Adam Parore: Time running out for Fleming to tame test demons

Any test century is worth savouring and Stephen Fleming should be delighted with his hundred in Cape Town yesterday.

Fleming did a pretty good job. It wasn't chanceless, but not too many test hundreds are.

He had to battle at times, but when assessing his innings, it's worth remembering New Zealand had been sent in to bat.

There's something particularly satisfying when you've been put in and get a century, as the opposing captain clearly reckons your team is vulnerable in the opening session.

Mention the words "test hundreds" and "Fleming" in the same sentence and you're bound to add the rider "conversion rate" as it's that statistic, 50s into 100s, which has prevented Fleming taking his place as perhaps New Zealand's most successful test batsman.

His nine hundreds sit alongside 41 fifties and that's an average return for such a classy player.

Martin Crowe mentioned early in Fleming's test career that he expected Fleming would overtake his mark of 17 hundreds by some distance.

It hasn't happened. Fleming is the country's highest test runmaker but he'll struggle to go past Crowe's 100 tally.

I suspect that the problem has now got to the stage that when he passes 50 he starts to feel spooked. In many ways, it is not unlike a lot of other negative thoughts that invariably go through a player's head, and if it wasn't that it would likely be something else.

We all have demons. There's no shame in that - as long as you tame them, that is.

In Flem's case, he probably still has some taming to do, and given his let-off on 97 he's probably pretty relieved that he didn't chalk up his sixth score in the nineties.

His conversion rate wasn't something we really discussed in the dressing room over a beer. It wasn't something he was especially keen to talk about with his teammates, and especially once he became captain, which was pretty early in his career.

I believe as his career developed and his captaincy record improved, he did not want to display any sign of weakness; certainly not in front of younger players.

I can understand why a captain would not want to be seen as somebody with a flaw in his game, but everyone has them in some aspect of their sport or life.

It took him 23 tests to make his maiden hundred. Yesterday's effort was his first century for 14 matches.

The pity of it all is that if he had converted at a rate of 40 per cent, which is something a good number of players who are not a scratch on Fleming have achieved, yesterday would have marked his 20th test century and catapulted him into the ranks of the greats. He would be regarded as our finest batsman by some distance, and certainly ahead of Crowe.

I reckon this conversion rate stigma will remain with him to the end of his career. If Fleming was 23, he'd have time to turn it round. Now, with retirement looming perhaps in the next couple of years, I can see him being stuck with it.

As for Shane Bond, there is some sense in the suggestion he should forget test cricket and concentrate on the one-day game. Let's face it, his fitness record is appalling. The sad reality is he can't stay fit.

If Bond, at 30, doesn't like the idea of shutting down his test career, it's worth asking: what career? After all, he's only played 14 tests since his debut at Hobart in November 2001.

Is it really worth hanging on for something that never really existed in any case? And while his numbers are impressive by any measure, he may be better off focusing on a game which puts less stress on his fragile frame.

I'd far rather have a fit Bond playing ODIs for the next three years than the stop-start, here-one-day-gone-the-next player in both forms of the game that he has become.