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The 29-year-old excelled at basketball, volleyball, football and rugby as a child but is now a batsman without obvious flaws• We are expanding our coverage of New Zealand. Please help us by supporting our independent journalism
As England prepare for the start of their Test series in New Zealand, history suggests they should be wary of unintended consequences and unnecessary generosity. For the presence in New Zealand’s team of a batsman and captain of genuine world class is, at least in small part, down to their own past failure to do so.
In the winter of 2001-02, while England’s cricket team toured New Zealand, Graham Thorpe gave an old bat to Mark Patterson, his former Surrey teammate. Patterson was playing for Mount Maunganui at the time, and though he failed to find a use for Thorpe’s old bat he passed it on to another Mount player, Jim Irwin. The bat laid unused in a corner of the Irwin household for a couple of years before he in turn offered it to Bill Aldridge, a keen player and coach whose son Graeme was to enjoy a very brief international career, which amounted to three limited-overs matches in the space of eight days in October 2011. Aldridge also decided not to keep it, giving it instead to a promising local 12-year-old, who thought it too big and heavy, and besides he had just bought himself a new one of a more appropriate size, so he too ignored it. The child’s name was Kane Williamson. Continue reading...