Jimmy Neesham will make his return for the Black Caps against Australia next month. Photo / Peter Drury
Jimmy Neesham will make his return for the Black Caps against Australia next month. Photo / Peter Drury
James Neesham started his international career with centuries in his first two tests. His first two series were winning ones.
He was scoring runs and taking the odd wicket.
He was young, he was talented, he was near-enough indestructible, having calculated that he'd missed maybe three games of cricketin the previous four years.
Jimmy Neesham salutes after scoring a century on day five of the second test against India at the Basin Reserve. Photo / Mark Mitchell
There was, at that point, no downside to professional sport.
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Then came a series against Pakistan in the UAE. The runs dried up and the pitches were so unresponsive that he bowled a total of 29 overs in two tests.
A bounceback series against Sri Lanka followed, then heartbreak. Neesham missed selection for the World Cup squad, run down in the finishing straight by the heady, experienced Grant Elliott.
He went straight back to Otago and played Wellington in a Ford Trophy game, determined to show the selectors he was the "next cab off the rank" should injury strike.
Instead it was he who felt a pop in his back. Stress fracture of the L4; all those niggles around the hamstrings, glutes and groin he had been experiencing lately were suddenly explained.
"It was a pretty rough week," Neesham says on the balcony of a Hamilton hotel.
"Obviously I was dealing with missing out on the World Cup squad and had made the decision to push hard, put the numbers on the board... To then injure myself, it was pretty hard to take. It was a good learning experience."
That "learning experience" would take him to places he hadn't been before - dark places.
The thought of giving up bowling to become a specialist batsman, which would protect the back, never entered his mind. Neesham's short attention span couldn't handle that.
"I was 24 at the time, I'm 25 now and that's a long way to go as far as allrounders are concerned. Historically allrounders don't tend to mature until their late 20s as far as fitness and form goes, so I never considered that, especially with the strength of middle order players we have coming through."
In a broader sense, however, the injury and long rehabilitation gave him a sense of fallibility, and there were times, fleeting though they may have been, where he wondered whether it was worth it.
"I've been really lucky with injury and I guess you start to feel a bit invincible when you have a run like that. When you get an injury like this it sort of puts things in perspective.
"You start to imagine what you'd do if you could never return to the field again, and that's why I've made some strides to look at options outside of cricket during my lay-off.
"It's really difficult to explain to someone that hasn't been through it - the dark places you go to when you're rehabbing from a serious injury. It was quite useful to have guys like Matt Henry and Shane Bond to bounce things off, but in the end you have to walk that road yourself.
"You go through some dark times, especially the middle couple of months. For the first month you're really motivated to get back and pushing to do everything you can. In the middle couple of months you go through a lull where the enthusiasm has worn off from the start and you've still got a long way to go and you can't see the finish line. You have to stick to the rehab programme and try to stay sane, which is a challenge at times."
Neesham is not using the concept of sanity flippantly. He says his flatmates - old schoolmates who are not involved in cricket - will testify to his state of mind.
"I was a reasonably miserable bloke for a while there. It tests you mentally like nothing else.
"I never thought about [giving the game away] for a sustained period of time, but you have your nights when you're lying on your back staring at the ceiling and you do wonder about that sort of thing."
Vulnerability doesn't appear to play much part in Neesham's game. He oozes confidence on the field, even cockiness. In a quiet moment, however, the leadership of the Black Caps will tell you that some of it is a front; that Neesham's confidence is a little streaky.
"That's probably reflective of all sport. Confidence comes from performance and naturally when you're playing well you're going to be confident and that feeds off itself," he says.
Neesham is confident enough to be something of a mould-breaker.
One of the side-effects of having strong, charismatic leadership is that the subjects all start to conform to the ruler. It might not be planned or even be an unspoken rule, but it just happens. You can see it in this Black Caps side. The pre-game quotes from any of the players could have all come from the mouth of Brendon McCullum. It's not a bad message, just the same message.
Neesham is different, which is why the media gravitates to him as much as he's started to gravitate to the media in preparation for an after-cricket career.
He doesn't do cookie-cutter quotes, particularly when he's interacting with fans on social media.
His social media activity, whether it's Twitter, Reddit or live blogging, is becoming the stuff of legend.
For example, it's hard to imagine many cricketers answering the Reddit AMA question, "What are you thinking as you are batting?", like this:
"Ok get through the first couple of balls. Jeez that was quick. Ok knuckle down here. Oooh that girl's quite pretty. Oi stop it, concentrate. Watch the ball. Shit that came off the bat quite nicely. I wonder how long it is til lunch? These pants are a bit tight, maybe I should get some new ones. Watch the ball. NO KANE NO. Come on mate there's no run there, jeez. Oooh it's lunch, I wonder if there's cheesecake?"
You wonder whether it's just Jimmy Being Jimmy, or is there a method behind the madness?
"It's a bit of both to be honest," he says.
"I had Twitter before I became a Black Cap, when I was playing for Otago. That wasn't a conscious decision to reach out to fans because I didn't have any.
"There's a gap in the sporting landscape for guys who interact with fans as opposed to those who use their profile to promote themselves. Also, as a cricketer you have a lot of spare time when you're on tour."
The professional sports landscape is littered with cautionary tales of social media faux pas, and it is not a space pre-Facebook-generation coaches necessarily encourage their players to occupy.
"I've sailed reasonably close to wind but I have a technique where I let things sit for about an hour if I think they're controversial or 50-50. If after an hour I'm still not 100 per cent sure I want to post it, I just let it sit ..."
For now, it's a different sort of technique that is more pressing: how to score runs and take wickets against a good Australian team in Australia.
