It helps to be six feet and eight inches tall. It can be the first step to a promising basketball career, and Kyle Jamieson could have gotten pretty far playing that sport - though he says his "jump height is not the greatest". Having to choose between two sports in high school, when juggling them "just became quite full-on", he chose cricket.
Jamieson was more of a batsman growing up - his father Michael says batting outweighed bowling 60-40 in those days - and he's already shown glimpses of his potential as a lower-order contributor, clattering 101 against an English attack that included James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Mark Wood in a tour game, and putting on an unbroken 76 with Ross Taylor for the ninth wicket, on his ODI debut.
But he's now a bowler first, a six-feet-eight-inches fast bowler. There are things a six-eight fast bowler can do that others cannot, and on Friday at the Basin Reserve, he did those things often. There were two balls, for instance, that climbed almost vertically at Ajinkya Rahane, lifting him off his feet. Rahane was batting on 10 when he got the first of them, and he rode the bounce as best as he could, played the ball as close to his body as he could, with the softest hands he could summon up, and kept the ball down despite only managing to meet it with his handle.
The second came when Rahane was on 24. He'd already faced 71 balls by then, and had negotiated difficult conditions - it was green underfoot, grey overhead, and the wind blowing across the ground was frequently causing the trees lining the grass banks to judder violently - with utmost serenity. But this ball from Jamieson, springing up towards his neck, shook him out of his sure-footed ways, causing him to twist awkwardly in midair, with eyes off the ball and hands rising instinctively to protect his face.
"I think as a tall guy, naturally your length is further back, but over time you get used to trying to bring it a little bit fuller." Kyle Jamieson
The ball hit his glove, or arm guard, or both, and ballooned over a desperately backtracking wicketkeeper and ran away for four.
There was plenty of bounce to be extracted from this surface, and Jamieson was extracting every little drop. It was effortless bounce, reminiscent of Morne Morkel at his scariest, even if Jamieson isn't nearly as quick.
"I guess it just comes from a steeper angle," Jamieson said at the end of the day's play. "I guess not as quick as what some of the other guys are around the world, but I think still my short ball is a weapon, from the height that I can bowl it."
The ability to extract this sort of bounce had been Jamieson's ticket to play this game. Neil Wagner, New Zealand's one-of-a-kind short-ball specialist, was unavailable, and the team management could have picked either Jamieson or the more experienced Matt Henry in his stead. Henry, though, is a swing bowler much like Tim Southee and Trent Boult, and New Zealand wanted a third seamer with a point of difference.
So here Jamieson was, providing that point of difference. Except that wasn't all he did.
At Test level, tall quicks who turn the pitch into a trampoline can often struggle for wickets despite routinely making batsmen look uncomfortable. They're often told to try and pitch the ball fuller, so that they can threaten the stumps, or kiss the edges that they so often zip past, but to go away from your natural length, and to do it without losing your pace and venom, is difficult. Just ask Ishant Sharma. Or the aforementioned Morkel.
On Test debut, Jamieson shifted his length forward and back effortlessly, without floating the ball up or losing his line, and he made it sound just as simple as he made it look.
"Yeah, look, I guess with my height, I can afford to go a fraction fuller, especially out here as well, with the extra bounce," he said. "I was trying to, I guess, make guys commit to play off the front foot. I think in my second spell, the first half of it, there was a lot of balls left on length, so it was just how do you commit them on the front foot, especially if it does swing or seam, then you're a chance of bringing the edge in.
"I think as a tall guy, naturally your length is further back, but over time you get used to trying to bring it a little bit fuller."
It was just one day's work, of course, in near-perfect fast-bowling conditions, and that day was curtailed by rain. We can only really judge Jamieson the Test bowler when he's built up a proper body of work, but as far as first impressions go, this was most encouraging.
The best length a fast bowler - any bowler, really - can bowl is the shortest one that still draws the batsman forward. Jamieson hit that length time and again at the Basin, bowling from fairly wide on the crease, angling the ball into the right-hander, and every now and then getting it to straighten off the pitch.
One such delivery in his first over beat both Cheteshwar Pujara's outside edge and the top of off stump by what seemed like millimeters. Pujara did everything right while defending it, playing the angle, protecting his stumps, playing close to his body and not letting his hands get drawn towards the movement. He had to do everything right to survive it.
In his third over, he bowled a similar delivery, only slightly fuller, and Pujara nicked it despite once again doing most things right.
Not a bad first Test wicket, and the second was of a reasonably good player too. It was one of those Virat Kohli dismissals that leave you scratching your head, the thick edge while driving away from his body at a ball that's nowhere near full enough, but it's also the kind of dismissal that makes you wonder about all the times he middles drives just as far from his body and off just those lengths.
It wasn't the shot for the circumstances - 40 for 2, first day of a Test series in difficult conditions - but the ball also straightened off the seam, and had Jamieson's extra bounce. Also consider what happened off the previous ball, a short one that made Kohli spring onto his toes to defend it.
Push him back, then bring him forward, knowing there's a chance he may not come as far forward as he should.
There was a similar sequence of deliveries later on to Hanuma Vihari, and an edged drive fell just short of gully. Then, in his next over, Jamieson bowled one a fraction too full, and Vihari drove it back past him, holding his pose. Jamieson corrected his length beautifully next ball, pitching it on a fullish but not easily driveable length, and shifting his line outside off stump.
Vihari's set-up at the crease is built for driving down the ground and through midwicket, but not so much for the front-foot cover drive, because his head doesn't really get over the ball when he plays the shot. He went for it anyway, perhaps still feeling the rush of the shot he'd played off the previous ball, and missed.
Vihari survived through to drinks, but not the first ball after the mini-break. It was much like the ball that had dismissed Pujara, angling into the batsman, drawing him forward, straightening just enough. If Jamieson keeps bowling that length and that line, over after over and match after match, and gets a little bit of help every now and then from the conditions, he could have quite a career.