DUCK TALES

Something's new in store for Martin

by Bharat Sundaresan • Last updated on

"There's no place for having an ego of being a former international cricketer. Here, it's all about customer satisfaction," © Cricbuzz

The first time you spot Chris Martin in his supermarket, he's walking around with a packet of Ice Pops. By the time he finds the correct rack to put the popsicles away though, he's summoned to the front counter. There's a lady there who wants to know why a particular brand of shortbreads isn't in its usual spot on the shelf. Martin smiles politely and insists that it'll be there when she's back the following day. And as he walks back towards his office, pausing in between to have a quick chat with one of his regular customers who enquire about his wife, the former Kiwi fast bowler notices a discrepancy that he feels needs immediate fixing.

"We can't have the cleaning stuff next to the refrigerated products," he tells one of his staff before heading across to organise the rack brimming with vegemite jars. Not long after, Martin's at the front end again, this time helping an elderly woman check out her groceries. Welcome to the Four Square in Eastbourne, or as the locals in this sleepy beachside suburb of Wellington call it, "Chris's Store".

"That's one thing you learn quickly when you run your own business. There's no place for having an ego of being a former international cricketer. Here, it's all about customer satisfaction," the 45-year-old, who still looks as lean and lanky as the day he hung up his boots six years ago, tells Cricbuzz.

The Four Square - the community grocery store franchise wing of New Zealand retail giants Foodstuffs - in Eastbourne is Martin's second venture into the industry. He'd previously run and managed a smaller scale mini-mart up in Palmerston North - some 150 km away - for nearly five years before shifting base to this much larger enterprise seven months ago.

"We started with one that had half-a-dozen staff and then we built it up to 12 and then we doubled the turnover and we now moved to this one that's got 25 staff," he says. Having more layers of management and managers at hand has meant that Martin can focus more on building the business behind the scenes rather than having to be hands-on and constantly man the floor like had to in Palmerston North.

"We've taken this business which has been run the same way for years and years. It's a bit older and tired and it needs a bit of love and life put back into it. It's going to offer you everything you need for any given moment of the day but it's not big enough for you to get everything."

For the laidback locals of Eastbourne, Chris's Store though isn't just where you go for your essentials. It's also where you find neighbours and others like you for an afternoon chat. It's where everybody knows your name and you know the owner's name. And Martin does make sure that he's the face of his store during peak hours like on this Friday morning even if he is well aware that his self-involvement won't necessarily make the business a "success or a failure".

"You need to create that feeling that it is Chris's Store and he's there and he's going to help you out. You are going to see him on the counter and see him stacking products. Initially, when I did finish my cricket and started in Palmy, I had a lot of people coming in to just see me. And that isn't really going to make a business fly. If they are going to be customers in the long-term then it's not going to be me impressing them but the store."

Martin played 71 Tests in a 13-year-long career and when he finished, only Richard Hadlee and Daniel Vettori had more wickets than his 233 scalps. He also remarkably led the New Zealand pace attack till he was nearly 40. But it was around the time he went past 35, that the Christchurch-born new-ball operator began planning his future. After initially contemplating a stint in the corporate world, Martin realized that his real interests lay in running his own show. And discussions with fellow former Black Caps Stephen Boock and Matthew Hart, he was convinced that Foodstuffs was the way to go.

The erstwhile fast bowler to supermarket owner isn't the first avatar change that Martin has undergone in his life. There was a time in the mid-90s, just before he broke into the Canterbury first-class side, where he was a dreadlocked Arts major sporting a goatee beard with a strong focus on "having fun in life". The hairstyle he reveals was probably an inspiration from the "Grunge Era of Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain".

"Cricket was secondary, and I was perhaps enjoying my weekends too much. And I thought it would be embarrassing if I turned around in five years and realized I had done nothing with my cricketing talent. Some of the work I did while studying, labouring and brickie work, actually made me strong where I put on 10 kg of muscle weight. I had strong support from the club and started playing for Canterbury. But again had 2-3 hard winters after being told that I wouldn't make it, especially in a column by Jeff Crowe, who asked for me to make some serious changes to my lifestyle."

Martin insists that it was just a case of not having a durable enough body to carry his weight as a premier new-ball bowler at the highest level. And he started going to the gym a lot more to work on it. He did also along the way kick out a smoking habit that had been carried forward from his university days. Amazingly though, Martin only ever smoked when he was around the cricket team and never during the winter when he was away from the action. And he does admit to have once smoked a "rollie" while waiting to go out to face Allan Donald in a Test match in 2000.

"I wasn't a heavy smoker but someone who needed a few at the game. I think it was just nerve-racking watching our team bat."

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Martin's career was bookended by periods in New Zealand cricket where they suddenly had a glut of high-quality fast bowlers come through. The arrival of Shane Bond and Daryl Tuffey in fact stymied Martin's rise to a great extent in the early 2000s, and it was the rise of Tim Southee and Trent Boult that convinced him that it was time to go eventually. But for most periods in his long career, Martin wheeled away with inconsistent support from the fast bowling side of things.

"I would have preferred to have had a bowling unit. It would have been great to have Bondy for 50 Tests and everybody would have enjoyed that. We would have been a far more successful team. You do need that strike bowler. I was caught in between, whether I was going to bowl a truckload of overs trying to attack with the new-ball and then come back and try and attack. We had James Franklin for a while. He was a genuine swing bowler. He could have stuck around and got better. Ian Butler was always injured. Daryl Tuffey was happy with the white ball and wasn't playing Tests for a while. Iain O'Brien would come in and make your life easier. Daniel held us together. When Trent and Tim came in, it felt a lot better and it felt a lot more enjoyable."

Not like it ever seemed to affect Martin's own consistency with the ball once he became a mainstay around 2004, when he was nearly 30, but in his opinion, at the peak of his powers. It was also when he began to grow as a senior member of the side, and someone who always had the reputation of being the calm presence who never reacted "emotionally" to any situation. He also developed the knack of getting the better of the South Africans and a number of high-quality left-handers, even if the two batsmen he reveals to have struggled a tad against are Justin Langer and Andrew Strauss.

"Justin Langer left the ball really well and didn't want to get out with his great mate Haydos. And Andrew Strauss, another guy who left the ball really well had good success. Kevin Pietersen as well, too, who would perhaps see you as a threat and play you out and then take you apart later in the day."

He does admit to have really enjoyed dismissing Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis the most - his two most regular victims for good measure. Martin considers himself to have had limited talent, which at times was more than enough, as a bowler. Unlike his former schoolmate Chris Cairns, who he grew up watching from the sidelines.

"When I was in first year in high school, he was in his final year. He was hardly at school in his final year because he was playing for Notts. We didn't really cross paths but you knew when he was at school. There would be a big group of 10 people standing around him, and he would often speak at assemblies."

He admits to it having been a special feeling when he went past Cairns' wickets' tally. Though he quickly interjects about how he's been pushed down the tally by Boult and Southee before going, "Yikes, and Neil Wagner is catching up fast," while jokingly smacking his forehead.

Martin admits that a lot of his customers do try to sneak in a chat about cricket whenever they can, and how it mostly revolves around his batting. The topic he says, with a stern look, "is the easiest way to end a conversation with me". So we obligingly leave it for the end.

Ask Martin if he ever saw the funny side or got the joke about his blatant incompetency with a bat in hand, and he responds with brazen self-deprecation. Lines like, "I was out there trying to survive like a blind man with a cane," or "There are people with a certain amount of ability with the bat but I wasn't one," and "you just have to resign yourself to the fact that I'm a genuine rabbit."

But he does take great pride in having a rather impressive record in making sure his teammates got to three-figures if they were somehow in their 90s when he walked in.

"I'd generally get them through, which is good for their career and ensures that they don't resent Chris now. They know he got them through. There were times some tried working on my batting. But it just wasn't enough to deal with the Akhtars and the Lees."

Martin of course famously is only one of two Test cricketers of note with more wickets than runs scored, and an average of 2.36. But while making many helpless admissions to his utter uselessness with bat in hand, he does reveal to have enjoyed it and also having worked on it at times.

"Looking back, I am a little bit embarrassed but not to the point where I thought I could do much about it. A lot of teammates when I walked out to bat, would get up from their seats and start putting their boots on. I sort of got used to that. There are also moments when the entire team is sitting on the balcony with their whites on and half-hour later, I am still there and they're loving it. So you take those half-an-hour moments but you are generally out of there in an over or two. It is a funny thing to be exceptionally good at something and very poor at something, and still be able to have a career."

Martin does lament about how he should have in hindsight approached his batting in the gung-ho fashion that Boult does and thrown his bat around rather than get sucked in by the "ironic applause" from the crowd and the sense of inevitability over him getting out cheaply.

Despite popular belief that his greatest moment on the field was the 12 not out against Bangladesh, Martin's most memorable period of play of course came with ball in hand. It was back in 2004 when he ran through a star-studded South African batting line-up at Eden Park in Auckland.

"I saw a lot of games growing up on TV and you'd always hear the Hadlee chant ringing around the ground. And I remember that day at Eden Park, it was late in the afternoon and I had a Martin chant around the ground. Nothing can beat that."

Martin reveals that unlike the "instant gratification" that's provided by sport, success as a supermarket owner comes through as a slower, cumulative effect. He doesn't just take in pride in making sure that the people of Eastbourne have a place to shop for whatever they need just "two doors down". He's also trying to subtly help them make better decisions in terms of how they eat.

"I don't like having all the fizzy and the salt and sweet stuff front and centre. I'll rather have the produce and different dietary requirements there. There's certainly scope for some innovation. But it's a supermarket so you can't go too far."

The next step for the Martins would eventually be to own and run a New World store - a full-service franchise of the FoodStuffs enterprise - and expand their business even further. But for now, they're very happy in Eastbourne, especially with the kids still in school.

And all Martin, who openly admits to having never scored a 50 at any level of cricket, asks from Eastbourne in return is a chance to do so.

"I've got the Eastbourne Cricket 100th anniversary game on March 12. I might open the batting. Not expecting to face much pace."

© Cricbuzz

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