Good things take time they say and when Chris Martin was named New Zealand cricket player of the year, it was a good thing - 11 years in the making.
I began my international career about the time Martin started his and the way he entered the team for thefirst time is almost a metaphor for his 11 years so far. In 2000, Mathew Sinclair and I returned from Zimbabwe while the ODI squad toured Kenya and South Africa.
During that part of the tour, the incumbent seam bowlers began to go down like flies. So the selectors called for a net trial in the notoriously fast, bouncy and dark New Zealand high performance centre's indoor nets. They invited Kerry Walmsley, Andrew Penn and Chris Martin and revved them up with a speech about wanting a fast, aggressive opening bowler for the test part of the South African tour. And then they let them loose on me and Skippy - for two whole days.
Walmsley and Penn charged in and let us have it; both got picked and both also limped out of the tour. Martin looked after himself on the notorious injury producing surface, kept the ball up to the bat and eventually went to South Africa as the last man standing.
He's never looked back, with his intelligent approach serving him well in the years since. In his early days, he was an unlikely fast bowler and not your usual cricket personality.
Back in New Zealand, Martin's mates probably didn't know where he'd gone until they saw his mug on the big screen at the pub. Even then, the surprise would not have been that he was a New Zealand cricketer, more that he actually played cricket. He surprised me the first time I played him. I remember thinking, "this hippy is quite fast". He would have weighed less than 70kg and had long, straight, thin hair down to his waist, parted at the middle and tied in a pony tail - he looked like Neil from The Young Ones.
He was the reason we had a dress code because it was feared if we didn't, Tommy' would turn up to the airport in flares and Jesus boots'. Martin, I believe, received some poor advice early in his career to try and swing the ball away from both right and left-handers.
It wasn't until he just moved it left to right against all batsmen that he began to maximise his talents. Martin gives a captain an entire day of good service. He is consistent in effort in all spells, a rare quality. He does not spike and trough in emotion but don't be fooled - he does get angry at batsmen and downhearted at captains he would describe as lacking "fast bowler empathy".
It angers me that some pundits have used Martin's total lack of batting ability as an angle to attack him as a cricketer. I find that criticism small minded and misguided. Martin earns selection as a bowler alone; he will always have no aptitude for batting. He would bat at 11 in Martin Crowe's Cornwall reserves. However, have you ever seen him back away against the world's fastest bowlers? Do you know how much courage that takes?
