Stephen Fleming

Stephen Fleming will go down in cricket history as his country's most successful captain and one of their best batters, and one of the finest T20 strategists in the first generation of the game.

The first New Zealander to pass 7000 Test runs, he did enough in his last innings, in Napier against England, to lift his career average over 40. Nine Test centuries were a poor return for such a talent, but Fleming was worth more than his statistics.

A stint with Middlesex in 2001 laid the foundations for a successful re-evaluation of his batting methods. After a breakout innings of 134 not out to steer New Zealand to a landmark World Cup victory over South Africa, along with another spell in county cricket, with Yorkshire, Fleming confirmed his greater consistency with a career-highest 274 not out against Sri Lanka in the first Test of their 2003 series. He followed that with an equally impressive 192 in Hamilton against Pakistan later that year and was named New Zealand's cricketer of the year in 2004.

In 2004, Fleming's 87th Test made him the most capped player for New Zealand at the time, and in the course of his 202, against Bangladesh, moved to 81, went past Martin Crowe's mark as New Zealand's premier Test run-maker.

In May 2006, he made his 100th Test appearance, against South Africa - appropriately, in Centurion. In that series he made a wonderful 262 in Cape Town in a game New Zealand lost. The World Cup in the West Indies the following year was Fleming's fourth as a player and third as captain, and he led New Zealand to another semi-final in what turned out to be his final act as one-day captain. In September that year, he retired from ODIs, and was also relieved of the Test captaincy after a decade in charge, in favour of Daniel Vettori.

In 2008 he called it quits in Test cricket after a home series against England, going on to play in the first year of the IPL for Chennai Super Kings, before moving into the coach's role with them with great distinction: during his first six-year stint in charge, CSK won two IPL titles (and were runners-up twice) and a Champions League T20. Fleming was back in the saddle with them in 2018, after the team's two-year suspension, and led them to the title again that year, in 2021, and in 2023.