Daniel Vettori

Daniel Vettori looks more like a nerdy geek with his school-boyish spectacles than a cricketer. However the saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' never held truer than in Vettori's case, who is comfortably one of New Zealand's greatest ever cricketers.

He became the youngest Kiwi to play a Test match when he made his debut at the age of 18 against England in 1997. His ODI debut came a month later, against Sri Lanka, at Christchurch on 25 March 1997.

Vettori has a classical action and a couple of telling variations and he is regarded as the best exponent of left-arm spin in the game since Bishen Singh Bedi. He has a beautiful loop, and deceives the batsmen in flight, often changing the pace and the trajectory of the ball to leave the batsmen fooled. He also has a killer arm ball which curves back in wickedly at pace, to catch the batsmen off-guard. In recent times, he has added some variations like the one that moves away from the right hander ever so late.

Vettori has often borne the brunt of being the sole wicket-taker for New Zealand in Tests and luckily for them he has the ability to bowl long spells and possesses patience in abundance. He is willing to plug away at batsmen, working on their weaknesses before snaring them with an unexpected delivery. His current Test average of 33.61 might seem a tad high for someone to be considered world class, but it should be remembered that he has operated without support for the most part in a team that has always been weak. When New Zealand did have another strike bowler in their ranks in Shane Bond, it has shown Vettori's value more truly. In matches that Bond has played in, Vettori's average has been a world beating 24.74.

Vettori was thrust with the mantle of the New Zealand captaincy after Stephen Fleming stepped down post the 2007 World Cup. Soon enough, it was announced that Vettori would captain the Black Caps in all forms of the game.

He had a far from smooth initiation into the job, with a number of high profile players such as Stephen Fleming, Chris Cairns, Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan retiring, and two of the leading bowlers - Shane Bond and Daryl Tuffey - joining the rebel ICL, but he stuck to the task manfully, leading a bunch of inexperienced and rookie professionals through some difficult series.

Vettori, who started off as a bowler who could bat a bit, has worked superbly on his batting skills, having scored 3,000 Test runs including five centuries as well as several half-centuries. Although it took Vettori 47 Tests to score his first 1,000 runs at an average of 17.24, the second thousand took him just 22 Tests at a rate of 42.52. He has been the rock in the Black Caps side in the lower middle-order and has had to promote himself up the order often, to rescue a talented but fragile top order.

Vettori gave up captaincy of the National side after the 2011 World Cup. The Kiwis reached the semi-final but lost to Sri Lanka, which caused him to hand over the leadership to Ross Taylor. He also suffered a series of injuries which have kept him out of the team for a while. These days he doesn't play much with the emergence of Nathan McCullum and Ish Sodhi. He is yet to announce his retirement and by the looks of things it won't be long as he last played for New Zealand in June, 2013.

Vettori is one of the few nice guys left in cricket and he rarely loses his temper. He was picked by the Delhi Daredevils for US$625,000 in the inaugural IPL auction. His penetrative spin bowling has added a cutting edge to their attack, leading Sehwag to dub him the best spinner in the world in 2009. However, he was let go after his contract expired and Royal Challengers Bangalore snapped him up in the 2011 auctions. Vettori was also made the captain and in that very year he took the Bangalore franchise to the final but they eventually lost to Chennai. He continued captaining the side in 2012 and 2013, but injuries and form made him to step aside and let Virat Kohli take over. In a surprise move, Vettori was made the head coach of the Bangalore team just before the 2014 auctions.

Vettori played the Big Bash League for Brisbane Heat in January 2014 and was made stand-in captain in place of the injured James Hopes. He played the home ODI series against South Africa in October 2014, before making a shock return to Test cricket - after a gap of two years - in the third Test against Pakistan at Sharjah in November 2014. However, he stressed that he did not want to prolong his Test career and did not feature in the home series against Sri Lanka. He continued to play the 50-over format. With a lot of experience behind him, Vettori is one of the key players for New Zealand at the 2015 World Cup.

Little known facts about Vettori:

Vettori was born to an Italian father and a Kiwi mother making him the first cricketer of Italian descent to represent New Zealand.

He is only the eighth player in Test history to take 300 wickets and score 3,000 runs. He also holds the record in Tests for making the most runs at No.8.

He has the distinction of having dismissed Shane Warne the most times in Test matches - getting him out nine times, most notably for 99 in a Test at Perth thus denying Warne his only Test hundred.

Vettori is one of the most powerful men in New Zealand Cricket today - he is the leading bowler, one of the main batsmen, a safe fielder, captain, and one of the selectors of the New Zealand team. To top it all, he was even the standby coach for a short while after Andy Moles was sacked.

by Srivathsa