Chin music maestro Neil Wagner retires, batsmen heave a sigh of relief

Neil Wagner will finally stop bowling his bouncers. Watching him spill his guts out, attempt to spill the batsmen’s guts out, was one of the most visceral cricket experiences in modern-day cricket.

“The time’s obviously come,” said Wagner, who fought back tears when thanking people at a press conference in Wellington.” He would remember Brendon McCullum at this emotional time. ““He always spoke about leaving the Black Caps in a better place when you’re done, and moving that legacy forward, and I thought that’s something I can be pretty proud of.To the NZ public and the fans, I can’t thank you enough, for your support, for making me feel welcome, for making me feel like a Kiwi.”

His 260 Test wickets puts him in the fifth of all time New Zealanders’ bowling list behind Richard Hadlee, Tim Southee, Daniel Vettori and Trent Boult. And importantly, only Hadlee’s strike-rate is better than his.

Cricket has seen faster men, ‘nastier’ pacemen, more skilful with fingers and wrists, but rarely has it seen in one passionate ‘all-heart’ package as with Wagner. He spews his guts out, drags us with him into the heat of the battle, make us feel his pain, his effort, his ceaseless energy, his undying passion- it can all get a bit gut-wrenching at times. No other pacer hurls as many bouncers as him. No one is as accurate as him. It all began with Allan Donald.

Neil Wagner was 12 and living in motherland South Africa when he saw one of the greatest duels between a fast bowler and a batsman: Allan Donald vs Mike Atherton, 1998. Balls of fire vs courage.

“There were a lot of stares and glares in the middle of the wicket, and I remember getting absolute goose bumps,” years later Wagner would tell the New Zealand Herald, nailing that moment of falling in love with pacy bouncers. He carried drinks for a couple of South Africa’s Tests but with competition escalating, he switched to New Zealand. People didn’t know what to make of him. Trent Boult once sledged him in a domestic game. He was seen as something ‘silly’, with his non-New Zealander traits. He buckled down and operated as a line-and-length bowler.

Until one day in Dunedin against Sri Lanka in 2016 when his team mate Tom Latham intervened.

“It was a 10-over spell, and I just bowled bouncers. People like [Black Caps opener] Tom Latham had often suggested I play to my strength and concentrate on the bouncers. But it was the first time it really fell into place.It got to the point where I had set Mathews up, and Tim Southee came up and said don’t be shy of aiming a yorker at leg stump. I bowled a perfect one. It was an extremely special moment, a team-oriented effort, after a discussion that went around the players. It made me feel part of something bigger.”

When most pacers run out of gas attempting that line of attack, Wagner, incredibly, manages to dig deep to find undying fire.

In the words of Australian Matthew Wade, who was once peppered by a Wagner barrage in Perth, “If you looked at all the bouncers he bowled … he’s always between your shoulder and the top of your peak, or in your armpits. I don’t think anyone in the game has bowled bouncers the way he bowled and been so consistent, and not gotten scored off while also picking up wickets. I’ve never faced a bowler who is so accurate at bowling bouncers.”

Wagner was also the invisible face behind India’s memorable triumph in Australia in 2021. He had tied up Smith with a leg-side attack with men in the arc on the on side. Watching it all unfold was India’s then head coach Ravi Shastri who immediately called up his bowling coach Bharat Arun. “Ravi Shastri called me. When we were discussing the Australia tour, he said that we need to take the off-side out of the Australians. So, we had our own analysis and felt that most of the runs that Steven Smith and Marnus Labuschange had scored was off the cut, pull and on the offside. We also took a cue out of the New Zealand attack when they bowled to Steven Smith, where they had attacked his body and he had felt very uncomfortable at that point in time.” Wagner had paved way for India’s famous tryst with history.

Neil Wagner's short ball masterclass against steve smith pic.twitter.com/BVYJXI8DuW

— Sweet (@Lommy0Tatham) February 26, 2024

There is a moment when he was very young at backyard cricket in South Africa that probably decided the course of his career for him. An older brother bounced a tennis-ball, wrapped by insulation tape, at him at high pace, right on his ear. He was told not to cry and complain, but harden up. “We played a lot of backyard cricket, and what was supposed to be touch rugby which always ended up with contact. I wouldn’t say I was bullied, but I had to fight for things,” he told NZ Herald.

When he was 13, his parents lost their jobs in the real estate business. They lost their home. It took five years for their parents to reestablish themselves, with catering and gardening business. Neil’s resolve to make something of his life grew.

Till date, his pre-season training is quite something. He sprints 100m, 200m,300m, 400m with just a minute’s rest in between. Three minutes of rest, basically. Then he rushes to the gym to pound his body for 90 minutes.

“You feel like you want to spew your guts out.” On field, he does spew his guts out; so do the batsmen. It would have been a neatly romantic finish had he played one last Test against Steve Smith, whom he had harassed with bouncers in the past, before he called it a day. One last sighting of a bowler right out of fiction. But the dainty one for the road was perhaps never his bottoms-up all-heart style.

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