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International 12th Man
n extracts from Shane Bond's new book, the fast bowler reveals his disappointment with his treatment by New Zealand Cricket
I've had enough ups and downs when it comes to my cricket career - mainly through injuries - to be fairly philosophical about what life and sport can throw at you.
But I must admit it took me a long time to get over the circumstances that cost me two years of my international career. I've had a long time to think about it and while the anger and the bitterness have gone, I still feel some sadness about the way it happened.
One thing I'll never regret is signing to play in the Indian Cricket League. Not at all. I've achieved security for my family and in the long term that is more important than a few test and one-day caps.
What I'll never understand is why it had to be one or the other, ICL or playing for New Zealand, especially when I received a cast-iron assurance that I could do both, and my contract with New Zealand Cricket certainly allowed for it.
In the end I became a victim of politics.
As distasteful as that might be, I could learn to live with that, but what I can't live with is the suggestion that in the end I didn't want to play for my country. Ever since I was old enough to bowl a ball, all I've ever wanted to do was play cricket for New Zealand.
It's always been cricket. It was the first game I ever wanted to play and though I have enjoyed other sports, none of them has grabbed me like cricket and playing the sport I loved for my country was the pinnacle of my career.
That's what I was doing when I first heard about the ICL. Although I had been on a good contract by New Zealand standards, I hadn't got rich out of the game. I'd done all right, obviously, but I simply hadn't played long enough to accumulate the sort of income that would provide long-term security for my family once my career ended.
With my history of injuries, particularly back injuries, I was realistic enough to know that could come at any time. It is not the most comforting of thoughts, particularly when you have two children, which, with the birth of son Ryan in 2008, was soon to increase by one.
* * *
After the World Cup in 2007, around May or June, talk started filtering through the boys about some league that was going to be starting up. I had no idea about it, though.
As the year went on the talk started to get a bit louder. Nathan Astle had already retired but was saying that he was keen to play in the new league. Inzamam-ul-Haq had signed up, so names were starting to get bandied around.
Leanne McGoldrick, my manager, had been approached by the ICL organisers and was keeping me informed. I told her that if she thought it was a serious tournament then I would be keen to have a look.
I can honestly say at that stage that I had no concept of the repercussions that would eventually follow. There was no hint that players who signed up would be treated as rebels.
* * *
It is interesting, isn't it, that after everything had been sorted out - and after considerable stress on me, my family and, no doubt, Justin Vaughan - that an International Cricket Council (ICC) regulation should come crawling out of the woodwork to make its presence felt.
But that was what Justin was telling me when I went in to see him after that dreaded call.
This ICC regulation prevented New Zealand Cricket from releasing me to play in the ICL. Perhaps more far-reaching was the warning that if I insisted on playing in the ICL, then New Zealand Cricket had no option but to terminate my contract and the national selectors would be instructed not to pick me.
Hang on a minute, I thought, haven't I been released by the person who is now telling me this? Why has this only popped up now?
"Excuse me?" was about the only response I could come up with.
But the conversation was about to get a whole lot more surreal. Justin told me straight out that they were preparing a press release which said that I had breached my NZC contract and had signed with the ICL without NZC's consent, so I now had to tear up my New Zealand contract. It was bollocks.
I told him, "Sorry, number one, that's not true; number two, you gave me a release letter to play in it."
He kept repeating that there was a regulation that meant I could not be released to play in an unsanctioned tournament.
"You can't play, we can't pick you, you're an ICL player," he said.
I tried to reason with Justin. "What do you mean? I've just played in South Africa as an ICL player and if I hadn't got injured I would be playing in Australia, as we speak, as an ICL player. What has changed?"
"People now know you've signed," he said.
So let's get this straight, it was okay for NZC to be in breach of this regulation as long as the wrong people didn't find out? Or had they just not done their homework properly? I admit I lost it a bit here and, for the first and only time, I swore at Justin.
"You're telling me my international career is over because you've f***ed up?"
* * *
All the advice I had received suggested I would win a restraint of trade case but that would have been messy.
There was talk that India would not honour their commitment to tour here in 2009 and that other New Zealand guys who had signed with the IPL would have their contracts torn up.
So it might have been a victory for me, but at what cost? I could have been absolutely morally and legally right, but I would have ended up looking the prat.
No one would have ended up the winner. I would have become a pariah among those who had had their IPL contracts torn up, guys I consider good friends.
I would have felt dreadful if I had ended up costing them the type of long-term security I was seeking for myself.
I would have suffered, NZC would have suffered, and my mates would have suffered. In the end it was better just to suck it up and move on.
