KEY POINTS:
I have seen the future and its name is Adam Parore. In a development which could end the employment contract of many a sports psychologist, the secret weapon New Zealand sport has been craving was right under our noses all this time.
All we have to do is
to get Parore to slag off our sportspeople - and they'll perform like worldbeaters.
Parore, the former New Zealand wicketkeeper/batsman infamously gave new Black Cap Jesse Ryder a, er, serve claiming the one-day opener was "too fat" - and then was big enough to admit his mistake and concede Ryder had shown him up.
"He's in no fit state to play for New Zealand and if I was still in the national side, I wouldn't want him in my dressing room," wrote Parore in his New Zealand Herald column. "He claims to have lost 10kg, in which case you can only wonder what shape he was in before that.
"This selection sends a poor message to other players. There is an implication that fitness parameters only apply to some players. The days of picking Jock Edwards-types are over. Or David Boon, the tubby Tasmanian, for that matter. Boon was a fine batsman and an exception to the rule. But those guys are the dinosaurs and have no place in the modern international game."
This considered opinion has a lot of common sense behind it. In the exacting, percentage world of modern professional sport, there is no question about it - fit is better than not fit.
But there are a couple of things about, um, larger people. They can be enormously talented and win things, without ever having seen Adam Parore's abs.
Like Craig Stadler, the US golfer known as 'The Walrus' for his droopy moustache but also for a figure that, well, needed only the tusks...
Stadler weighed in at 115kg - not an enormous weight here in rugby-mad New Zealand but a fair tonnage if you are a 1.75m golfer. Stadler took off over 15kg - but lost form so badly that he put it all back on again and started winning. At last count he'd won 13 US PGA and eight Senior tour titles and had career earnings of US$17 million.
As I watched Ryder begin to unfold those rather special shots of his - the late, flicked, short-arm dropkick shots that flew off the middle of the bat, the searing cuts and pulls and the suggestion that we have not yet seen the muscular best of Jesse Ryder - I found myself thinking: 'Don't think Parore could play that shot; or that one; or that one'.
Respected international batsman though he was, Parore did not have the raw talent of this kid - even if Ryder has to endure taunts his whole career. The London Sun, incidentally, ran the news of the Black Caps' massive, 10-wicket ODI win against England under the heading "Pork Chopped". No prizes for guessing who they were referring to.
But Parore may have opened a whole new revenue stream for himself. He could slag for New Zealand.
We could set him up to have a crack at Michael Campbell ahead of the US Masters. Or we could rev Parore into full froth mode every Rugby World Cup semifinal. Sorry? Oh, yes, better make that quarter-finals.
If the Silver Ferns start spluttering, we could get him to pen a vicious column proclaiming that Irene van Dyk is too tall. Or we wait until the May rugby league test against the Australians and then fire off biting criticism about the Kiwis being mentored by a gangly Aussie pensioner who looks like he should be playing the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz Christmas panto.
So, Ryder gave the lie to the contention that he shouldn't be there. And Parore has now learned the lesson I did as a young sportswriter when I covered a New Zealand-England test match at Eden Park many moons ago. I wrote, in my unimpeachably youthful wisdom, that a young New Zealand bowler who battled to get any traction on a feather-bed pitch and was milked for plenty of runs wasn't good enough to play test cricket for New Zealand.
The man in question was Ewen Chatfield and, after a slow start, he went on to play rather a lot of tests for New Zealand and very successfully, too. So comment on form, even piercingly so, but never assume that someone playing for their country hasn't got the ability or shouldn't be there because they ate too many doughnuts. Because people selected to play for their country generally do have talent and, what's more, they usually have a considerable will and nine times out of 10 will prove you wrong.
Still, Parore could employ what I call the 'DJ Cameron Defence'. The former rugby and cricket writer for the Herald once wrote off a team's chances so dismissively that he was confronted after the match by an angry coach (whose team had won, of course) who began berating DJ about his piece.
Cameron waited until the onslaught finished, grinned at the coach and said: "See? Worked."
