New Zealand's Mr Nearly

Domestic cricket is splattered with players that have flirted with an international career having never managed to turn the romance into a marriage.

Matthew Sinclair, the Central Districts batsmen, is one of those players and he is currently contemplating an offer from Eastern Province in South Africa. If Sinclair accepts, he stands a reasonable chance of ending his sporadic one night stands with international cricket, at least while John Bracewell remains in charge.

Clearly there is more to Sinclair’s likelihood of playing for his country again than his form at domestic level. Form which has seen him proclaimed first class batsmen of the year at the recent NZ Cricket Awards.

Sinclair’s first obstacle is the selection policy of John Bracewell, which as observed by Andrew McLean would seem to favour persevering with new blood rather than recalling previous experiments.

Secondly is the parochial mentality that seems to permeate when New Zealand sportsmen look to ply their trade abroad. For Kiwi rugby stars, accepting an overseas job is virtually guaranteeing a kiss of death to their prospects of an international recall. And whilst New Zealand cricketers are generally not subjected to the same level of intense insular scrutiny as their rugby counterparts, playing cricket in South Africa is very unlikely to help Sinclair’s chances of a return to the top level.

And finally, there is the motivation from Sinclair himself to pursue international honours and one senses that the frustration Sinclair has been feeling with the shroud of fog blanketing his route back to international representation, is gradually transforming into an acceptance of his fate;

His comments to the media recently reeked of resignation rather than optimistic speculation and he confesses to holding little confidence of being offered a central contract.

All of which would seem to suggest that Sinclair’s international days may well be over, and for a player who is still only 30 and has scored three hundreds and a fifty in his last four innings , it would seem a harsh ending to an international career that never really gathered enough momentum for his name to be an automatic entry into the team-sheet.