The Life and Times of Former Black Cap Mat Sinclair

The Life and Times of Former Black Cap Mat Sinclair

51 Thoughts was lucky enough to speak to Mat Sinclair, the man who came from humble beginnings and a wooden bat made by his grandfather from a bit of 4×4 with a wooden handle on it through to a Black Caps batsmen.

Former New Zealand Batsmen, Mathew Sinclair, was born in Australia in a small township called Kathryn, which is roughly two and a half hours out of Darwin, Northern Territory. At the age of four, Mat’s father passed away in a shocking car accident, which in turn prompted his mother to move back to a place called Bulls as it was close to her parents, his grandparents. Not long after that, he moved to New Zealand at age five and started school at a private boarding school called Huntly, which is just out Martin and not far away from Wanganui. Cricket was something that he had never heard of until he came to New Zealand. He feels that his love for cricket started when he was five years old playing cricket with his school friends at school and at home with his brother. He felt that he enjoyed batting more and making his brother head out in the backyard to find the ball that he smashed into things.

From playing at Huntly School, a school of roughly two hundred kids, Mat was fortunate enough to be selected for Rangatiki age groups teams where he spent the majority of his school holidays playing cricket. From there he was able to play senior men’s cricket for Palmerston North Boys High (there were 1600-1800 kids there, which he found to be a massive jump in terms of what he was used to) where he played in the premier men’s competition. Mathew felt that it was a huge jump moving from age group cricket to senior cricket at a young age. “It certainly toughens you up a heck of a lot because you’re playing against men and they don’t like playing against high school students, and they certainly don’t like being hit around by high school students, that’s for sure.” By doing that, he felt that his skills got stronger and he was able to move his way into Central District age group campaigns and then make his debut for them not long afterwards.

After that, Mat was lucky enough to play for New Zealand A against the West Indies in a warm up match in Taupo for the West Indies tour that started up on Boxing day. Mat faced in that game the likes of Courtney Walsh and Brian Lara and scored a steady 30 runs in that match but he felt that playing in that tour match gave him a understanding of what it would be like to play at the highest level.

Mat was priviledged to respresent the Black Caps which was a childhood dream for him and he made his debut in an opening test match of the series due to the broken hand of Matt Horne. Mat felt that he had a heap on confidence coming into the match but on the eve of the test match he had his first ever interview with Radiosport commentator who asked “Mat, do you have a fear of failure?” He said, “I thought well that’s an interesting first up comment to talk to me about on my debut. I have the media on my back sort of saying that I’m potentially going to fail. I basically went out there to prove them wrong.” Prior to that test, not many people knew who Mat was and he came out and made a superb 214 in his first knock and felt that he was hitting the ball well throughout the whole innings but found that he got out to a silly shot. He felt that as the innings got on he wasn’t physically tired but it was more the mental fatigue that kicked in. “You go through different stages throughout the game. You will face the new ball or a new bowler, so the conditions are always changing on a cricket field. I think for me the mental tiredness hit me later on and as my downfall was, it was a lazy shot to get me out. I wanted to go on and on.”

When Mat was touring, he felt that it was a major step up from doing first class cricket tours to playing for New Zealand. In first class cricket, you are either bunked into a hotel or motel and in with two people. Whereas when you toured with the Black Caps, you had man-managers as such who organised where you stayed and what room you were in and also what you would like to work on in the nets. Also, you worked alone on your own game as there wasn’t a lot of advice that you could call on as the cricket season/tour was well in full swing. Throughout Mat’s time in the Black Caps, there were many coaches involved with the team. He felt that the coach that helped his game was Dennis Aberhart who was a former Central Districts and Canterbury player and also a school teacher. He felt that Denis was a good coach to confide and Denis would help Mat reach his goals that he wanted to achieve rather than point out faults. In saying that he felt that it was hard to get on with John Bracewell as John was coach and selector at the time and felt that “I couldn’t go to him in the same earnest and talk to him about hey I might want to work on this or do that because I might not get picked for the next test match because he might think that well Mats not ready sort of thing.”

Recently, in the English County Cricket competitions they have taken out the coin toss, and in doing so, it allows the away side to have the option of what they would like to do. There is talk about that the ICC is contemplating bringing in the no coin toss rule to International cricket give the away sides a better chance of winning games in conditions that they aren’t used to. This applies to sides who tour throughout the sub-continent and New Zealand encourages sides to bowl first as they will be able to take use of the spinner friendly and greentop wickets respectively. “I still think that there is having a lot of merit in overseas teams having the option of deciding what they want to do and when I think about it that could be a good way of going about it because half of the teams that come to New Zealand know that well it’s going to be green wickets well we are going to bowl first all the time.”

In 2003, Mat was selected to be a part of the 2003 Cricket World Cup side that went to South Africa. The squad felt that the biggest stumbling block for them would be the South Africans as it was their own tournament, home advantage and there was a lot of expectations on their side. At the time, their side was filled with veterans like Shaun Pollock, Nicky Boje, Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs and Ntini. The Black Caps won that match thanks to a good 100 by captain Stephen Fleming. The only game that Mat was selected for was the pool game against Bangladesh, however, he didn’t bat in the match as they wanted aggressive players to help boost their net run rate. He describes that moment as being “frustrating to not get an opportunity to bat over there but still an awesome opportunity to be a part of a world cup.” Results went there way, and the Black Caps made the super six stages in the World Cup but couldn’t go further.

One of Mathews favourite moments in his cricketing career was taking that amazing one-handed catch to remove Australian great Matthew Hayden at the Telstra Dome (Now known as Etihad Stadium) At this stage in the match, Australia had a good start they were 0/44 of 8.1 overs. Ian Butler was bowling at the time and bowled a good length ball with had a bit of width of it. Hayden played a brilliant pull shot which for all money was a six. However, Mat Sinclair took a running diving catch with his left arm fully stretched to take the catch. Mats thought process was “My initial thoughts there don’t let the ball go to the boundary, as I got close I thought I better have half a chance at catching this. Then it just stuck like glue.”

Whenever Mat played against the Australians, he played against their superstar team which included Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Shane Warne and Brent Lee just to name a few. The thing about the Australian side was that if one of their stars were injured the other one would come in and take their place and make that spot there’s. Mat felt that when they were going up against the Australians, you needed to go out there and do your job and put their skills up against the best. “That was always our saying at the Blackcaps where we felt that we were good players at first class level and sort of did what they needed to at international level, but they weren’t great players. So we wanted to push the echelon, and we wanted to be great players, how are we going to go about and do that? The Australians were the benchmark for us, but it was hard though because they were a winning side and winning does become a habit for these guys, and they just had the right formula.”

In the 1990’s Martin Crowe came up with Maxx Cricket which didn’t take off as well as he thought. However, in 2005, 20/20 cricket was created, and the first ever international was played been Australia and New Zealand at Eden Park. Mat was selected to play in that match and players thought that it was a joke and the Black Caps, grew facial hair, grew their hair longer and played in beige that was made famous by cricketers like Martin Crowe and Richard Hadlee. Mat got out cheaply, and New Zealand lost that match in comprehensive fashion, but he felt that it was a great experience to be apart of. Mat feels that even though 20/20 cricket is popular and it’s a good spectacular event for fans, he feels that there should be a set window for it as it’s changed the way cricket is played. “ I think the way that batsmanship is now and bowlers and that, it’s getting shorter and shorter. What ever happened to batting and bowling time? It’s like in Cricket now you have batsmen trying to smack the bowlers out of the park as quickly as you can. The old adage of knocking the player in the V has gone as well. What about leaving a ball if a bowler is bowling well, leave it? No, you have to try and hit him where the players are.”

When Mat was playing cricket and the offseason came about, and if you didn’t make the Black Caps that year (nor contracted to them) you had three options, study, go and find work or go and play county cricket and get ready for the next New Zealand summer of cricket. When Mat was playing, there wasn’t a players association like they get today and that probably would have helped Mat after he lost his Central Districts contract, that hurt Mat dearly as he had been for the club for 15 years. “I had been on CD for 15 years, and I would be number one player, and then I might not have a good year, and some young guy comes in and jumps above me in the rankings. It’s like well hold on I have been in the family for CD for so long, I have given you everything, and I have been dropped down because some young kid has had a good first year whereas I have given you fifteen years of consistency and I might not have had a good year, and that’s just a dropping off this and that.”

Since Mat finished playing, they have brought in the DRS referral system for both LBWs and faint edges that are caught behind the wicket. The good thing about the DRS is that it can reverse the sometimes poor decision that the umpire has made about the player either being out LBW when the ball wasn’t near the stumps or being out caught behind if the ball didn’t touch the bat, but it makes a noise. The part that does cause some issues with tv commentators like Shane Warne is if the ball partially hits the stumps when the ball hits the wickets it remains the call that the umpire has said. Mat feels that the DRS system is good because it takes out the real howler decisions that umpires used to make and helps umpires with the faint edges / nicks. “I think the hardest ones if you ask an umpire is generally the little faint edges, the nick onto the bat/pads one which when your 20 metres down the other end there its actually quite hard to hear / see and of course you have the appealing going on around you. Basically, as far as I’m concerned with it all, the DRS stops the real big howlers, like going down leg and it might clip your thigh pad instead of your bat, and you’re given out for it.”

Mat enjoyed playing test cricket and feels that more and more tests are becoming results orientated where you can tell which team can win. Test match Cricket is about having a challenge and dealing with the different conditions and / or elements that can happen in a test. To stop this from happening Mat believes that a two-tier system will help test match cricket. “I have seen results here against Bangladesh, and they are so one sided aren’t they? I think that if you create a competition around test matches to warrant captains to go out and have the opportunity to win test matches, then I suppose you are going to get the fanfare coming back into test match cricket.” Mat feels that test match cricket should be five days, not four (that has been proposed by the ICC) as he feels that by it being four days you turn it into first class cricket.

Mat was around in the area where the batsmen were strokemakers and thinkers. He felt that Captain Stephen Fleming was the best player and captain he played with as he was a good thinker and a good calming influence on the side. As a batsman, he enjoyed playing against Sachin Techukular and Brian Lara.