In the best of careers, hitting that point where you do a stocktake of past achievements and remaining goals is an enjoyable experience.
BLACKCAPS mainstay Ross Taylor can certainly look back on an impressive mountain of achievements in the game both at home and abroad, and there’s plenty of fuel and passion left in the tank to tick off a few more challenges yet.
But as 33-year-old Taylor increasingly looks beyond to the future, one thing’s clear — he wants to give back to his favourite sport.
Last summer, Taylor made what had become rare appearances at Pukekura Park as he joined the Central Stags in both domestic white ball campaigns, 14 years after he had first donned the green strip for his domestic team as a youngster, playing his very first Ford Trophy one-dayer in Napier in early 2003.
Taylor relishes his rare opportunities to play for the Stags. PHOTOSPORT
Hailing from Masterton and a product of the tiny but thriving Wairarapa Cricket Association, Taylor has never played for any other New Zealand domestic team, and you get the feeling he’d saw all his bats in half before he even thinking about it.
But between international, County and T20 campaigns around the world, the 81-Test BLACKCAP has been a busy man for as long as he can remember. This week, Taylor’s appearance in the Plunket Shield — scoring 90 in a rousing, 166-run third-wicket stand with Will Young as the Stags chased down an improbable 332 for victory — was his first for the team in more than two years, and only his second since November 2013.
Stags captain Will Young is relishing his opportunities to bat with Taylor. MButcher / CDCA
So for the likes of young Stags captain Young, it must have been music to the ears to hear the former BLACKCAPS skipper telling the media during the match that he’d like to play “a few more games” for the Stags when he gets the chance, and be the kind of valuable senior player that Mathew Sinclair and Craig Spearman were to him back in the days when he was a young man learning the ropes of the game at the higher levels.
Beyond the shores of New Zealand, Taylor’s spent a busy year not only playing for the BLACKCAPS and captaining Sussex in the Natwest T20 Blast, but also making time to coach and mentor two of the smallest members of the ICC.
Taylor joined forces with former CD coach Dipak Patel in Abu Dhabi this year. ICC
First there was Papua New Guinea earlier this year, where he teamed up as an assistant to former BLACKCAPS spinner and Central Districts coach Dipak Patel to work with the side in the UAE, as the PNG “Barramundis” sought to make the qualifiers for the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup. Then there was a whistlestop visit to Samoa, making his first trip back to the small Western Pacific nation since he last visited as a child to help the Samoa International Cricket Association celebrate its 20th anniversary and work with its young players.
Both international teams compete in the ICC’s East Asia-Pacific axis and Taylor came away full of admiration for what athletes in the region achieve in their tournaments abroad, having grown up with very different cricketing resources to those we take for granted.
“Two days is the longest Papua New Guinea play at home, and they’ve only got one grass wicket facility,” Taylor points out — this despite an impressive 165,500 local participants in the game.
“Most of the players come from the same village, and their wicket is the road — they’ve painted lines on it.”
Many players of Samoan heritage have made their mark in teams like the BLACKCAPS, WHITE FERNS, Wellington Firebirds and Auckland Hearts, not to mention Samoa itself; but Taylor is surely the best known worldwide after a glittering career which includes the highest Test score by any visiting batsman in Australia, his 290 at Perth a couple of years ago breaking a record that had lasted 111 years.
Taylor has been quietly helping Samoan cricket out for some time with gear, through former BLACKCAP Murphy Su’a’s connections to the association. It may also fly under the public radar that several of New Zealand Cricket’s Major Associations have long-standing programmes in place to assist Pacific cricket with gear, mentoring and training programmes (for umpires, for instance) — Auckland’s connection is with Samoa, Northern Districts assists the Cook Islands Cricket Association and Central Districts, Vanuatu, for example.
But with Taylor’s mother, Ann, linking him proudly to his Samoan heritage, there’s no problem crossing the border on this occasion for Taylor.
“It’s something I always wanted to do and give back,” he says. “And I've really enjoyed being able to give back to the game that has given me so much enjoyment and opportunity.”
