On tour in India in the late 1980s, New Zealand were having a net session before the third Test.

There were concerns over how New Zealand's batsmen would handle India's spinners. They had used four in winning the first Test at Bangalore by a mile.

New Zealand had superbly squared the series in Bombay.

But now they needed to look at plenty of twirlers before the Hyderabad decider. One of those rounded up to bowl in the nets was a local 12-year-old, who was a handy legspinner.

Early on in John Wright's turn at bat, he was beaten and just possibly might have been out to the little fellow. At which point Wright got serious, blocking furiously as if defending on the final afternoon to save a Test.

Once, the ball rolled a metre away from his bat. Convention is that the batsman lobs the ball back to the bowler.

But Wright stood his ground as the youngster marched all the way down the pitch to pick up his ball. Watching this, Wright's teammates chuckled.

And as New Zealand look to toughen up their cricket outlook, it's that measure of hard-headedness, that determination not to give an opponent a break which New Zealand's cricketers will get from Wright.

He starts work, on a two-year contract, at the high performance centre in Christchurch late next month.

His role is vague for now, but

national coach John Bracewell and New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan have their ideas of how best to use Wright's abilities.

One of the planks of Bracewell and Vaughan's thinking is that New Zealand cricket must harden its approach. Test cricket will be more central to thinking in the year ahead.

Under Bracewell, New Zealand have won nine and lost 12 of 27 Tests since late 2003. But the nine include two each against lightweights Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the West Indies.

Wright never sold his wicket at bargain rates in 82 Tests from 1978 to 1992. He hit 12 hundreds and 23 fifties, averaged 37, and with every dismissal, whatever the scoreboard said, looked as if he was on his way to a funeral as he trudged back to the pavilion. In the short term, Bracewell envisages him working with the top order batsmen before their Test tour to South Africa. No matter who is chosen for that two-Test, three ODI trip in November, Bracewell acknowledges they will need hardening.

Wright will have a worthwhile message. If it is heeded and pays a dividend, Bracewell will be happy.

Longer term, he sees Wright's value in also working with the up-and-comers.

Vaughan thinks of Wright in a broad-based role covering the international batsmen, the high perfor-

mance centre, emerging talent and the major associations.

"When we started to think about winning culture, and toughness and performance, one of the names that certainly sprang to mind was John Wright," Vaughan said yesterday.

But, not surprisingly after his lengthy, largely successful tenure with India, others wanted him too.

"It just so happened it coincided with him being approached by the Australian academy. To a degree I suppose that accelerated my thinking, so we moved quickly to engage him.

"He wanted to be able to contribute to New Zealand cricket. I think he wasn't sure there was a role for him. I madeit quite clear to him there was."

And so one of the game's most popular figures joins the NZC family. If he sits down with the national selection panel, it'll be an old boys' reunion.

Wright, 53, shared dressing rooms for years with Bracewell, Sir Richard Hadlee, Glenn Turner and even the nipper in the group, Dion Nash, who made his debut on the traumatic tour of Sri Lanka in 1992, when Wright and Vaughan arrived as replacements to help out a squad hit by departures after a bomb explosion in Colombo.