Thanks to his New Zealand state team, Canterbury we were able to get in contact with Brandon and pose him a few questions in order for us to find out a little bit about him and his background. To give you some details of his career so far, Brandon grew up in the Southland city of Invercargill. He has played club cricket in Christchurch for a number of years, but has found it difficult to break into the Canterbury State side who have had a good number of Black Caps in the last few years. In the last 18 months, Brandon has been given a chance to finally play First Class cricket for Canterbury and has seized the opportunity with both hands, taking wickets and scoring runs as if they were going out of fashion. This has alerted the World-A-Team selectors of his all-round abilities and has seen him selected for this year's team.

Currently, Brandon is playing in the Lancashire Leagues in the UK for Enfield; which has seen him pitted against his own State Captain, Chris Harris. Later on in the season, he will be going head-to-head against in-form Cantabrian Michael Papps.

http://www.world-a-team.net/content/view/94/28/

NOTE: The content of the interview is there, and we hope to furnish the writings with some photos pretty soon. Please let me know any comments you have, or if you have any further questions that you'd like me to pose to Brandon.

If you were having problems with the link, I've just fixed it.

Liked his comment about how the Christchurch pitch went from being way to bowler friendly to way to batsmen friendly.

And Lawn bowls offers an excellent outlet to unwind from cricket.

Yeah. From my understanding, changing the nature of a pitch so quickly was nigh on impossible, but this sort of proves that if a groundsman really wants to change how a pitch plays, then it can be done - and quickly too!

The key thing I've learnt from Hiini's interview is that he has almost a Hussey-esque outlook on the game. He obviously thought that he was good enough to play First Class cricket, but due to the strength of the Canterbury team - he couldn't get a look in. Rather than giving up or getting fed up or changing states, he kept putting in the hard yards and the effort until his persistance was rewarded. Then, when he's stepped up to First Class level, he's looked like a natural because he's had to work so hard to get there that he wasn't going to let the opportunity slide!

I think the analogy to Hussey's step up to international cricket (albeit at a very different level) as quite an apt one to draw.

Good choice of questions, Andy. I'd like young cricket players to get some insight about the development of professional players. It's good to learn the choices these up-and-coming players make regarding their development and who have been their role models and major influences to their cricket development. It's also interesting to learn some personal details like favourite music, films, hobbies etc.

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What a great interview. Thanks Andy.

I must admit I did not know who Brendon Hiini was...Now I do. Interestingly, he names his mother as having the most influence (early on) his cricketing career..Also, it was his mom who introduced him to cricket. Go mom!

Also, I did NOT know Dave Nosworthy was the Canterbury coach. I wondered what happened to him...

AND last but not least. Wikipedia has only one reference on Brendon Hiini. This interview by Andy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Hiini

PS: He also want to join the NZ Police Force. A la Shane Bond. Okay, no one mess with the Black Caps cricket team!

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Personally, this is probably the best of the interviews I've done - strangely enough, the interview with Brandon's team mate, Richie Sherlock is probably the next best. He seems a very, very interesting chap - one degree already and a second on the go whilst playing pro cricket!

And the link on Wikipedia.... well... that may have been me putting that on there