Captain Marvel keeping the faith
By Sarah Stuart
From the Press, 23 February 2003
Australian cricket legend Steve Waugh told Stephen
Fleming to keep believing. That advice has finally paid
off for the Kiwi cricket captain. Sarah Stuart reports.
"They ran on the field, grabbed the birthday cake,
blew out the candles and ate it. That's what it was
like, wasn't it?"
Pauline Fleming can't contain her delight. Last Monday
her adored only son gatecrashed South Africa's World
Cup cricket party, ruined the host's celebrations and
played the innings of his life. It's hard to know who
will stop grinning first.
"How was that mum?" were Stephen Fleming's first words
down the phone after he led his team to an unexpected
win.
"He gets so excited," says Pauline, who was still in
bed, the TV warm after a night of nerves and excitement.
"He said he just couldn't stop laughing and laughing.
And I could picture him there, see him doing that. He's
got a great sense of humour, you know."
It was indeed a remarkable performance. Chasing 306
after a dismal bowling and fielding display that saw
the usually stoic Fleming fuming at his players from
behind those impenetrable sunglasses, the captain strode
on to the Wanderers pitch, faced the Proteas in that
Johannesburg cauldron without fear and elegantly stroked
his way to an unbeaten 134. Game over.
"That's just a glimpse of what we'll see now," says
former Kiwi coach Steve Rixon from his New South Wales
Cricket office.
"I think (Stephen's) always had the ability to be great
and from early on in that innings you could see he was
prepared to have a go. He was backing himself and look
what happened."
Fleming is inclined to agree. He's had a tumultuous
decade in the Kiwi side, thrust into the captaincy too
early at age 24 ("yeah, but you're never going to turn
down the chance to captain a national side", he says),
given little time to work on his batting and criticised
for his lack of form and dour style of captaincy. Two
years ago critics, including the Sunday Star-Times'
Chris Laidlaw, were calling for his head after a string
of embarrassing losses.
"The Black Caps need a leader, more than ever before,
who is more demonstrative, confident and aggressive,"
wrote Laidlaw. No wonder Fleming was last week feeling
sorry for Team New Zealand's deflated skipper Dean Barker.
He is now recognised as the nation's most successful
cricket captain and that unflappable on-field demeanour
is seen as a controlled, calming presence in the face
of adversity.
But still the batting proved problematic, until that
brilliant knock on Monday finally fused the captain's
building confidence with 12 months of technical work.
Phlegmatic Fleming broke out in a beaming smile. "I've
been working really hard . . . and there weren't immediate
results," he says. "It was a matter of waiting for,
or creating, the day it would all come together. (Monday)
was that day . . . I had a feeling it's my time as a
player now."
After the jubilation of the dressing room and a few
quiet drinks in the team bar with Kiwi supporters, Fleming
retired to his room to write down what had gone right,
how he had felt out on the pitch. "You want to bottle
it," he says.
If it is truly a "zone", Fleming wants to recreate
it and if his prediction of a New Zealand v Australia
World Cup final is right, he'll need it.
No one was more thrilled with Fleming's 134 than his
greatest supporter Pauline, who has listened to years
of criticism of her son on Radio Sport.
"I have to turn it off that station when I hop into
her car," says Fleming of his mother's passion for his
sport. Last week there was nothing but public accolades
and Pauline was proud.
"It's a change from having people saying get rid of
him, from everyone saying he's not scoring runs and
should be leading by example."
She's tried hard to not react to criticisms of her
son through the years. Pauline brought Stephen up alone,
took him down to the Sydenham cricket club to enrol
when he was just six and "barely able to see over the
table".
"The guy asked him if he could hold a bat and he said
Oof course I can'," she said.
His cousins played, as had his uncle and father who
was separated from Pauline. When that long, lean frame,
determination and handsome left-hand strokeplay became
obvious, the working-class boy was offered a place at
the prestigious Christchurch Boys' High School. Pauline
was advised to turn it down.
"(Former coach) Bob Carter said it would be better
for him to play against those guys. If he played with
them he'd coast along," she says. The strategy worked:
into Cashmere College's 1st XI at 14, Fleming developed
a good technique and a love of the game.
Friends from school remember him as a quiet bloke with
a small circle of good friends, many of whom are still
his best mates today. While a teenage Chris Cairns was
wielding a hefty bat and bashing boundaries, Fleming
was a less dominant force.
"If you'd asked me if Stephen Fleming would captain
New Zealand at that time I would have balked," says
a team-mate from school and club cricket. "He was always
technically very good but not the sort of guy who would
just dominate."
Pauline was at every game and became the 1st XI manager
- much to the chagrin of some of her young charges.
"They didn't always want a mum hanging around," she
says. "But some of those boys still come and visit me
now and, when Stephen's away, I'm in charge of keeping
the strip watered and mowed in the back garden. Those
friends will say to him Oyou might be doing all right
over there but you still haven't won the backyard cricket'."
Fleming says his teenage sport, including representative
rugby, was enjoyable and not too pressured - he enjoyed
a party and had a life outside training when he was
called to the national side at the age of 20.
"When things got serious I was very committed to it,"
he says. "I was ready for that commitment."
The 1994 slip-up when Fleming and two other young Black
Caps - Dion Nash and Matthew Hart - admitted smoking
dope at a team barbecue in South Africa was out of character,
say his school friends.
Fleming was always the good boy, his honesty more his
downfall than any loutish leanings.
A subtle, thinking cricketer from the beginning, Fleming's
critics say he's lacked a killer instinct and as with
all top sportsmen, he has struggled with performance
anxiety.
On Monday he looked confident, even after the obvious
frustrations of mistakes in the field which led to that
mammoth South African total.
"I am mentally tough, I am," he laughs.
In 1998, when his confidence had taken a bigger knock
than he was able to deliver on the field, Australian-born
Kiwi coach Rixon organised a dinner in Napier with a
couple of the New Zealand cricketers and their Aussie
opponents. New Zealand had lost the first two matches
to the Australians, but immediately captains Steve Waugh
and Fleming clicked.
"It might not be a big deal to him, but after we had
a chat that night I scored a century and we beat the
Australians. That's the impact the guy had," recalls
Fleming. "He signed OKeep Believing' on a book for me.
I think learning how to get better while people are
criticising you is probably more important than learning
how to win.
"(Waugh's) as tough as they come as a captain - focused
and determined - but it's the kind of man he is as well
that I admire."
The two have spoken several times since that dinner
and after a bomb exploded outside the Black Caps' hotel
in Karachi last year, Waugh was one of the first to
leave a message of support for Fleming.
"I wouldn't call him a mentor as such, that's probably
more Martin Crowe for me," says Fleming.
"But it's the lessons I have learned out of cricket
from him, from the way he plays the game."
Rixon believes Stephen Fleming's come of age at this
World Cup, both as a captain and a batsman. "The belief
is there now within the team," says Fleming.
New Zealand Cricket's decision that the Black Caps
will not play in Nairobi because of safety concerns
- a decision Fleming is pleased with - means the team
is enjoying a 10-day break before easier matches against
Bangladesh and Canada. Fleming is determined to remain
focused and has hung up his golf clubs for the break
to leave more "thinking" time.
His long-time girlfriend Kelly Payne will join Fleming
at the end of the tournament and the two will travel
through Africa for a few weeks before returning home.
And while he has a good few years of cricket left in
him, the Kiwi captain is planning on a life with a family
and a new career. He'll turn 30 on April 1 and business
opportunities keep "popping up".
But from the excitement in the normally impassive captain's
voice, it's obvious he can't see much further this month
than the end of his bat.
Says Fleming: "I have a feeling it's my time as a player."
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