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Daniel Vettori — the understated champion

It would not be stretching it too far to say Daniel Vettori has been the most important Kiwi cricketer of the last two decades.

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Daniel Vettori © Getty Images
Daniel Vettori was forever a team man; he was the team’s leading batsman, bowler, and captain at one stage © Getty Images

As Daniel Vettori calls it a day after an 18-year journey across the cricket world, Arunabha Sengupta pays tribute to a brilliant and understated career that has notched up plenty of colossal deeds along the way. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Top 10 most memorable moments

From the scholarly looking 18-year-old to the elder statesman of world cricket, it has been a long, long journey. Half his life till now has been spent on the cricket ground. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: The CricketCountry XI

There were changes on the way. The long locks fell away early, the boyish angularity of the cheeks was filled up with the heaviness of experience, the glasses too changed from the light metal frames to rather forbidding and wide spectacles, the chin started smooth, gradually sprouted outgrowth of stubble and with time changed into a rather serious beard. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Top 10 innings

In cricketing terms he crossed the whole nine —22 perhaps? — yards. The left-arm spin picked up guile on the way to becoming one of the best in the world, the left handed batting metamorphosed from handy tail-end to meaty middle-order, for a while nearly the best Test batsman of the country.  The burdens of batting and bowling were enhanced with the mantle of captaincy, and the erstwhile teenaged stripling led the country with the same steely determination that was forever sheathed under his polite exterior.  Injuries weighed him down, and the responsibility of selection was also thrust on his shoulders. He took all that in his stride, and then some more. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Top 10 spells

It would not be stretching it too far to say Daniel Vettori has been the most important Kiwi cricketer of the last two decades. And certainly the most understated in the world when weighed against his surprisingly colossal achievements. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Top 5 catches

When in the World Cup his bespectacled eyes followed the ball on the point boundary, all through the parabolic trajectory, and then he leapt in the air to bring off a one-handed blinder to dismiss Marlon Samuels, the entire side ran to him in unbridled delight. The man himself almost squirmed uncomfortably in the limelight that his 36-year-old athleticism had surprisingly exposed himself to. Cricket World Cup finals XI: Players who were outstanding on the day of finals

He has never been one for excessive show of emotion or celebration. Hence one continues to do a double take on looking at his record. A collection of 4,531 runs at exactly 30 runs per innings and 362 wickets at 34.36, six hundreds and 20 five-wicket hauls from his 113 Tests.  That places his unassuming self in the select bracket of some of the greatest all-rounders of all time. Only Kapil Dev and Ian Botham have scored more than 4,000 runs and captured more than 300 wickets. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: The Associate XI

One thinks of Vettori and wonders when he accomplished all that. He remains second only to Richard Hadlee in the impact he has left on the cricketing landscape of the lovely nation under the long white cloud. And without any semblance of doubt it makes him the greatest spinner produced by the country — ever. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Moments that occurred for first time in a World Cup

He was the youngest New Zealander to play Test cricket, and then One Day cricket as well. Soon, he became the youngest spinner to 100 wickets. Gradually his feats became more than just the flashes of a youngster. The drift became more pronounced; the spin and bounce more controlled and canny. If the first forays to the crease were accompanied by spirited endeavour but limited ability, soon technique and strokes were being added to his batting skills. He graduated to a batsman with a fantastic 137 against Pakistan. He celebrated his 200 wickets with an 82-ball century in the same Test match, still the fastest by a Kiwi batsman. And then he got Kumar Sangakkara caught at mid-wicket to complete the fantastic double of 3,000 runs and 300 wickets. In 2010, he became just the second Kiwi cricketer to appear in 100 Test matches. Vettori had moved on from being a boy cricketer with a faint resemblance to Harry Potter into a man, a noble one, of whom Nature might stand up and say to the world, “This was a man.” Top 10 batsmen in ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

And in spite of the wealth of experience, he did not quite develop the hardened cynicism that makes cricketers trespass the boundaries of the spirit of the game to win a match. He led New Zealand to the ICC Spirit of Cricket Award, twice. And he refused to appeal for a run out when he felt he was in the way of the batsman’s rush back to the crease. Top 10 bowlers in ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

With time the hamstring acted up, the back shut down, the Achilles rebelled. The career was derailed, tried to limp back only with partial success.  It was pure determination which enabled him to play the World Cup, a key member in the side’s incredible march to the final. Top 10 fielders in ICC Cricket World Cup 2015

The superb display of the side in the tournament, followed by the heartbreak in the final, will ensure one important thing. Vettori’s departure from the cricket world will not be as understated and unsung as most of his career has been. The impact of the competition on public memory will result in his walking away in full glory, accompanied by all the fanfare that he so richly deserves. ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Complete Coverage

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)

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