Wags
0By Harbour Heather and Scott Maclean
Neil Wagner is the personification of heart and soul.
You never needed to guess or assume how he felt on the cricket field. A great example of white line fever. It was there for all to see, in stare-downs, his run up, his intense wicket celebrations, his back-breaking short deliveries.
Over and over and over, over after over after over.
One thing was for sure – Neil Wagner never stopped trying. Even in his 20th over in a row on a dying pitch, into the wind, he wanted the ball. He wanted to change the game, and always believed he could.
There’s something to be said for a player who realised that perhaps his ambitions were limited in his homeland, and chose to give it a crack thousands of miles away. Knowing what we do about Wagner now, it’s not surprising he made it happen.
He wore the fern with as much passion as any of the 10 other men lining up next to him. Perhaps because he took a chance on New Zealand, and New Zealand took a chance on him. Thank goodness.
You can’t fault him for how he fully embraced the Kiwi lifestyle, including a rite-of-passage coming-of-age stint in Dunedin. Even the pronunciation of his name assimilated.
He was reliable in the field, no doubt due to the aforementioned competitive values, famously taking consecutive catches on the final afternoon of The Greatest Basin Test ever TM. He was also trusted as a nightwatchman, a role he took seriously, with pride – in 2018 he scored 7 off 103 to win a test series against England.
Pride. Apt, perhaps, because the most overused word for Wagner was ‘lionhearted’. Overused for a reason, however – what other word describes the way he kept running in? Herculean? Deranged?
Heart and soul? Sure. But he was also bulging discs, broken feet, torn hamstrings. Firing down what seemed like two hundred bouncers a match and earning his own moniker: “Wagnerball”. Whatever it took to have the chance to compete, to win.
And today, he was tears. Talking about what it meant to have worn the Black Cap, the people who have helped him along the way, those he had played beside, those who kept him (mostly) in one piece, he let his emotions show once again.
That man loved playing cricket for New Zealand, with his heart and soul. And the indelible memory is of him – and everyone else at the Basin Reserve on that afternoon 12 months ago – losing their minds as he had Jimmy Anderson feather one down the leg side to complete one of Test cricket’s most staggering comebacks.
He leaves with 260 Test wickets at a more than respectable average of just over 27, and at a strike rate that is only bettered by one Sir Richard Hadlee.
You thanked cricket fans, Wags, for accepting you, for loving you like our own. But thank YOU, for your tireless effort, your passion, your heart and soul.
Thank you, you World Test Champion.
Follow Scott and Heather on Twitter