And now: even younger guns
By Margot Butcher
From The Big Black Cricket Book, The Sporting Press, 1992, p. 87

This is a dangerous task. I mean, let's face it, no matter how much about cricket any ne of us may presume to know, there's just no way of telling what new cricket talent may spring up in the next seven years, just as seven years ago. no-one would have proffered the names of Chris Pringle or Mark Haslam or Dion Nash in a similar dalliance. And even of those few young talents who appear on the horizon of the field now, who can say what the gods of fate and form have in store for them?

However, let's bravely and foolishly go out on the proverbial limb. The New Zealand selectors have beaten me to it, as far as two of the names that I had on my Year 2000 team list goes. All-rounder Dion Nash and left-arm spinner Mark Haslam were the surprise selections in the late 1992 tour to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka (Dion also represented New Zealand in the September 1992 Hong Kong siz-a-side tourney).

DION NASH

Remarkably, Dion Nash has made it into the Young Guns with just three first-class games to his name. His debut came in 1990-1991, when he quietly played a single game for Northern Districts against Auckland near the end of the competition. The next summer, Northern Districts called the Dargaville kid up again - for two trophy games and a cup game - in which he singularly failed to distinguish himself, thereafter tearing one of the muscles that attach the ribs to the back and ruling himself out for the remainder of the domestic season. But help was on its way in the form of the New Zealand Youth tour to India, in February/March of 1992. Though his first national age-group selection had been at the reasobly belated age of 18, upon induction into the New Zealand Cricket Academy/Development Squad/under-20's Dion had quickly made his mark and, once the muscle tear mended, was a natural selection for that tour. And it was his maiden showing in India that paved his way into the Young Guns: full of determination to prove himself, he scored two very good centuries with the bat, and in one of those games, doubled the good impression with a bag of 5-44 off just 16.4 overs. It was a tremendous performance when you consider Dion's relative inexperience against India's top, keen youth on their home turf - hot and dusty conditions vastly different from New Zealand, and where umpires appear to have been reading a different rulebook. But that's another story.

Now living in Dunedin, Dion will be playing for Otago in the 1992-93 domestic season - he is a Bachelor of Arts student at Otago university, studying History and Anthropology. He will be 28 in the Year 2000 - in his cricketing prime.

[The other names on Margot Butcher's list were Mark Haslam, Llorne Howell, Richard Jones, Matthew and Robert Hart, Jeff Wilson and Vaughan Hartland, none of whom played for New Zealand in the year 2000. Nash, of course, did represent his country in 2000, but his contribution was severely curtailed by stress fractures in his lower back. Instead, the year 2000 offered an opportunity for a whole new batch of young unknowns - the likes of Chris Martin and James Franklin - to break onto the international scene.]

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