KEY POINTS:
Imagine that! You make 106 at the Gabba, you stay out hoping someone's going to come out and form a partnership and no one does; you accidentally run out the one who does but the rest die like flies; you finish a few runs short and you're out
of the series, on the next plane home and instead of hearing "Well done, Stephen, you played a Captain's innings", the banshees are screaming for your blood.
Then Adam Parore, in what you'd have to think is not a small betrayal, not only demands you surrender the captaincy to Daniel Vettori but goes on to suggest your leadership over the years hasn't been flash at all, despite what the "sycophants" say.
One newspaper letter writer accuses you of playing a typically selfish, self-glorifying innings. That irks Stephen Fleming. "I've never played selfishly. My record is selfless. I'm aware of being captain of the team score, I'm not driven by personally getting X number of runs. It's where the team's at that matters to me".
But it's Adam Parore who's taken his breath away. The personal attack from "one of my own, a guy I stood beside for 10 years and talked a lot of cricket with and shared a lot of good times and bad times" is a first for Fleming. "It set me back for a while".
Did you phone him? "No, I didn't phone him. Because it doesn't worry me, Paul, to be honest. If Adam had something to offer the New Zealand team or he cared about the New Zealand team, maybe he would have called me six months ago saying: 'Look, I've seen this, I've noticed this', which is what Martin Crowe does. He cares about the team. If Adam had been genuinely interested in the team he would have called and said: 'Mate, I've seen a change in you. What's going on?"'
Regarding the Gabba game, Fleming says he was delighted to get a century. He knew the importance of the game but the way wickets were falling, he says, he had to be measured the whole way through as he kept waiting for a partnership to form. When he walked off knowing it was all over, he was as flat as anyone.
So why didn't he pick up the run rate when he had the target in sight, which is one of the things Parore is furious about?
"We tried. The one thing I was guilty of was getting timid when we lost wickets. I knew then I had to stay in and bat. Running Ross out was tough as well. Each time we lost a wicket I'd take more and more responsibility to a point where I got too cautious because I didn't want to get out and lose the game by getting out. I had every reason to believe Jacob [Oram], Scott [Styris], Brendon [McCullum], Vettori, that any one of them could peel off a quick 30 or 40, and that's not shirking responsibility, our tail has been phenomenal in that area. That one night it didn't happen eroded my scoring and I can't say more than that".
Sounds fair to me. For God's sake, look at the man's record. Into the New Zealand Cricket team in 1994, Captain at 24 two years later, 104 tests, 267 one dayers, nine test centuries, seven one-day centuries, 41 test 50s, 45 one-day 50s, 159 test matches, 128 one-dayer catches, 6620 tests runs, 7599 one-dayer runs. That's pretty much a New Zealand record, except the centuries. That's a lot of dues and a lot of hard work over lots of years in front of millions of people round the world. He's carried the cricket hopes of a nation on his shoulders nearly all his adult life and, after the initial flutter with a relaxing joint as a lad in the team in 1994 in South Africa, there's been not a hint of private scandal. He's been a fine role model.
My son, who's mad about his rugby and his cricket, looked at me with awed reverence when I told him I was going to spend time with Stephen Fleming. "Can you get his autograph?"
Which I do. Fleming has warm, easy-to-read handwriting, with flowing, nicely curved letters. His signature is big and generous. He writes: "Reuben, Keep enjoying your cricket, mate!"
Interesting.
One of the big questions being asked of Stephen Fleming in recent times is whether he's enjoying his own cricket. But the word "enjoy" doesn't really apply at his level. By that I mean, cricket is what Fleming does. It's what he chose to do, his vocation. Cricket is his eternal fascination and he's spent all his adult life pretty near married to it, a leader within it, pondering and practicing its endless subtleties and mysteries, combinations and fortunes.
Yet, when I get home and take the autograph page out of the notebook to put aside for my boy, I find myself contemplating those few words, "Keep enjoying your cricket, mate". And I wonder, just a little, if after Brisbane and the clamour that's followed, if it's not something he's unconsciously saying to himself.
Stephen Fleming, his partner Kelly, and 13-month-old Tayla, live wrapped in bush high above Wellington. The house is in the full chaos of renovation. It's full of builders and timber, and everywhere is the sound of circular saws and hammering. They plan to light up the great wet pongas and a huge kowhai. "The cuddle puddle's over the back".
I tell him it's the house of a man with the instincts of a hermit. "No, it's the house of a man who treasures the family time and when people come around, it's our time and it's really valuable to me. As soon as you go out you're open to criticism and you're open to praise and you become a different person. When I get home the things that matter to me, the family, my friends, are of massive importance. If I can protect that I certainly will."
He still laughs about the first time we met a long time ago. His leadership was under stress then, too, and he was copping it in the papers.
I wanted an interview for Holmes so I phoned him and must have been, although I have long forgotten this, seductive. Says Fleming: "Your first words were 'an enemy of the Herald is a friend of mine', which I'll never forget." And laughs about it again.
(Guilty, your Honour. It's a competitive world and time passes but we all mellow and we come to love our brethren). But Fleming's good big mischievous laughter is a delight. He can laugh in a tough week. He's got a sharp sense of humour and responds well to wickedness. He can, however, think about things so deeply he's inclined, in the difficult times, to go too far into himself. As Martin Crowe describes it, he can get bogged down.
As we leave for a quiet cafe, Fleming asks me, suddenly, to come and see something.
He gets a bunch of keys from what's left of the house and leads me down a short bush-covered path to an old bush-covered shed you'd never know was there. He opens two locks and pulls the door. My cellar, he says, as he stands aside for me to enter.
Kelly made this for him one weekend he was playing away, he says. She planned it all, got their friends in to help, and surprised him when he came home.
Oh, this is a cellar all right, but it's much more than that. This is the perfect man den, a lovingly created man cave for the stressed man Kelly loves. Go Kelly! The old concrete walls are painted a soft, textured, cosy orange, soothing and warm and mottled somehow, like terracotta. Along two walls, to waist height are wine racks holding several hundred bottles. Along the top of the racks are shelves lined with Veuve Cliquot. On a table in a corner, a big box of cigars and a small stereo. On one wall, a candelabra. And in the middle of the concrete floor, a table and six chairs where Fleming can retreat with a few friends, and enjoy a red and a cigar with the stereo on and the world a long way away.
Along the back wall, above the Veuve, Kelly has mounted two big words in black, "Relax" and "Enjoy". Kelly knows her man. "She gives me perspective, yeah. She's a great woman".
So, I say, fired with psychological insight and chancing altogether too cute a question, did you spend much time in here this week? "No, I'm not sure I would have come out. If I'd gone in there I might have drunk a few too many."
But what about the captaincy? It's been 10 years now. In fact, Fleming believes himself to be a better captain than he was, say, four years ago. In what way? "Experience", he says, "just being in the job. I think the development of Daniel Vettori, I'm very proud of. I don't know too many other sports teams that have taken the opportunity to groom someone and I feel I've played a major part in that. He'll be a fine Captain of New Zealand. I think decision-making on the field is just as strong. We're a team that's always had to tap into our resources and we've always got to be as smart as we can be. Our research of other teams, finding weakness in other teams, is as good as it could be. It's just implementing that let's us down.
"And even this week I don't get too wound up about it. I'm thinking about Australia because I really want to make the Chappell-Hadlee work. I don't fear for my job because it's the nature of what we do. I can be selected or not selected. I want to perform and I want to be really smart about our last three games before the World Cup. I want to win the World Cup".
Yes, but maybe it's time for Vettori, Stephen? "Vettori's time will come. No doubt about that. I'm incredibly realistic about what I can give to the game. I'm getting on.
"I'm not as good on the field. I can catch but in the field I'm nothing like a Lou Vincent or a Ross Taylor. That weighs heavily at times when I'm in the field. I get criticised at times for not looking enthusiastic but I'm concentrating on my fielding. I've got to give everything to my fielding as well as captain the side. I'm always thinking about the team and what it needs, and if I don't feel I can do the job then I won't stay any longer than I should but there are things I still want to tick off".
So what about the big question of whether he still has the passion for the job, whether he still "enjoys" his cricket? "Emotionally, I don't get as wound up as I used to get but that's not diminishing the importance or the excitement of the role. I'm more clinical about what needs to be done because I understand if we don't start getting results, I understand what's round the corner, so I know what needs to be done."
Then there's the awful sting of Parore's claim that Fleming is comfortable with defeat.
Fleming reacts physically to this and he flicks his head.
"I take exception to that. That was out of line. That I'm comfortable with losing is rubbish, absolute rubbish. It's just shallow. From watching an interview he felt I was comfortable with defeat! Maybe he's too wrapped up in the brand."
The day draws on and the talking is easy. On the deck of the cafe, a wind is coming in from the south. We order more of young Sven's good coffees. Fleming is a regular in Sven's cafe and is obviously adored.
The cricket conversation is running out. "Well", I sigh. "As someone once said to me: 'They dream it, you live it"'.
"In the end. And that's great", he smiles.
So let's talk about sex. When you've had a bad week of criticism, does that put you off?"
"Low libido?"
"Low libido."
"Yeah, probably not quite that adventurous."
And the good, sudden, wicked laugh again.
Relax, Stephen Fleming.
Oh, and Reuben says: "Keep enjoying your cricket, mate."
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
