A new Mitchell, almost like Vettori, but not too close

Popularly know in the Black fern land as ‘The next Vettori’, he created ripples with the white ball at home against Australia.

Cricket has seen an era of Michaels, Allans and Davids but the Mitchells are now taking the gentleman’s game by storm. Mitch is the new stock of the cricket community. While Mitchells have stamped their authority in the bowling department thanks to Australians Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc, the Mitchells have also made their presence felt in the all-rounders arena, courtesy Aussie Mitchell Marsh and Kiwi Mitchell McCleneghan.

But hold on right there! In Team India Director Ravi Shastri’s words, “It is a horses for courses game.” And there’s a latest addition to the starry Mitchell clan, who is now, slowly but surely making a mark as a spin doctor.

Popularly know in the Black fern land as ‘The next Vettori’, he created ripples with the white ball at home against Australia and scored a boundary from the first delivery in his debut Test match —meet Hamilton born Mitchell Santner.

Santner stepped foot on Indian soil on Monday night along with the New Zealand team to gear up for the upcoming ICC World T20 in the sub-continent. The rookie left-arm spinner, who visited India during the Champions Trophy in 2014 playing for Northern Districts is pumped up ahead of the global fiesta and shared his initial experience of playing on Indian wickets.

The wickets show a bit of spin but they are good batting wickets so you have to hit your areas and change of pace is pretty crucial. If you are bowling at one pace, it gets easier for the batsman to hit and it’s such a big stage and they are all world class players of spin,” Santner said.

However life does get hard for spinners in the shortest format but the young gun seems to have an optimistic approach.

Life is hard (for a spinner) on flat wickets and small boundaries. But batsmen go after you so that in one way works as you can get a wicket but you can go for a few runs,” he said. New Zealand will kick off their World T20 campaign when they face the number one-ranked side India in Nagpur on March 15. Before the big match, the Kiwis have a couple of warm-up matches against Sri Lanka and England on March 10 and March 12 respectively. Santer is geared up and ready to go.

I am very excited. To play at such a big stage, it’s pretty exciting for me. I’ve only played a few Twenty20s so far and spinner-friendly wickets are exciting for me,” Santer, who made his debut in the bikini format of the game during New Zealand tour of England on June 23, 2015, said.

Santer was speaking to reporters at New Zealand’s pre-tournament open media session on Tuesday.

Commonly known as Mitch, Santner’s debut Test match also marked the first day/night Test which Australia won by three wickets. Bowling with the pink cherry was a rich experience for him. “It was a new experience playing in the pink ball Test,” he said.

I thought it was very solid to a white ball and harder than it. It does spin, it’s quite hard so you do get bounce. There was a little bit of turn on that Adelaide wicket. Turn and bounce is what I really look for,” he said rather cheekily.

Elaborating on the ‘lucky’ boundary from the first ball in his debut Test, he added, “I just wanted to get off the mark. I was lucky enough to see the first ball going for four, so I have to calm the nerves down a bit.”

When the topic drifted to Kiwi legend Daniel Vettori, Santner just couldn’t stop.

I caught up with him two weeks ago. He’s a world class bowler. I had a little conversation about his style of bowling over here and he shared his theories of what he did here which was pretty successful. Now taking that on to the field is the next step,” Santner pointed out, adding that he shares quite a good relationship with the veteran left-arm tweaker.

Vettori, currently the Head Coach of Indian Premier League (IPL) side Royal Challengers Bangalore does give Santner a lot of dope on how to bowl tactically. But is there a slight chance that Vettori gave out tips on how to handle Virat Kohli, also with RCB

We don’t really talk too much about each player. It’s a general talk about bowling in India. We have our game plans, it’s more about the tactical side of bowling in India. Vettori has been a hallmark for me growing up.

I grew up watching a lot of Vettori over the years and I was lucky enough to play with him in my first season for domestic cricket. It was pretty special. I still stay in contact with him,” he said.

Quizzed who will be his prized wicket when New Zealand take the field at the Jamtha in Nagpur, Santner, who had a naughty little smile, said, “Virat Kohli.”

With so much of Vettori going on around him, Santner does agree that he wouldn’t mind calling him ‘The next Vettori’ but that would take a little time. While he does sport almost identical spectacles like the Kiwi turner, a lot of it would just be too much.

"No,” he said when asked if he plays with spectacles. “I wear contacts. Don’t want to look like Vettori too much wearing glasses,” he said with a hearty laugh signing off the chat on a bright note.