Stephen Fleming leaves the stage at the end of this test and he might well have spent the greater part of the first day here in Napier thanking his lucky stars that Daniel Vettori did not win the toss and bat first. At least that is what one might assume given the way things turned out for England’s batsmen in that dreadful morning session but maybe Fleming would have been New Zealand’s equivalent of Kevin Pietersen and would therefore have negotiated the day with equanimity.

He will get his chance today to leave a mark on this match and although he has been adamant that a good team performance would be the perfect parting gift it is no secret that he has personal goals which will help him and the team finish on the right note. Simply speaking he needs 113 runs in the match to take his average over the 40 mark and would be delighted if they all came in one innings so that his tally of test hundreds could also reach double figures.

There has been much speculation concerning his attitude to his last three games for New Zealand with some of my colleagues favouring the theory that it is mighty hard to get one’s brain working properly when one knows the end is nigh. The fact that he has got going in every innings but has not quite delivered the big score might bear this out.

I however would guess that all has been pretty much as normal in the Fleming brain. In every innings he has walked out as normal, started as normal, and carried on as normal. Normal is averaging just fewer than 40 throughout 14 years of largely satisfactory test cricket. It is going to be the question that he himself will continue to ask long after he has finished with the playing side of this game, “How does a man so capable, as evidenced by his ability as a captain, through which he has long demonstrated considerable understanding of this game, fail to make more of his own career?” And one could add, especially as he has helped many others under him make more of their own careers.

To be a good captain you need the ability to organise your thoughts coherently and consistently and batting demands more of the same. He was acknowledged as one of the best captains of this generation so it is a wonder that he did not make more of his natural abilities as a batsman. Because of that the challenge to finish with a career average above 40 has been a spectre hovering in the background these last weeks. As 40 is the acknowledged benchmark for a “good player” it is only right that he should be at that mark.

If he had played all his cricket in Asia, where he averages 65, the figures would not be a problem but ironically he has struggled more on home territory as defined as Australasia, where it’s 32 and even in England where it is 37. But let us not define him solely by his figures. His contribution to New Zealand cricket has to put it simply been immense. Even Martin Crowe, the genuine great of the previous team and an innovative captain in his own right, acknowledges that Fleming took captaincy to another realm.

The fact that he has decided to end it all in New Zealand has denied him the chance to finish off at Trent Bridge, where he has been a successful and influential figure these last seasons. To have bade farewell to New Zealand and England in the space of three months would have been a nice option yet it seems that the combination of the selectors giving Vettori the test captaincy as well as the one day and the IPL coming in with a suitably tempting bid has seen him pull the plug earlier than he might have done.

New Zealanders will quite rightly respect him whatever. He gave the team great leadership for many years having been pitched into the role at a youngish age. Through those years he acquired much kudos for the way in which he pulled his team together, coaxing results from shrewd manoeuvring and good man management.

At the same time as he did his utmost to draw everything possible from his team, asking them persistently to over achieve, he also kept a grip on reality. He has developed into a fine talker about the game and has enlivened many a post match interview with his shrewd observations. He notices things other might not, as Mike Atherton would attest during one such interview that he conducted; it was Fleming who had to indicate that the interview would work much better if Mike actually pointed the microphone towards him! Mind you we’ve all done that at some stage or other.

More seriously – sorry, Mike – he acquired a reputation for candour as well as perception and would not shy from expressing his thoughts openly at the end of the day’s play, a refreshing attitude when so often one is left with bland, evasive generalisations. That realism I referred to came out for instance during last year’s World Cup, when his side got to the last four. Many a captain on losing at that stage would not have admitted as Fleming did that New Zealand were realistically a top four side at best and that therefore had done what they ought, no more no less. It is okay to dream of winning the World Cup, which is all we can do in this country, but it helps if your aspirations are achievable and your rating of your own team realistic.

He can also be suitably disingenuous when it suits as we saw at Hamilton at the start of this test series. Although obviously not captain he was again thrust in front of a camera at the end of the 4th day and eloquently and subtly managed to put all the pressure onto England by his choice of words, through which he reminded anyone who was listening that it was New Zealand who had controlled that game all the way through. Even he though might have been happily surprised as to how well it all went for New Zealand the following day.

We have got so used to him being a part of New Zealand cricket that it will be a shock when he is no longer there. What he makes of the next part of his career, careening around the Twenty/Twenty circuit in India is up to him. He can relax and enjoy it in as much as his reputation in world cricket is secure and New Zealand will always be suitably proud of him.

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