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Daniel Vettori is so young yet, in cricket terms, so old. He’s
also New Zealand cricket’s most prized investment for the future.
The visitor from Blenheim was getting edgy. Cricket is a
game he understands, but Tony Hill’s first visit to Lord’s is
demanding a lot more than just his attention.
It is a sunny Saturday in July and Hill sits in the upper tier
of the Compton Stand where he is both enveloped by tradition and
surrounded by New Zealanders who, like him, are watching history
rewritten.
Just a hundred or so metres away, Daniel Vettori is
despatching convention along with the England attack on his way
to a stylish half century. By this time tomorrow, the game will be
over.
That Vettori should play an important innings in a Lord’s test
doesn’t at all surprise a man who has known longer than most of
his nephew’s special gifts.
That it was he to whom Vettori would raise a triumphant bat
is a moment neither will forget, and in seat B 76, Hill was fighting
the emotion without success.
“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t tears in my eyes,” he
recalls. “When Daniel did that, it just sent a chill down my spine. It
was a very special moment.”
Not just for Hill. In the middle of this famous ground, where
the dreams of 12 previous New Zealand touring teams had died,
Vettori was clearly enjoying England’s discomfort and his
contribution to it.
No one was safe, but Phil Tufnell was an obvious target.
Vettori drove him to one of the longest boundaries at the ground
before turning to acknowledge his tearful Uncle Tony’s support.
“It’s hard when you’re coming in at 10 or 11,” says Vettori.
“But every now and them you get the chance to do something
different and this was mine.”
He had been at the crease since the evening before, a
nightwatchman working the day shift. When he eventually clocked
off, he would take with him an invaluable 54 runs, and leave
behind a reminder that however successful his instincts might be
with the bat, his focus remains elsewhere.
“I’m a bowler,” he insists. “Sometimes the need is to get
some runs, and hopefully that is a side of my game that I can
develop more, but I’m not an all-rounder.
“I just try to put a lot more value of my wicket than I used
to, and it seems to be working.”
Maybe not to the purist, but to the punter who enjoys the
simple spectacle of a battler doing his best, Vettori’s ‘development’
is coming along fine.
For instance, we could never forget Chris Cairns’
extraordinary assault on a tiring England attack at the Oval. But do
we easily remember how Vettori picked up where Cairns had left
off.
Batting at 10, he mugged an already groggy local attack. His
half century took 47 deliveries, and it would be impossible to
understate the significance of his partnership with Stephen
Fleming. In a match won by 83 runs, their ninth-wicket stand was
78.
Yes, he’s developing. Throw in a maiden first class century
against Leicestershire between the second and third tests, and
you’ve got a cricketer who, maybe not this year or even the next,
but one day might have to acknowledge even his own ability with
the bat.
In the past 30 years, New Zealand cricket has enjoyed and
sometimes endured three distinct eras. The bit before Richard
Hadlee, the bit after Hadlee, and the bit with Hadlee.
The reality was, while Hadlee was playing, we were mostly
winning ... or at least mostly not losing.
One man who is in no doubt that New Zealand cricket will
one day look with fondness on the early 21st century as the ‘Vettori
era’ is John Bracewell.
As a contemporary of Hadlee and a coach of Vettori,
Bracewell is uniquely positioned to offer at least a partial insight.
And when he describes his admiration, he talks with the language
of a coach, but the enthusiasm of a fan.
“It’s difficult to define him, because we get so few like him
in New Zealand. But Daniel is an artist.
“If I was a kid again, I’d like to be Daniel Vettori, which I
guess just shows there’s no age limit to your heroes. We need
people like him, because like any artist, he inspires and we’re just
blessed that the art he expresses is cricket.”
In 1990, Bracewell retired as New Zealand cricket’s most
successful spinner. His 102 wickets is, by international standard,
nothing spectacular, but every now and them he won us a test with
either his bowling or once, famously, his batting.
“But to be honest, I just had the opportunity to get some
more wickets than some other very good spinners had got in the
past. Daniel will get well past 200 wickets, let alone 100.”
Why stop at 200? What about 300? 400? When we look at
Vettori, we see a cricketer of rare talent in the early morning of his
career. What we often overlook is that he’s just 20 years old.
Injury and motivation notwithstanding, he could logically
still be playing for New Zealand well beyond 2010. How many
others have we been able to say that about? How many others
would we want to?
But what sets Vettori aside isn’t just his ability or, as
Bracewell would have it, his ‘art’. It’s his maturity.
Even the 18-year-old who played against England almost
three years ago seemed to possess a calm not generally associated
with the teenage sub-species.
As Bracewell puts it: “There’s a massive gap between his
chronological age and his biological age.
“When he was on the youth tour of England in 1996 he was
17, but he had one of the oldest heads in the team ... including
mine.”
Bracewell’s wasn’t the only revelation that year.
As a former first-class player, Tony Hill understands how
rarely the truly special ones emerge. But it still came as a shock
that when cricket’s ‘new best thing’ arrived, it was his wife’s
brother’s son.
It was also in 1996 at the national under-18 tournament,
when he was a CD selector and Daniel a ND prodigy.
“Daniel had a really good tournament, and I remember
saying at the time I thought e was good enough to be playing for
New Zealand within about three years. I was out by two.”
Not that it’s always been easy.
If there is one place on the planet where is still treated like
any other 20-year-old and where his bowling figures really don’t
count, it’s at home in Hamilton where Renzo Vettori chuckles at the
suggestion that his son is wise beyond his years.
“Let’s just say we see another side to it,” he laughs. But his
laughter is that of a father immensely proud of his son and the
path he has chosen.
Renzo and Nicholas Vettori were at the Oval this year to see
New Zealand complete a come-from-behind series victory, and to
enjoy the moment with the youngest member of the family. But if
it meant a lot to his father and brother, it meant everything to
Daniel who hasn’t always had the chance to share his sporting
success.
The world is literally his playground, but Hamilton isn’t the
home it used to be. For a start there are fewer places to hide for a
famous 20-year-old.
“I sort of struggle with it at times,” he admits. “It’s quite
hard being recognised, but you realises it comes with the territory.”
That territory will be well travelled over the next few years,
or for however long Vettori feels he can decently delay the
pharmacy degree he’s been putting off.
Without the slightest trace of embarrassment, Bracewell
hopes Vettori never again sees the inside of a university, because if
he does, it’ll mean he’s probably lost to cricket.
“this is one of the most exciting times I can ever remember
for New Zealand cricket, and Daniel is a large part of that.
“He had the artistry, and the skill, and that’s a very rare
thing. Look at the series against England. Ad far as dominating an
opposition goes, I don’t think there had been a better display form
a New Zealand team ... ever.”
Vettori is less certain. But what he does know, is that
something special missing from recent New Zealand teams is again
making a difference.
“We have brought together a team with a certain culture,
and we’re all playing for each other.
“Steve Rixon used to go on about it a bit and I think it’s an
Australian thing. But if you can get into the habit of winning, it can
stick with you.”
In 1956, Diego and Dorina Vettori left their home in the
Dolomites for a new life in a then largely mysterious country half a
world away.
Forty-three years later, their son and two of their
grandchildren returned to the village of Roncone, mid-way between
Milan and Venice. It wasn’t a pilgrimage as such, but you can
imagine the number of times Daniel must had his hair ruffled and
his cheeks pinched by adoring relatives he had never met.
This hamlet of 1400 people high in the Dolomites near
Italy’s border with Austria is where, for a few days at the end of the
England tour, Renzo took his sons. They got to see what their
grandparents had been talking about all this time, and Roncone got
to embrace, however briefly, the New Zealand arm of the family.
“It was just fantastic,” says Vettori. “We didn’t do much,
other than eat too much pasta, and drink too much wine, but it was
nice to catch up with relatives I had never seen before.”
Within hours of the Oval celebrations, he was discovering
family in the Dolomites. Within days of that, he was back in
Hamilton. Within weeks, he would be embarking on one of the
most significant challenges a spin bowler can face.
It says much for Vettori’s career that, even at 20, this isn’t
his first Indian experience. And it says everything for his character
that he returns determined to prove that the recent glory of an
English summer will not be forgotten amid the frustrations of the
sub-continent.
“It can be hard at times,” he says. “But winning makes it so
much easier.”
Note: Daniel is not the youngest member of the Vettori family.
Brother Nicholas is older, sister Kimberly is the youngest.
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