It’s been a long time without Blackcaps cricket. The lockdowns brought a premature end to a cheeky limited overs series in Australia back in March and half a year later there’s been nothing since. A tour to Bangladesh had to be postponed. So did a T20 World Cup. The hope is that there’ll still be a full international summer starting in November once fellas get back from the IPL and once the West Indies, who are due to visit first, can get through some quarantining... still it’s been a long time between Kane Williamson cover drives and Trent Boult in-swingers.

This is a drama that’s affecting sportsfolk the world over where disrupted schedules wreak havoc with routines. For most people it’s a disruption they can handle, but there are always a few for whom this missed time is time they can’t get back. Steven Taylor leaving the Wellington Phoenix for example, he’s in the latter stages of his career and thus nearing that leap into the unknown that is retirement – where a bloke who has spent 30-40 years prioritising this one particular career is no longer able to do it, a bit of a burst of sudden change which many sportspeople struggle with. Stevie T wants to make a bit more money from football while he still can, he also wants to actually play football. Right now the A-League is offering neither of those things.

Bringing it back to the Blackcaps and there’s one fella in particular who you’d think suffered in that way from the dearth of international cricket this year: 36 year old Ross Taylor. He’s the oldest contracted Blackcaps right now, a guy for whom the clock is ticking louder than most. These games that he’s missing out on - the ODIs against Australia, the tour to Bangladesh, the T20 World Cup, etc. - could have a direct impact on how his final career stats end up looking... he’s 1500 runs short of 10k ODI runs and the longer he plays, the longer he’ll be able to hold off Kane Williamson as the all-time leading Test run scorer for Aotearoa. Not to mention tournaments that need winning... Ross Taylor is the only player to have played in the last four ODI World Cup semi-finals.

Here’s the thing though... who says Rosco is retiring any time soon? At every opportunity the last few years he has continually faced that question with a straight bat. When he played his 100th Test match back in February, becoming the fourth kiwi to reach that milestone (Fleming, Vettori & McCullum), he had this to say...

Ross Taylor: “First and foremost I want to get to next year - the Twenty20 World Cup and then the home summer - and then I'll have a good idea on how I'm placed at the end of next summer. Whether there is still a drive, whether I'm good enough, whether I'm fit enough, and whether I deserve my spot in the side. If I can tick all those, then definitely 2023 is an option.”

That’s 2023 as in the 2023 World Cup, looking to play a fifth straight World Cup semi and hopefully a final beyond it where maybe this time we’ll even win the bloody thing. That quote was obviously pre-covid, he was more circumspect in a chat with Cricinfo ahead of the Carribean Premier League where he said he was “not sure” if he’ll hang around for the delayed 2021 T20 World Cup which is now happening in India next October (with a 2022 version in Australia twelve months later). Generally just shrugging off the question, there, but retirement has never been something he’s seemed resigned to any time soon.

But it’s more than whether he’s keen or not, many players have been keen to play on long past when they really should have hung it up. Ross Taylor, on the other hand, is currently playing the best all-format cricket of his career. He’s the first and only player in cricket’s history to play 100 internationals in each of the three formats for a good reason. His ODI form in particular over the last few years has him in the finest company on the planet while he continues to churn away record runs at the Test level and he’s even had a beautiful late-career resurgence at T20 level too with a clearly defined new role. And with Taylor, it’s not hard to find the tipping point where that resurgence began... during the 2016-17 summer he stepped away from cricket for a sec to have surgery on a pesky case of surfer’s eye. Ever since then he’s gone bonkers.

Ross Taylor Since Eye Surgery (Dec 2016):

TEST: 23 MAT | 1400 RUNS | 43.75 AVE | 63.72 SR | 3 100s | 8 50s | 200 HS

ODI: 56 MAT | 2746 RUNS | 65.42 AVE | 86.60 SR | 6 100s | 19 50s | 181* HS

T20I: 27 MAT | 653 RUNS | 32.65 AVE | 128.03 SR | 2 50s | 54* HS

Ross Taylor to Cricinfo: “It was a gradual thing so you didn't notice it as much. It's nice to see the ball swing and during day-night games, not to fear it. A lot of times in day-night games you didn't want to the ball to come near you in the field and that's not a great place to be when you are playing cricket. In hindsight it would have been nice to have the operation two or three years earlier. At the same time, has it made a big difference? It's hard to tell, you are older and wiser as well which makes a difference. Seeing the ball swing from the hand, I hadn't been able to see that for two or three years. But you are still human, get good balls and play poor shots so hopefully I can eliminate that as well.”

Those are incredible numbers. Numbers that would have been even better a year ago because that Test average since the surgery was only a gentle dip under 50 after the first Test in Aussie (where he scored 80, coming off a hundy in the series against England at home). However it’s since dropped a couple runs as he hasn’t passed fifty in any of the four Tests since (Aussie & India). Ah but soon enough he’ll get a few more chances to add to his record 7238 Test runs with the West Indies and Pakistan meant to be visiting these shores for five-dayers if all goes according to plan... and it just so happens that Rosco’s hit more tons against the Windies than any other team, four of the big bangers. Bangladesh and Australia are meant to pop by for limited overs series later in the summer as well.

The ODI stuff is where it really sizzles for Ross Taylor at the moment... that batting average since the start of 2017 is second only to Virat Kohli for all batsmen with at least twenty innings in that time and Virat Kohli, statistically and anecdotally speaking, is probably the greatest One Day International batsman in the history of the sport so that’s some decent company to be amongst.

Kane Williamson comes in at 20th on that list, btw – 2053 runs at 48.88 with 5 tons and 12 fifties.

Since the start of 2017, Ross Taylor has not gone more than four ODI innings in a row without passing fifty – and even when he did (a little streak in Jan-Feb 2019 against India and Bangladesh) it was a bit of a misrepresentation as he had three not outs in that run. Discounting the aborted series against Aussie he’s got at least one 50+ score in every series he’s played over this stretch, with more scores of 90+ (9) than scores of single-figures (7). Three of his six hundreds have come in successful run chases.

So that’s the golden format for the bloke, and the bulk of the evidence why there’s nothing stopping him hanging around until the next World Cup if he wants to. But it’s gotta be emphasised just how rare it is for someone to be putting up the kinds of numbers across the board that he has been. There are 43 players who have averaged above 40 in ODIs since the start of 2017 and 29 players who’ve averaged above 30 in T20Is over the same time-frame. How many jokers are on both lists? Actually more than you might think, there are thirteen of the buggers: Babar Azam, Calum MacLeod, Eoin Morgan, Jonny Bairstow, KL Rahul, Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor, Kusal Perera, MS Dhoni, Paul Stirling, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan & Virat Kohli. Although raise the ODI buffer to 50 and only Kohli, Taylor, Sharma, Babar Azam and Bairstow survive the cut.

What’s most impressive about Taylor in T20s is that this isn’t what he always did. He used to bat in the top four, getting in early and demolishing that ball with his slog sweep. But his numbers slumped in that 2013-15 era and that led to some immense confusion with selection as he was suddenly out of the squad despite being on record saying he was ready and available for Blackcaps T20s. This was as he was coming back from eye surgery which would have been an easy excuse to chuck up to the public yet Mike Hesson/Gavin Larsen seemed to have other ideas, blaming his dropping on performances. Even though he’d just come back and dominated the Super Smash for CD. It was weird.

After not playing a single T20I in 2017 until the last week of December, Taylor forced his way back into the starting eleven in a new role: batting at five or six in the order. In that role you’re sometimes coming in with your team at 20/3 and needing some stability, or maybe you’re coming in at 120/4 with three overs left needing to go hundies from ball one. It’s a pivot position in the order that requires a wide skill set... which Taylor happens to have in abundance.

All of his T20Is innings since he got back in the team have come at that position and he’s clearly excelled, not necessarily getting the big scores because in T20s those big scores are mostly owned by guys in the top three who get by far the most chances to bat deep into an innings but Taylor’s cameos have been low-key amazing. In 27 innings he’s only been dismissed in single-figures on five occasions. Just the two scores of 50+ (both in the most recent series against India) yet he’s scored 20 or more in 16 out of those 27 innings. All but two of those 20+ knocks coming with a strike-rate of at least 110. In T20s these sorts of cameos can be match-winning, especially from that part of the order. From being on the outer of the Blackcaps T20 scene Taylor’s responded with this resurgent 2-3 year period where he’s adapted his game and embraced a new role and offered something genuinely valuable to the ‘Caps in that format of the game.

Then we come to the Test level where Taylor is one of only 19 players to have sustained a batting average above 40 since the start of 2017 (min. 20 innings). Let’s cross-reference that list with the ones who’ve also averaged 40+ in ODIs and 30+ in T20Is in that space of time as well and... we have a shortlist of a mere four all-format contemporary legends: Virat Kohli, Babar Azam, Ross Taylor & Kane Williamson. Cheeky tip of the glass towards Kanos for making it a half-kiwi affair. Pretty incredible... granted this ain’t his particular moment in the spotlight right now. It’s Ross Taylor’s magnificence that’s under the magnifying glass.

We’re not just talking about a lovely twilight swan song from Rosco here, we’re talking about a guy at 36 years of age who at this very minute is one of a handful of the very finest all-format batsmen in the world. No need to be talking about retirement at all. At this rate the dude could probably play into next decade... he’s ageing even better than that collection of fine wines he’s got in the cellar. Love ya work, Rosco.

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