Ross Taylor 11,945 test balls and counting
Black Caps batting supremo Ross Taylor is about to play his 100th test. Here’s how the first 99 unfolded
The first delivery Ross Taylor faced in test cricket was delivered to him at The Wanderers in Johannesburg by South African great Makhaya Ntini. The ball spat off a length, smashing him in the shoulder.
It would have hurt a lot more if relief hadn’t been such an effective painkiller.
“Hey rookie, welcome to test cricket,” someone chirped behind him. It could have been wicketkeeper Mark Boucher, or anyone of the slips and gully cordon that contained Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers and Herschelle Gibbs. They all had some words of advice.
“It didn’t bother me. I was just stoked that I didn’t get a golden duck.”
Back then, if you told the kid from Masterton that he’d face another 11,944 balls in test cricket he’d have laughed you out of the room. Now he just jokes “that I’d hate to think how many have hit my pads”.
Taylor is not driven by numbers, but he is a goal-setter. Some things he can remember with crystal clarity, such as that first delivery, such as taking guard in his second test among the bloodstains left by Craig Cumming when he was hit in the face by Dale Steyn.
He can remember the most unplayable ball he faced, also in South Africa, a worm-burner from Steyn that hit his ankle right in front of the stumps in 2016. He walked off with zero next to his name, grinning like a Cheshire cat at the absurdity of it all.
“Probably not a great look,” he says. Other things he can’t recall at all, such as his first four (a drive off Andre Nel that midoff misfielded), or his first six (a flat, pulled six over square leg off James Anderson at Old Trafford on his way to his second test century in his seventh test).
And why should he? He has only gone and hit 870 fours and 50 sixes subsequent to those first ones ( and two fielder-assisted fives).
Taylor has compiled some extraordinary numbers during his test career. Here’s a few of the most cherished.
99
The amount of tests he has played. This week he will become the fourth New Zealander to play 100 tests after Daniel Vettori (112), Stephen Fleming (111) and Brendon McCullum (101). As an example of the relative paucity of test cricket New Zealand plays, England’s Alastair Cook debuted a year before Taylor and retired in 2018 having played 161 tests.
“It’s a bit of a strange one,” Taylor says. “I guess I won’t know how it feels until I walk out to play it but a lot of people have been talking about it. I guess when the Bangladesh test got cancelled because of the mosque shooting, I knew I’d be playing it at home.” Friends and family have got in touch to say they’ll be coming, including many who influenced him as a youngster in Wairarapa. When Taylor mapped out his summer he had circled the Boxing Day test as the one to cherish, now he’s beginning to understand how much this means to people close to him.
71 74
The runs he has scored in test cricket. He became the second New Zealander to pass 7000 test runs behind Fleming (7172) and limped past the lefthander’s aggregate during the recent horror tour of Australia.
Going past Fleming, who was captain when Taylor debuted, meant a lot to him, but he has a fatter number on his mind now. “I’d like to get to 8000 test runs,” he says. “That’d be nice.”
19
His test centuries. Second only to Kane Williamson (21), Taylor checked off a big goal when he went past Martin Crowe’s 17 tons. A nice round 20 is the next target and there is probably a part of him that would love to catch Williamson, although the younger man will likely end up with several more by the time he retires.
“I’d like to get a few more, but I don’t have an end number in mind,” Taylor says. “I got a nice call from John Wright who told me he’d set a goal of 12 test centuries and that’s what he ended with. He told me that he wished he hadn’t set a target and had pushed on for more.”
It was gratifying to catch and then pass his mentor Crowe’s tally. It was the elegant righthander who had encouraged him to set stats goals.