Well bowled, Timmy!

The Bangalore visitors' honours board (Courtesy of blackcaps.co.nz)

7/64 on a green seamer at the start of a New Zealand summer would be a fine haul – to achieve it against India on the sub-continent is almost without peer. The extraordinary effort of Tim Southee made for riveting test cricket, albeit a hard-fought loss, and helped dull the pain of an inept New Zealand struggle in the first test. Will it allow him to cast aside the potential tag that has threatened to hang him for the past four years?

A baby-faced Tim Southee announced his arrival on the international scene with 5/55 against England on test debut in Napier – four years and 18 tests later, a more mature 23 year old has finally shown a return on the potential that had started to weigh him down.

Having got his break for Northern Districts as an 18 year old, Southee made the step up to the international arena in 12 short months, but his appearances at test level have been sporadic and often underwhelming. Like Vettori before him, Southee has grown up, both personally and in a cricket sense, almost wholly at an international level - developing in the spotlight is never easy, doing it as an impressionable young man can be a recipe fraught with danger.