Daniel Vettori: Reluctant hero

By GREG DIXON

The pain was almost palpable. As Daniel Vettori walked in to bowl his last spell on the final day of New Zealand's second cricket test against Australia, it was there, plain as the Wellington sunshine, in his uncertain gait and in the furrows of his face.

He seemed to forget the strain of the then-undiagnosed back pain for only a moment during his eight-over cameo at the death.

With his team again playing towards a certain defeat against Australia, the left-arm spinner bowled his first ball over the wicket to Michael Slater, the opener came at him, the ball turned past the bat and Kiwi wicketkeeper Adam Parore did the rest.

The bails on the ground, the stumped Slater trudged from the crease with his total at 12. The Wonders from Down Under fleetingly stumbled at an unflattering 22 for one. For the briefest of moments, too, Vettori forced a smile.

Character. Maturity. Mental toughness. Fingers were busy at keyboards banging out these words - the cliches, the platitudes that plague most commentary of professional sport - within hours of Daniel Luca Vettori leaving the field.

A week can be a long time in cricket. After the young bowler's record-breaking triumphs in the first test loss to Australia, he ended the second with a stress fracture to his lower spine, forcing him out of the third and into bed.

But again the youngster had done more than was asked of him. Again he displayed the true grit that seems such a foreign concept to some of his team- mates. Again he was the spin-ball wizard. Yada, yada, yada ... But in truth, it is Vettori's on-field presence and success, his style and approach to the game that is now his life, that communicates the nature of this 21-year-old.

Certainly, he's prepared to give away only a little about himself off the field. Slumping in a chair at his Wellington hotel, two days out from that second test, he's the very picture of a reluctant hero. Answering each question in a quiet, polite monotone, he gives the impression that he'd like to be anywhere - anywhere - other than in this room talking about himself.

He might have been the youngest player to represent New Zealand in a test match (18 years and 10 days). He might, just a week before we talk, have become the youngest spinner to take 100 test wickets. He might even hold, just three seasons into his international career, the second-best bowling figures in a New Zealand test match (12-140 to Richard Hadlee's 15-123).

He's just not given to crowing about it. And he's not interested either, you figure, in drawing any more attention than he might already have.

"Oh," he says sighing audibly, "[attention] is probably the worst thing that comes with playing for your country. It is something that ... I mean I know I have to do it, but it's always something I probably struggle with a little bit in terms of giving up my time. It's always been hard for me, but I just accept it as part of the job."

Over coffee in the warm living-room of his family's bungalow in Hamilton, Vettori's parents, Renzo and Robyn, offer another perspective on their son's success and fame.

They say they have put his numerous sporting trophies out for display only to watch Daniel take them down again (though they now sit on shelves in his large room, converted from a double garage, and close to his recent purchase, a pokey machine called "tequila sunrise").

He's not much more curious either about the family's scrapbook of his press clippings, the hundreds, maybe thousands, of newspaper column centimetres he has generated since he bowled his way into the big time at 18 years. Occasionally he'll flick through them.

Vettori sen: "[Fame] hasn't affected him in a negative sense at all. I don't believe that, he's just learned to live with it. He doesn't particularly like it."

"I think he found it mystifying at first, to be quite honest," Robyn Vettori adds.

"He couldn't work out," his father continues, "what the big deal was that he had longish hair, that's what you wear. But when you become part of the public limelight ..."

"He doesn't play to the media at all, I don't think," says his mother.

He was certainly playing a slow innings the day of our face-to-face interview, offering little spin but much tried-and-true cricket-player philosophy on the various aspects of his life.

On success in the first test against Australia: "It's behind me now. I'm just looking forward to this next test match."

On the pressures of public expectation: "Obviously people expect the same thing to happen again, and it's a matter of knowing it probably won't. I suppose I do feel some expectations ... but I try not to put any more pressures on myself."

On Australian Captain Steve Waugh's suggestion that he's captaincy material: "It is something that I'd probably love to do. It could be a long way away with [present captain] Stephen Fleming being around a long time, but certainly it would be a great honour."

It is perhaps best left to others, those who know him best or work with him closely, to describe the unwilling Vettori's true strengths. And when you do approach these people, those words - character, maturity, mental toughness - are delivered consistently.

The opposition, or at least Aussie "spin-meister" Shane Warne, apparently admire him.

Speaking after Vettori's 103rd test wicket (in a test which garnered Vettori the man-of-the-match award despite New Zealand losing), Warne said he thought his opponent had bowled "beautifully" and with great control.

"He's all of 21 years of age. I know what I was doing at 21 and, phew, he's got a very level head on his shoulders. All the expectations were on him ... he bowls the ball in the right spot most of the time ... I admire him."

High praise indeed, and thoughts that are echoed by someone who knows more than most about what goes on above Vettori's shoulders.

New Zealand Cricket's player manager, Gilbert Enoka, who is also a sports psychologist, reckons Vettori's combination of physical talent and mental stability is rare.

"It was identified at an early age that he had special talents, that he was extra special as an individual. The talent and maturity of him as a person has meant that we have basically got more out of his ability at an earlier age.

"He's been thrown in against England [in the second test in the 1996/97 season] right at the outset and he's performed admirably on the world stage and has only gone forward since then. I think he is more the exception rather than the rule. People like him only come along once in a while."

Ask Enoka just why - the original nature versus nurture question - and he calls it a tough one to answer. However, he does believe the stability of a "solid" upbringing has played its part.

Renzo and Robyn, however, have been somewhat stumped by all these maturity comments.

"It's interesting that you say that," says Robyn. "People tell us he's mature beyond his years. I don't know whether we would have recognised that without people telling us."

But if mature he is, it was Vettori's schooling at the private St Paul's Collegiate in Hamilton (it has a solid sporting and academic reputation) that was in many senses the making of him, they say.

But you can't help but sense his family was more important. Renzo and Robyn have a close family (Daniel has an older brother, Nicholas, a 23-year-old University of Waikato student, and an 18-year-old sister, Kimberley, who is travelling for a year before pursuing a communications degree).

And Renzo's Italian heritage - his parents brought him to New Zealand when he was 6 - means, predictably, that family is a big deal for the Vettoris.

Pictures of the children, at all ages, adorn the walls of their home, echoing their pride in their good-looking brood.

Good looking and nice, too, if the public's perception of Danny Boy is on the button. Well, maybe. His mum seems to think he's fooled the nation.

"Chris Cairns said that to me too. We met once for a drink here in Hamilton and he said, 'I think, Robyn, you and I are on the same track: I know this kid has fooled the nation as well.'"

Daniel has, says his mum, a "wicked" sense of humour that the public rarely sees.

Renzo: "I remember early on Fleming saying something about 'he's a pest.'"

That said, the young Vettori commands respect from team-mates years his senior.

Parore has had more to say about the spinner than just "bowled Dan." He said recently that "Dan's never had more than a couple of bad games in a row for New Zealand. We know that we've got a better chance of winning a game if Dan's there."

Which makes Vettori's spinal injury all the more concerning for the team and selectors. The third test, timed to start yesterday, may well be decided by his absence from an attack and pitch demanding spin-ball wizardry.

It's not his first injury. He's had a "fairly significant" shoulder problem, and damaged his knee after a collision in the field in a test match against Australia in 1997.

But the stress fracture of his spin (first damaged as a teen in a car accident which put him hospital for weeks) appears as career-threatening as any injury he's had. The 7935 deliveries at an average of 44 overs a test seem to have taken their toll.

"I just feel very weak, like my legs are going to give out," he told the Herald this week.

But the timing of the injury is fortuitous. After the third test, the team and Vettori now have a five-month break before another intense season.

And his career might well be long enough to achieve his ambition of becoming captain. Spinners, unlike pace bowlers, traditionally serve well into their 30s - though in most cases they've matured later than Vettori.

Certainly, he has options should his career end. His academic record at school was strong and his skill at chemistry garnered a $5000 scholarship (now elapsed) for his then planned degree in health sciences at Waikato. He still has vague plans to study, perhaps by correspondence.

Robyn, who made sure that Vettori paid attention to his studies as well as his sport, might well prefer academia to watching her son take the field with the obvious pain he had during the second test.

"They said they were going to fill him full of painkillers," she said, shaking her head at the thought. She was not sure whether she was happy about that. But then, she confesses, she's got a degree in worrying.

"I've worried about him being young. He was still growing when he started. I mean he'd played a lot of cricket before [playing for New Zealand] but it's more intense at this level. I guess he was helped being within a team.

"But I remember he rang me once [from India] and said, 'It's all right mum, I've got an armed guard to go outside.' It freaked me out."

Bowled Dan.