After appearing on the New Zealand cricket scene as a gangly, precocious spin bowler in the late ‘90s, Daniel Vettori has slowly but surely risen through the ranks to become by far our most valuable player. The thoughtful, multi-talented cricketer sat down with his casual wear sponsor Barkers for an exclusive interview late last year.

By Duncan Greive

There’s a palpable change in the atmosphere when Daniel Luca Vettori strides into the lobby of the Wellington hotel where he and the rest of the New Zealand cricket are holed up ahead of the second test with Pakistan in early December 2009. For the past twenty minutes I’ve sat and watched players like Grant Elliott and Shane Bond wander past without drawing much attention. They’re stars in their own right, but when Vettori enters the room everyone stops for a moment, their eyes drawn to the player who has become the very core of a nation’s cricketing fortunes.

Even allowing for the talismanic strength of All Black captain Richie McCaw and the infinite finesse of first five Daniel Carter, there is no one in New Zealand sport who dominates their code quite like Daniel Vettori. At that stage the 30-year-old was the team’s key bowler, its best batsman, the captain, a selector and the team’s temporary coach, a role that eventually went to Mark Greatbatch without the captain ceding much authority.

With his versatility and vast experience (he’s our second most capped test cricketer and third most-capped ODI player) Vettori’s an in-demand acquisition for any Twenty20 team worldwide, and earns nearly a million dollars a year playing for the Delhi Daredevils (he jetted out to India immediately following the recent Australian series and was immediately in the runs and wickets) in the lucrative IPL. Which makes his response to my question regarding his future as a cricketer all the more breathtaking.

“I’d like to play test cricket as long as I can,” he opines. “The limited forms of the game I might not play as long.”

In an era where players like Jacob Oram and Andrew Symonds have retired from test cricket to prolong their Twenty20 careers, Vettori’s commitment to the long form of the game marks him as a true iconoclast. Given his huge influence within the New Zealand team and our paucity of resources, his forgoing the riches of Twenty20 to seek the more pure and historic rewards test match cricket brings might send a message to younger players about what should truly matter to a cricketer.

Despite his own preferences, he disagrees strongly with those who would brand the younger generation, with their obsession with the Twenty20 cash (recent surveys on both sides of the Tasman have shown players value an IPL contract over national selection) as traitors to the game.

“I think people are just a product of their environment,” he says with a hint of sadness. “So I think it’s more a slight on administrators that they haven’t got the balance right. You should be able to play all three forms of the game, and you should be able to aspire just as highly to all three.

“Twenty20 offers more remuneration, and that’s great, but I think good players are still good enough to play all three forms of the game, and I think that should continue. But I think it’s wrong to blame an 18, 19-year-old coming into the game for wanting to play the game they see on TV. They’re just products of their environment, and if administrators could clean it all up then it wouldn’t be an issue.”

When Vettori himself was an 18-year-old trying to find his way in the game he faced an entirely different world. Stephen Fleming was a recent appointee as captain of the New Zealand team, and the basis of one of our greatest sides was in place, with the likes of Nathan Astle, Chris Cairns and Simon Doull in the team which welcomed Vettori into its fold as the youngest debutant we’d ever seen. He had only made his first class debut three weeks earlier, but had taken the wicket of England captain Nasser Hussein, which was enough to suggest to then-New Zealand coach Steve Rixon that the gangly, bespectacled Vettori had the talent to take on the world’s best.

It capped a precipitous rise for the spinner. He was born in Auckland but attended high school in Hamilton, playing in the same St Paul’s First XI as Eating Media Lunch star Jeremy Wells, who recently said of Vettori  in a Herald profile “he was remarkable. He could bat right- and left-handed, and he could bowl with both hands.”

Indeed it took until fifth form before Vettori even tried spin bowling, having belatedly become convinced that he’d never become fast enough to achieve greatness as a quick. And while he was an instant success with the ball, taking 30 wickets in his first year as a test cricketer, he took a good deal longer to find his feet with the bat, starting his first match as number eleven, and taking years to work his way up the order to his current position at number six, easily our most consistent batsman.

“I was a little bit embarrassed to be batting at 11,” he says sheepishly.  “My record wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. I’ve always had the desire to improve it, and I still do. But I prefer to see someone else in our top six or our top four take over that role as the senior batsman, because I think I’ve got enough on my plate. I don’t want to diminish my responsibility to score runs, no matter where I bat, but with Ross Taylor and Brendan McCullum really stepping up into those roles, if I can keep playing the way I have that complements what they do.”

Perhaps the modesty stems as much from the peculiarities of his technique as any reticence about his effectiveness. Regardless of how many runs Vettori scores, it is still jarring to watch him accumulate them. He seems to have taken parts of the wristy style of the most flamboyant sub-continental batsmen but completely removed the classicist elements. The runs come from odd parts of the field, flicked and squirted and squeezed from deliveries other batsman would leave well alone. As a result he is commonly thought of as one of the most infuriating players to bowl at in world cricket, a fact he seems more than a little proud of.

“I think there’s definitely a lot of frustrated bowlers out there who look at me and think taking my wicket should be a lot easier than it’s turning out to be. And I know myself there are some batsmen I look at and I think ‘I could get this guy out at any time’, then I look up at the scoreboard and he’s on 50 or 60. I think it’s a great compliment that I can bat like that, that I can frustrate a team and put a score on the board. I think the fact that I score quickly is a great help to the team too. I think now that teams are coming prepared, coming with a plan, whereas when I first started I was just the number eight batsmen, ‘let’s get through him and put our feet up’.”

With nearly 800 runs at almost 70 last year, there are few in the world who can match his recent record, regardless of how strange his style is, and the emergence of Vettori the All Rounder was highlighted on a personal level by his joining the exclusive 300 wicket/3000 run club, alongside such all-time greats as Shane Warne, Imran Khan, Ian Botham and our own Richard Hadlee.

“I’ve always been a statistically driven person, that’s always been a big part of my game, so that was huge from an individual standpoint,” he says, in marked contravention of sportmen’s usual professed ignorance of statistics. It’s telling too that his team highpoint came not in any of our celebrated victories over Australia in One Day International cricket but with a famous victory at the home of cricket.

“I think from a team perspective winning the test series in ’99 in England, and winning a test at Lords [are most satisfying]. I suppose those are times in New Zealand cricket history which won’t be forgotten for a long time.”

I mention that my principal regret as a fan was watching the New Zealand test side fall just short of a series victory in Australia in late 2001, despite four centuries in one innings and having Australia reeling on the final day. Vettori shakes his head at the memory, and it clearly still pains him. But above that even he lists a greater ambition for the remainder of his tenure as leader of the national team.

“As a captain, I’d love to lift a trophy. A World Cup win would be amazing for New Zealand cricket,” he says, and his absence through injury from New Zealand’s incredible victory in the 2000 Champion’s Trophy is obviously a sore point. Beyond that, he does relish the prospect of a victory over the great test sides.

“I sense within the team, that a test series win against Australia or South Africa, or even India is pretty important to everyone, and I think it would show that our game’s improving in the right areas. So I think if we could achieve one of those, as well as me contributing individually, that’s pretty important.”

The remainder of the Black Caps side has now passed through the hallway in various bunches. Later today Shane Bond will be announced as having sustained an abdominal tear, which soon will lead to his retirement from test cricket only one match after his return from ICL-imposed exile. It’s a crushing blow to Vettori’s injury-riddled side, and further increases the pressure on his shoulders.

Vettori will have heard the news already, but if he’s depressed by it his demeanour doesn’t betray him at all. He retains the thoughtful, determined approach which has characterised him since his emergence many summers ago, one which he shares with his predecessor Stephen Fleming, a man for whom Vettori has the utmost respect and admiration.

“The big thing he brought to the team was a calmness, and a desire to win. I think if I can instil that in the team now, because a lot of the guys in the team have never played under him, I think that will be a legacy of his as well as mine.”

Before we finish I ask him what he likes about Barkers as a brand and a clothing range. He’s been sponsored by us for a while now, citing their fit for a man so tall as key. He also notes wryly that many of his teammates have shown their admiration for Barkers by attempting to steal his clothes on tour. I ask him what his favourite piece is and he returns to a perennial favourite.

 “I wear the jeans a lot,” he says “I’ve been in there twice and picked up a load of stuff, and generally it’s all I wear these days. Apart from this,” he gesticulates at his New Zealand Cricket training jersey which he’s currently sporting. That would be the one piece of his wardrobe Barkers would never want to replace.

Barkers has a Black Caps jersey signed by Daniel Vettori to give away. To win simply place an order with Barkers Online and write 'Vettori' in the comments box at checkout. We'll draw the winner at random and notify them via email. This competition runs until May 17, the end of the ICC World Twenty20, and will be be drawn the following day. Good luck!