Cricket: Scaling the Matterhorn

Matt Horne has compiled more than 500 championship runs this season.

Many years from now, when cricket buffs gather in the places old cricket buffs go to, clutching almanacs and Thermos flasks, one name will provoke little impassioned debate. That won't unduly bother MJ Horne.

The one-time Black Cap and prolific first-class batsman, is unobtrusively nudging himself up among the giants of New Zealand cricket. Of active first-class players he is second-highest career run-scorer behind Stephen Fleming and 28th of all-time and climbing fast. Only nine New Zealanders have scored more first-class centuries than Matt Horne and none are still playing.

But the fact he has done it flying below the radar is his greatest achievement.

"I am aware [of my place in history], but there's things I still want to achieve. But it always comes back to a ball-by-ball proposition," Horne earnestly says.

"You seriously cannot get any further beyond that. At the end of your career it's really your gameplan, your processes and what you learned along the way that got you there.

"In some ways it'll be great to look back and say X and Y happened, but statistics are probably in some ways irrelevant: the top players were just more methodical, more patient and better organised than the rest of us."

Horne, who will lead Auckland's batting line-up in the State Championship final starting on Eden Park outer oval today, has had a strange season, compiling five 50s and more than 500 championship runs - considerably more than James Marshall - while giving the impression he's done very little.

"I've been thinking a lot about it," Horne says. "I remember one season a while back where I scored one century and nine 50s and averaged 50 for the season. I sat down with Bert Sutcliffe at one stage and he looked at me and smiled and said 'well there's only one person who can do anything about that'. I went away and thought about it and realised he was spot on. It was realising that once you reached a particular comfort zone so you've got to work hard and push yourself through that.

"It [this season] has been a little bit disappointing. In terms of batsmanship and getting in, my rate of scoring 50s has been all right. But in the end it's big scores that you've got to get to push your name forward, but more importantly to set up games and give your side a solid base from which to apply pressure."

Even if he had his name written in neon and waved it under the noses of the New Zealand selectors, it is a moot point whether it would be noticed. When, following the second test versus Australia, it was decided Stephen Fleming was best served batting at No 4, Horne's name was hardly mentioned.

But it's OK to dream.

"I just love playing and if that happened it would be great, but I guess what the selectors have looked at is where they want to go to and in what direction they're heading. Maybe someone with my background, a little bit older, doesn't fit that mould and that's fine."

Instead, Horne has reset his goals at first-class level. Where once he sat down with Sutcliffe for inspiration, now he looks to another left-hander.

"I look at Michael Bevan. He has no international aspirations because of the player base in Australia and he's scored eight centuries this season."

He clearly thinks those are numbers he should be aiming for. "Maybe I'm just a little bit soft around the edges."

You can gather that thoughts of retirement are a long way from the 34-year-old's mind. There are things he'd still like to achieve, including the reconstruction of his once-expansive game, a game he compared to Lou Vincent. But finding himself opening in a test match after a relatively short domestic apprenticeship left him thinking deeply about survival skills rather than a shot-a-ball repertoire.

"I sat there and thought to myself 'geez, I'm playing a test match'. I realised to survive out there I had to make drastic changes," says Horne, who averages 28.4 in tests with four centuries.

"Basically, I crunched my game right down. As a result my one-day cricket definitely wasn't as good as it could have been and my game in general suffered because I wasn't able to be more expansive when I needed to be. It's something I've battled with. But internationally perhaps I got found out a little bit."

It's a refreshingly brutal assessment in a game where every weakness is seized on like carrion over a carcass. But it's Horne's weaknesses more than his strengths that keep him coming back for more.

"There's things I still want to achieve in the game, even if it is at first-class level. I'm still setting goals and still looking to push areas of my game. You look at someone like Mark Richardson and that's something he struggled with at the end. He'd moved on from that and he made the right decision. Me, hey look, I'm still loving it."