Standing room only for Fleming show

From Stuff, 14 March 2003

JOHANNESBURG: Stephen Fleming is well used to the cricket pre-match press conference rigmarole, but even he was goggle-eyed at the turnout for his solo show yesterday.

The New Zealand captain entered the stuffy conference room at Supersport Park in Centurion, a day out from the clash with India, to the glare of 10 television cameras and anywhere between 60-80 media representatives.

It was standing room only for the Fleming sermon, a turnout befitting royalty or rock stars.

Fleming may have experienced such a scrum before on tours of India but the massive interest far outweighed anything he'd seen at the World Cup to date.

The previous day, Chris Cairns had to fight off a ruck of 25 Indian journalists all competing intensely to bark the same questions.

As per usual, Fleming put on a polished show yesterday as he glanced off questions with a stern raised eyebrow or a fair degree of quick wit.

The first tricky moment came when Fleming was posed an identical question to the one he'd just answered from the other side of the room.

"At the risk of repeating myself...," he began with a deadpan look.

He took umbrage to a poser about the lack of big scores from the top-order batsmen and was quick to put the questioner right, having cracked a memorable 134 not out himself against South Africa.

"I wouldn't say that, there's been some pretty good hundreds scored..."

Then to the inevitable question about Kenya, and how the forfeiting of competition points for their refusal to travel to Nairobi was still affecting them.

"I'm sorry, I turned off after you mentioned Kenya. What was the last bit?"

Fleming even resorted to a joke at his chairman of selectors Sir Richard Hadlee's expense when asked what was being said when the pair met for a prolonged chat at training.

"He was talking about his 430-odd test wickets, as he always does," Fleming said with a grin, the room erupting with laughter.

But the real star of the day was India captain Sourav Ganguly, the man whose word everyone seemed to hang on, and who swelled the numbers from Fleming's gathering by an extra 20 to almost 100.

Ganguly was having nothing of the match being talked up as revenge for the 2-5 series hammering his side received in New Zealand in the New Year.

His confident air was a far cry from the meek mindset he showed in New Zealand, when he couldn't buy a run and was under pressure to retain his job.

But Ganguly bristled at a previous Fleming comment after the loss to Australia about trying to open up old wounds from the New Zealand tour.

"He can say whatever he wants, at the end of the day the whole world knows where both teams stand, and that's the reality," Ganguly said.

"There have been better fast bowling attacks in this tournament than New Zealand and we've beaten them.

"Whatever he might say, he's got to accept the reality that the pressure is on them, because they need to win to get into the semifinals and play the best team in the world."