You sense it was the proudest moment of Andrew Niblett's life.
At 29 and with his dream of playing first-class cricket beginning to look rather remote, the South African-born allrounder took a huge punt this summer and headed to Hawke's Bay. He know no-one or anything about the standard of cricket
here, but was driven by a belief that he was good enough to play at that level - given the chance.
His gamble paid off on Monday, when Central Districts coach Graham Barlow came calling.
"The phone rang about 11 and it was Graham, wanting to make sure that I wasn't registered as an overseas player," Niblett explained to SportToday.
"I said 'I've been here four and-a-half years and I'm a fully-fledged resident'. He said he wanted me to meet him at McLean Park and I thought 'okay, that's quite interesting'.
"I thought he'd probably tell me he wanted me to go down and be 12th man and then he said 'look, you're in the side and you're batting at eight'. I have to say I was quite shocked and taken aback by it."
Then came the most satisfying phonecall Niblett has ever made.
"The first thing I did was ring my dad back in South Africa. It was half-past one in the morning, so he wasn't so chuffed and when he first answered the phone, he had this worried sound in his voice," Niblett said.
"He said 'what's wrong?' I said 'nothing. Are you sitting down?' He said 'ja' and I said 'I'm making my first class debut; and he says 'what?' So I said it back to him and he was stoked."
Niblett admits the call-up has come sooner that he expected. But when Mathew Sinclair, Jamie How, Michael Mason and Jacob Oram were all named in the New Zealand test team, surely he must've thought he had a sneaky chance making the Stags team?
"To be honest, I did. I thought 'well, they've got to replace four players' and started to wonder about who else was around. I didn't expect it, but I thought there was a chance - even if it was only one percent."
And what's the reaction been among his teammates at GJ Gardner Homes Napier Old Boys' Marist? "I've been getting a few jibes about my age. All the young boys were saying that I better take this chance because, being an old man, it might be my last."
