KEY POINTS:
Here's a snapshot into the world of Andre Adams. Take it with a decent pinch of salt, however, as sledging stories are like Chinese whispers - embellished in the re-telling.
The scene is Eden Park's outer oval, a normally pleasant greensward except for this four-dayer, the strip in the middle is proving a little too green for Northern Districts.
The details are a little sketchy but the story goes largely like this: Northern had already failed in their first innings and start their second 117 runs behind.
They lose their first wicket with just nine on the board and schoolboy phenom Kane Williamson strides to the crease in his first-class debut.
Williamson had made just two in the first innings before falling leg before to Adams and in a game where the in-form seamer is jacking it around like Richard Hadlee, it seems crazy to let Williamson be hung out to dry at No 3 but that's a whole other story.
Anyway, before long Williamson finds himself facing up to Adams, still to get off the mark.
The first ball rears off a length and goes through to the keeper (Adams can be sneaky quick when he wants to be).
"What the hell are you doing out here? You're late for school," Adams says, with some words either carefully edited or deleted altogether.
Next ball is another short one that sits Williamson on his bum. More fatherly advice dressed up as invective follows from Adams.
Next ball is full, raps Williamson on the pads and he's gone, stone-cold motherless lbw.
Williamson trudges off, now realising what first-class cricket is all about.
Even if the story is only half true, it offers two useful lessons.
1) Williamson, who many rate as the brightest batting hope in the country, should be managed carefully, and;
2) Adams is the dominant force in first-class cricket at the moment and, with Shane Bond injured, the best seamer in the country, period.
Herein lies the problem.
Adams has already turned down the opportunity to play for New Zealand, rejecting Sir Richard Hadlee's offer to join the squad in South Africa for the one dayers and offering a few words of explanation that were not necessarily conciliatory either.
A few days later, he spoke out in the Herald on Sunday, giving more context to his obvious dislike for coach John Bracewell while at the same time saying he wanted to play test cricket for New Zealand.
It won't be easy and talk around the traps is that Adams won't be a name featuring highly in discussion for the test side to face Bangladesh.
Well, that's not good enough. He should be at New Zealand Cricket's tailors now.
Sure he's had some helpful tracks this season but he is in Hadlee-esque form with the ball.
I mean, when's the last time you've heard of anybody with close to 30 wickets taking them at eight runs per wicket? The Demon Spofforth maybe?
Bracewell needs to be big about this, rather than belligerently big-headed. He has lost the power of veto now so perhaps Dion Nash, who has been a welcome sight at the Eden Park outer oval this season, can exercise some willpower over the three crusties (Bracewell, Hadlee and Glenn Turner).
Perhaps they should talk to some first-class batsmen who have faced Adams this year. Tim Weston, who is having a solid season, told this column that Adams was by some distance the best he'd faced this season.
Adams needs to show some humility as well. If it's true he still burns with desire to play test cricket, he should make a call or two; try to facilitate a meeting with Bracewell where they can formulate a plan whereby they can work together. They don't have to kiss and cuddle, just toleration would be a start.
This is time for hatchets to be buried in places other than between shoulder blades. The only thing more criminal than New Zealand's performances in South Africa and Australia would be for Adams to waste all his best lines and deliveries on schoolkids.
