At this T20 World Cup, with New Zealand playing three of their four group stage matches at our home city in Chennai, Deiva and I were pretty excited. This is my first time ever covering a World Cup, by the way and I was gonna do it with my little brother.
Initially this was just going to be a fun little - being the operative word - diary entry "about me, lil bro and NZ" but when I put that up on our office Whatsapp group, Joy with whom I interviewed for this job, said it was a long time coming. Really should've learnt to stand up to peer pressure in school. Or just kept my mouth shut and sprung this thing on the desk; 250 words, a little self-deprecating joke here, a snide remark about Deiva there, all done. Instead there's this little walk down memory lane.
I dunno when, or why, I was drawn towards New Zealand cricket. Never seen Hadlee. First impression of Crowe was as an expert not batter. Liked Lee more than Bond. It's probably Williamson's fault. Sometimes I zoom in on his pictures... to file away the exact model of bat he uses.
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Deiva's gone way past me in keeping on top of Black Caps coverage. He drills right down to domestic stories. Under-19 stuff even. He's more of a go-getter and I wish I had his research skills. Over the past four weeks, he's picked up on really cool details about Jacob Duffy and Varun Chakravarthy and Mark Chapman - and I've been able to dress it up for the shop window. I think that's why we work so well. His strengths and my strengths complement each other.
But to actually show them off, we needed access to players and New Zealand are really cool in providing it. They even overlooked the fact that I kept Henry Nicholls, and later BJ Watling, hostage for a really long time. Or at least that's what I thought until they left a quiet word about keeping my next interview a little shorter. They're also tolerant of occasionally overenthusiastic requests. I sent one this weekend to mine information about a 19-year-old who is now all grown up and captaining New Zealand without realising the person I was chasing was in the middle of a match. Deiva would've clocked that, and has already told me so. I'm never going to live it down.
Fortunately there's something he didn't clock and proof of it has gone out to thousands of people.
That's my little brother's voice in the reel.
I did stick up for him though. That's not in the reel. I went "Lockie so salty" and made him smile. Lockie. Not my brother.