The Pink Report

Kane’s A Rockstar

A long time ago at a cricket ground far, far away (OK, Napier), I was one of the last two people lingering in a grandstand after the final day’s play at a test match between India and New Zealand. The other was a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar. He’d left the Indian dressing room to find a quiet place to consolidate his thoughts and reflect on what might have been.

It was his very first overseas tour for India and though diminutive in stature and still brushed with the shyness of youth, he was already being widely billed as an up-and-coming rockstar of the game.

Usually February’s sun bakes the McLean Park deck as hard as biscotti, but that match nearly 21 years ago was uncharacteristic. The first day’s play had been washed away, but when the gloomy weather abated, Tendulkar found himself walking in with the task of saving an innings falling on his young shoulders, Richard Hadlee having relished the seaming conditions and India precarious at 152/4.

Tendulkar was an exceptionally earnest young cricketer. He lived and breathed to bat, combined his gifts with a nerdy work ethic and set such high standards for himself that he had been convinced, following his test series debut against Pakistan back home in India, that he would never play for his country again - despite two half-centuries from six innings, which were surely signs of promise from a teenager into the fray between such titanic rivals.

So anyway, there was Sachin Tendulkar sitting by himself in the near-empty main grandstand at Napier, the match over by some time, gazing at the covers on the sodden ground while his team-mates unwound in the dressing rooms below. The young man had scored 88. His highest test score. He should have been encouraged, even quite joyful, but all you could see in his face was the blankness of defeat, as he clearly perceived it. The angst of the rued shot. Of missing his maiden test century by a skinny 12 runs. Twelve more runs  that day and he would also have become the youngest test centurion in the history of the game.

Until Sunday night this column was going to be all about the Northern Knights heading into Tuesday’s Plunket Shield season opener at Queenstown, but as usual, Kane Williamson has scattered my carefully-laid plans. Shortly before he took off for the recent BLACKCAPS tour of Bangladesh, Kane sat down with me in Hamilton to talk, for a few hours, about his batting for a magazine profile that’s coming out in December. So far I’ve had to rewrite that feature twice. He’s barely been in the team a minute and he’s already scored his first ODI and test hundreds. I’m very pleased for Kane of course, but would be relieved if he could hold off on any more career-defining statements, just for a few weeks. I’m getting writer’s cramp.

The thing that really grabbed me about Kane in that interview is how well he understood the mental side of batting - not just shot selection and all the technical stuff that you can be taught, but the actual psychology of batting. The effect of emotions on an optimal state of mind. The zen of focusing on each ball as it comes. The distractions of nerves and over-exuberance, and how best to bat them away. Anyone who watched the composed manner in which he compiled those centuries - and then batted away the big moment to keep him focused on yet more runs - will have seen those qualities.

He reminded me a lot of Tendulkar’s youthful earnestness and I would have loved to have known Tendulkar’s reflections as he stood fielding in Sardar Patel Stadium, watching the diminutive young batsman clip his way to a test century on debut - the youngest ever to do so for New Zealand.

Kane’s been born and raised in Northern Districts, which is exciting for ND. He’s made a memorable start to his BLACKCAPS career, which is exciting for New Zealand. But most of all, he’s got a touch of magic about him which is exciting for everyone across the world who enjoys watching a special batsman.