| BOY WHO IS FACED WITH A MAN'S JOB AT OLD TRAFFORD |
|
IF New Zealand are to win at Old Trafford,
and
reduce England from the status of
laughing-stock
to national derision, their chief instrument will surely be Daniel
Vettori. Young shoulders, long hair, student-style glasses. And a wise
old
head.
England encountered Vettori for the first
time
in the winter of 1996-97. Aged 17, and in
his
home town of Hamilton, he made his first-class debut against
England for Northern Districts as their
third-choice left-arm spinner, and picked up
Nasser Hussain as his maiden wicket in a very tidy spell. Straight
into the Test side he went, New Zealand's
youngest ever Test cricketer at 18 years 10
days, and he picked up Hussain again for his maiden Test wicket as
England won by an innings in Wellington
after
New Zealand had stuck their neck in the
noose by
batting first on a damp seamer.
For his next trick Vettori scored 54 runs
and
took five for 110 in the final Test when
England
just squeezed home thanks to Mike Atherton's second best
match.
With unwavering accuracy Vettori bowled 69 overs, but without quite
the
variety and penetration to finish off England and level the series (he
had
no spinner at the other end to help him,
either). If Atherton was the man of that
match
at Christchurch, Vettori was the boy of it.
At this juncture most prodigies, or at any
rate
most English cricket prodigies, would go off
the
rails, intoxicated by their own publicity if not other
substances, and take years to return if not disappear altogether. Not
Vettori, though, with that wise old head and
steady bespectacled gaze (he cannot wear
lenses
because of an accident when he was knocked off his bike).
Two-and-a-half years on he has steadily
progressed to become as good as any left-arm
orthodox spinner in the international game: the equal of Phil Tufnell,
in
other words, as there are not any others of
note
around (better endowed countries prefer the
extra penetration of a wrist-spinner). Old Trafford will
therefore offer the two men a shoot-out for the title of the world's
best
of their type.
Nature and nurture have caringly combined to
keep Vettori on his steady course. His
grandfather came to New Zealand from the Dolomites and
worked with an immigrant's energy to
establish
his family. His father works for Anchor, who
dominate the Waikato's dairy-producing countryside around
Hamilton: in fact he is big in butter, so to
speak, as the company's finance director. At
Hamilton's leading school Daniel was always captain of his
football and cricket teams, without being
aloof
from the lads or resented.
When catapulted into Test cricket he was
about
to go to university in Hamilton to study
pharmacy, but if you were an 18-year-old given the choice between
going to university and being paid to tour
Australia, which would you choose? "I kept
going
on tour after tour, and I can't see that I'll be able to take up the
course in the next couple of years," he says. "But it would be a shame
not
to go to university some time."
In his fourth Test, by taking nine for 130
against Sri Lanka, he out-bowled Muttiah
Muralitharan to give New Zealand their first series win for four years.
In his 14th Test he reached his 50th Test
wicket, easily the youngest to do so at 19,
after which his only barren period came in a series against South
Africa
on flat home pitches. The historical context
against which Vettori has to labour is that
only
one New Zealand spinner has taken 100 Test wickets, the
off-breaker John Bracewell.
Without a past-master to coach him, Vettori
has
had to learn those variations to accompany
his
stock spinner and arm-ball. And at Lord's he demonstrated
how he could now use the width of the
crease,
adjust his degree of turn and vary his
trajectory.
"I've just learnt from bowling and from
watching
other bowlers around the world, especially
on
television, and a lot of it has come from the one-day game. In
one-day cricket it has to be a different ball every time, and while I
don't enjoy it as much as Test cricket you can take something from
that."
He has a particular admiration for
Pakistan's
Saqlain Mushtaq, who uses his fingers to
bowl
offbreaks and his wrist to bowl top-spinners. "I'd love to do
what Saqlain does but I've tried it in the
nets
and can't do it yet." More realistic
ambitions
for the moment are 100 Test wickets and to play 100 Tests,
which no New Zealander has yet done, by
which
time he will no doubt be captain.
His record at present runs parallel to
Tufnell's
as he has 63 wickets from 21 Tests against
Tufnell's 107 from 36, while both average 34 per wicket. The
differences are that Vettori is slower, usually 48 mph by the
speedometer,
and has a higher trajectory which tempts the
straight-drive for six, while Tufnell bends
forwards in the crease and pushes it through more.
Another difference is that Vettori can bat
(502
Test runs at 17) and since a fruitless
Edgbaston
Test has worked the ball around with irritating ease,
culminating in his vital 50 at Lord's and a maiden hundred at
Leicester.
"We haven't played a full-strength county
side
yet and it's helped our batting by giving us
time in the middle."
"People back home were pretty thrilled about
our
Test win and said what a great week it was
for
New Zealand sport after the All Blacks won as well.
The
old players have said some nice things too, like John Wright sent us a
telegram and Richard Hadlee was complimentary.
"But the main thing is that we're learning
to
keep our foot on the opposition's throat.
This
team has played together for 2.5 years and we've let winning
situations go before, but now we know what
to
do, which is an awareness of when the moment
comes." A second win for New Zealand at Old Trafford
and it will be England who need the
pharmacy. |
