Cricket: 'I was so close to quitting,' says Fleming

Stephen Fleming becomes the second most-capped test skipper today. Picture/ Brett Phibbs

Say what you like about Stephen Fleming, but it's difficult to fault his sense of humour.

Only hours before last night's screening of his much-publicised mock interview with former teammate Mark Richardson, Fleming was light-heartedly chastising the media over their part in his near downfall in the summer of 2001.

The New Zealand skipper, who will today join Clive Lloyd as the second-most capped test captain in history, was reflecting on his 9-year, 73-match reign.

On the eve of the second test, at the Basin Reserve this morning, Fleming recalled that he went within a whisker of resigning after the barren stretch in 2000-01, when his team were losing and he wasn't scoring any runs. At the time, New Zealand had been cleaned out by South Africa, had lost a series against a Zimbabwe for the first time at home, and then been crushed 4-1 in the one-dayers by Sri Lanka.

"I had a period when one of the press writers had a crack at me during the Sri Lankan series; a quite orchestrated campaign to get me removed," he quipped. "It was tough because I wasn't scoring. That's the hardest part of being captain; when you're not scoring runs but you're trying to pull the team out of a pretty bad slump.

Only Allan Border has captained a team more often in test history, and Fleming said like the Australian, he was once on the cusp of drawing his service revolver. "I was pretty close," he said. "I'd made up my mind to go, probably at the end of the series, but it never really sat comfortably with me. It never got to a point where I offered it [the job] up, but in my own mind I felt had to step down.

"In the end I wasn't happy about walking away from something that I was doing poorly, or from a perception that I was doing poorly; I just didn't want to go out on that note. It was the soft option.

"I remember waking up one morning and realising that I just couldn't go ahead with it [resigning]."

Fleming is also second to Border on the list of consecutive tests as captain, having strung together 58 since recovering from a groin operation in 1999. And just to keep his feet on the ground, he presently sits at the top of the list of skippers who have presided over the most test losses; his 24 defeats just pipping Brian Lara's mark of 23, Allan Border's 22 and Mike Atherton's 21.

Meanwhile New Zealand have named an unchanged XI for this morning, although Fleming said he'd be keeping a key eye on the overhead conditions before making any decisions about the toss. "In Wellington we usually hold off until as long as possible because it can change," he said. "Playing locally here and knowing the characteristics of the pitch is to my advantage, and to my mind we should delay that decision for as long as possible."

The West Indies are expected to usher in paceman Daren Powell for the injured Jerome Taylor, and batsman Runako Morton to replace Ramnaresh Sarwan.

THE SQUADS

New Zealand

Jamie How, James Marshall, Peter Fulton, Stephen Fleming (c), Nathan Astle, Scott Styris, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, James Franklin, Shane Bond, Chris Martin.

West Indies

Chris Gayle, Daren Ganga, Runako Morton, Brian Lara, Shiv Chanderpaul (captain), Dwayne Bravo, Dwayne Smith, Denesh Ramdin, Ian Bradshaw, Fidel Edwards, Daren Powell, Rawl Lewis, Devon Smith, Jerome Taylor.