KEY POINTS:
The season of Peter Ingram's life was very nearly not a season at all.
Controversially cut from the Central Districts contract list in the off-season, an embittered Ingram was feeling about as charitable towards the Central Districts management as Saddam Hussein was to Kurdish villagers.
So when coach
Graham Barlow made an SOS call to Ingram when Mathew Sinclair and Jamie How were called up to the national team, he didn't let the opportunity pass to let the former England batsman know how disappointed he was.
Then the 28-year-old Taranaki batsman accepted the challenge.
Then he went and scored a total of more than 600 runs in one-day and State Championship cricket to establish himself as the form batsman in the country this summer - bar no-one.
Here is the rub: the worst moment of Ingram's cricket career had the most positive effect on his game.
Rather than quitting in a fit of pique, he went back to his roots, decided to stop listening to coaches and get on with doing what he used to love doing before getting serious - just hit the ball.
Because, and Ingram will be the first to admit this, in his first six years of first-class cricket, Ingram developed a reputation as a blocker of the highest degree. Given the success of his transformation into a stroke player, it is not unnatural to ask Ingram if he feels he has wasted the past couple of years trying to play the anchor role.
"Probably six years, mate," he says. "The contracts came out at the start of the summer and I wasn't part of it, so I said 'I don't want to be part of the Stags any more and just want to do my own thing'. I kept training, did my own thing and learned to trust myself again."
Ingram coaches and plays with the Francis Douglas Memorial College 1st XI in Taranaki club cricket and playing with bright-eyed kids reignited his passion for the game.
"I always believed I could do well but I didn't know how to do it. I'd always listened to coaches and they say 'do this, do that' and I've always thought they must know what they're talking about. But just doing my own thing and just trying to hit the ball allowed me to get my trust back in my game and to discover the areas I can score runs in."
Each major association has 12 contracted spots to dish out each season, with the highest-ranked player earning $24,000 and No 12 $12,000.
To suddenly have a sizeable chunk of income ripped from you was not something Ingram, until then a part-time teacher (he is now full-time), took lightly.
His omission shocked some of his team-mates. Unbeknown to him at the time, at least three senior players approached the Players' Association to intervene on Ingram's behalf, saying Central's selection of eight bowlers in the 12 was illogical and unfair on Ingram, who would likely be called up if Jamie How, Mathew Sinclair or Ross Taylor made the Black Caps.
Central management was quizzed but was unrelenting. That is why Barlow's call to Ingram when the inevitable happened must have been a chastening experience.
Born and bred in the region, Ingram even took calls from Northern Districts, who were happy to offer him one of their 12 contracted spots, before deciding the upheaval would be too much for him and his fiancee.
Barlow will be thankful for that - Ingram is about the only thing that has stood between Central and ignominy in a disappointing season so far.
Ingram has gaudy stats in both forms of the game. He has scored 331 runs (at 110.33) with two centuries in the State Championship and 280 runs, average 56, with a century last week in the State Shield. He has chipped in with a handy Twenty20 knock as well.
And he's doing it for $1000 per Championship match, $500 for a Shield match and $300 for a Twenty20 game.
At best, he can earn a little less than $15,000 this season, little more than pocket money in today's world.
That's why when Central contact him in the off-season and offer him one of their 12 contracts, they should not expect any thanks, or loyalty. He might find he has better things to do with his time than live on the whim of a selector or two.
"Cricket's here today, gone tomorrow. I'll just keep teaching and whatever happens, happens. I'll just enjoy life and if cricket's part of it, then good," says Ingram.
