Paul Lewis: We're getting a bit sick of it

Poor old Shane Bond. He's a strange sportsman for whom you can quite easily feel pity and irritation at the same time.

Has there ever been a New Zealand cricketer so injury-prone? Has there ever been a New Zealand sportsperson so often removed from the field of play?

As Bond himself alluded last week, his in-again, out-again career is hard on his team-mates. It will be interesting to see how the second test against Pakistan ends up, given the confidence-boosting effect of Bond's presence in Dunedin; the confidence drain of his absence now and the bowlers' long toils yesterday.

There has probably never been a sportsperson in this country who has attracted so much criticism because of injury. Bond is injured and the talkback airwaves fill with bile; comments on his supposed lack of spine; as if he was somehow malingering.

His team-mates and those familiar with his physiology have repeatedly made it clear he isn't - but it still rankles.

Sometimes Bond doesn't help himself. He often rather comes across as a man more intimately interested in the details of his health than is generally considered appropriate for a sporting hero.

We still like them brave, here in New Zealand; stoic, unsmiling heroes who carry the weight of the nation on their shoulders. Like Wayne Shelford having his scrotum stitched after a rugby test against France; like Colin Meads playing with a broken arm in South Africa or, in cricket terms, Stephen Boock and Gary Troup defying the frightening West Indies pace attack to notch a historic win. There was also Ewen Chatfield, defying his almost complete lack of batsmanship to win a test against Pakistan with Jeremy Coney at the other end.

When he was diagnosed with an abdominal tear, Bond said: "There was a little bit of niggle there during the game but during the last session, there was nothing," he said.

"I've had aches and pains there for a long time and when you go into a test with four bowlers, you want peace of mind that everything's fine.

"I could probably play but if I did, there was a chance I could blow it completely and then you're out for a long time."

So let's get this straight. He wasn't in discomfort but he went to the doctor just in case. He discovered a small tear. Bond could have played - but will instead hopefully be back against Bangladesh and then to the major assignment of the season: Australia.

It calls to mind the joke about the doctor counselling a patient who makes too-regular visits that he might be suffering from hypochondria. "Oh no," the patient says with his head in his hands. "Not that as well ..."

See what I mean? Bond attracts this stuff like a magnet.

He could have blamed the amount he was used in the first test - 48 overs, a lot for a genuine quick and for someone with his history of injury.

There were some - Herald on Sunday cricket columnist Mark Richardson among them - who felt New Zealand should have gone into the first test with four pacemen and with skipper Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum shuffled up the batting order.

New Zealand won the test anyway but stacking the batting and using three pacemen plus Vettori in attack put a lot of strain on the quicks; principally Bond.

There is a school of thought that Vettori should also have taken in four pacemen to take into account Bond's frailties. But that is being wise after the event and it also requires Vettori to feather-bed a player when he is entirely within his rights to use the weapons in his arsenal in the entirely reasonable expectation that they are fit.

Bond didn't blame overuse but neither did he completely exonerate it: "I've prepared for this for the last four months. I've bowled a lot of overs in the nets and had the one-day series ... the amount of overs has probably attributed to it but that's cricket."

So there we have it. A world-class paceman with less-than-world-class fitness. A spearhead - but who can't be thrust at the enemy too often nor too many times in one outing.

It's a difficult balance for everyone - Bond, Vettori, their team-mates and even the fans.

At least Bond opting out again happened ahead of the second test and not during it. Had he chosen to play without going to the doctor and then broken down, as he has done before, the effect on his team-mates would have been far, far worse. Abdominal tears - whether he was feeling pain or not - can be nasty and long-lasting.

"I'm a positive person but I'm also a realist," Bond said. "I don't like doing this, I feel like it lets the team down. I'm sure the team finds it a pain in the backside to have someone coming in and out all the time."

Without doubt. Bond hasn't yet taken 100 test wickets but, in the 32 innings he has run in to bowl in tests, he has taken 87 wickets at an average of 22.09. That's better than Vettori, Chatfield, Chris Martin, Danny Morrison, Lance or Chris Cairns; better even than Sir Richard Hadlee, our greatest bowler whose 431 test wickets (gathered in 150 turns at the bowling crease), came at an average of 22.29.

That's how you know Bond isn't swinging the lead. When your bowling is discussed in the same breath as Hadlee, it would normally attract the adjective "great".

Bond's career, when it finally ends, likely won't be filed under G for great but P for potential, because of test matches missed through injury. But take another look at the effort and competitiveness he put into that first test against Pakistan - the mark of a man trying for G for great; not G for GP.