Modern New Zealand Cricket Greats : From Stephen Fleming to Kane Williamson (eBook)

New Zealanders have just lived through a Golden Age of Cricket. That's not a sentence many brought up with a love of the great game in the 1990s thought they would read as the national side took the gains made in the 1980s - mostly though the deeds of the great Sir Richard Hadlee and the burgeoning talent of Martin Crowe - and flubbed them away in a drunken fog of amateurism while the rest of the world took a more rigidly professional approach. The green shoots of a recovery started to emerge under the young, urbane leadership of Stephen Fleming and, despite as many downs as ups, took flight when Brendon McCullum and coach Mike Hesson created an environment where failure was accepted as long as it came with grass stains, skinned elbows and a fearlessness never seen before on our cricket fields. Four ICC tournament finals later, including a heartbreaking tie in the 2019 ODI final and a win in the inaugural World Test Championship, has cemented this era as New Zealand's greatest. These are the modern legends of summer who paved the way: Stephen Fleming, Nathan Astle, Daniel Vettori, Shane Bond, Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor, Tim Southee, Martin Guptill, BJ Watling, Kane Williamson, Trent Boult, Neil Wagner.

Dylan Cleaver has been obsessed with the summer sport since his earliest days on this planet. The first Black Caps test he covered as a journalist was Stephen Fleming's first as skipper, a four-wicket loss to England at the old Lancaster Park. Long before then, Cleaver had sat on the terraces of his hometown Pukekura Park and dreamt of a cricket career himself, but a lack of talent stymied that. Instead, he has spent the better part of three decades covering the sport for mastheads like the New Zealand Herald, Herald on Sunday, Sunday Star-Times and Sunday News, alongside contributing to overseas publications like The Cricket Monthly and The Nightwatchman. Cleaver has won close to 40 national journalism awards, including Best Investigation at the Canon Media Awards in 2015 for his work on match-fixing allegations involving former New Zealand cricketers. He has been named Sports Journalist of the Year on multiple occasions, including for his ground-breaking work linking the high rates of dementia in former rugby players with head injuries suffered in their playing days. He lives on the North Shore with his wife Michelle and two teenage children Liam and Libby.

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When New Zealand beat India to win the inaugural World Test Championship in 2021 it was more than a David v Goliath for the sport, it was the culmination of the greatest era in the country' s cricket history.Since the turn of the century the Black Caps, despite the country' s tiny playing pool compared to most of the cricketplaying world, have produced an outsized number of brilliant and influential players.In this book, long-time cricket journalist Dylan Cleaver dives deep into the best players of the era, from the elegant and erudite Cantabrian Stephen Fleming to the fire-breathing and bustling Neil Wagner, a Black Cap legend despite his highveld upbringing.These are the modern greats of New Zealand cricket.Stephen Fleming, Tim Southee, Nathan Astle, Martin Guptill, Daniel Vettori, BJ Watling, Shane Bond, Kane Williamson, Brendon McCullum, Trent Boult, Ross Taylor, Neil Wagner, Tom Latham.