand pushed England hard, certainly, but they did not bowl well and Fleming sometimes appeared to be going through the motions.

This is a big match for him and his side. He put an end to the experiment of opening the innings himself, having been out twice early at Lord's. In 83 previous tests he had done it only once before, and there was presumably a reason for that.

He was much more at home in his natural position of three, and that would apply even if he had to come in for the second ball of the match.

As a batsman, he appeared to turn some sort of corner a couple of years ago. His diligent century in Perth in a match the Kiwis drew and almost won was a kind of catalyst.

Big scores have followed.

If he can guide his side to level the series this week he will not miss the three runs he failed to gather. Not much.

- INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY