Captaincy call

Former Black Caps coach Mike Hesson has opened up on the Ross Taylor captaincy axing controversy that blighted his otherwise successful stint guiding New Zealand’s national cricketers.

Hesson revisited the controversial decision to dump Taylor as test skipper after the Sri Lanka tour of 2012 in the latest instalment of Sky Sport’s The Pod interview series.

Hesson spoke about ‘‘snaky’’ elements within the New Zealand side that were looking to play both sides of the great divide between Taylor and Hesson’s choice of successor, Brendon McCullum, but said he had ‘‘no regrets’’ over a call that saw him cop his share of the fallout.

‘‘It was definitely the toughest time of my coaching career,’’ Hesson told Ian Smith during an hour-long discussion covering his career in the sport.

‘‘I keep going back to the reasons why I coach and many times I ask myself at night – am I making the decision for the right reasons . . . because I think it’s going to make the team better?

‘‘I have a lot of empathy for what Ross went through and it was a really difficult time for the whole team.

‘‘And we also had people within the environment being a little bit snaky around it as well in terms of trying to play both sides.

‘‘It was a really untidy time. But I don’t regret the decision, [though] I certainly regret the fallout from it and the way people felt throughout it. I still think it was the right decision. Could it have been done better? Of course it could have.’’

Hesson also revealed the extent of the fallout he copped in Dunedin from a clearly divided cricketing public.

‘‘I had hate mail put in the door. I had faeces put on my front door at my house,’’ he told Smith.

‘‘It was a pretty horrible time and all I was trying to do was what I thought was right for the cricket team at the time.

‘‘There were a number of people who didn’t know many facts, who didn’t know either Ross or myself, who were very opinionated about things . . . It was what I felt we needed to do to move the team forward.’’

As Hesson told Smith on The Pod, New Zealand were ranked eighth, eighth, and ninth in the three disciplines at the time and