Who wants an I Love Phil T-shirt?

Phil Stoyanoff is weaving himself into the tapestry of New Zealand cricket, and we should salute him for being one of the characters on the scene. If anyone knows where I can get me an "I Love Phil Stoyanoff" T-shirt, let me know.

The 49-year-old Napier groundsman's brutally honest comments about the "useless" state of the Pakistan and New Zealand batting lineups caused a furore this week and shortly thereafter he was ignominiously paraded by New Zealand Cricket as they sought to spin-doctor his words. In seeking to unwind and "clarify" Stoyanoff's comments the public relations disaster was probably maximised, rather than minimised.

After the clarification we were expected to believe that "in context" he was just having a laugh, but does anyone actually believe that our man Phil now thinks the two teams' batting lineups are anything other than useless? No amount of spin will change that.

He probably shouldn't have made the comments, or at least been slightly more subtle. Or perhaps less public. But in the end, if the Napier curator thinks the teams' batsmen aren't very good, it is not exactly Armageddon.

As a local council employee, NZC does not pay his wages, so the relationship appears to be an uneasy one. In fact, it is not the first time Phil S has been involved in a controversy involving NZC and its public affairs bureaucracy. Christmas cards are unlikely to be exchanged. Last year, in the lead-in to the Test match against India, the loose lips of the NZC public affairs manager uttered the words "fungal infection" causing consternation throughout the cricketing world that the deck might not be fit to play.

Stoyanoff was livid, cranky and incensed and said "all that stuff about the pitch is a load of rubbish", prompting a hasty NZC media release to the global cricketing media to announce that there was nothing to see here.

Other highlights of Phil S's career in cricket include:

* Playing one first-class match for NZ under-23: he scored 4 and took 0/15 from 5 overs.

* Being flown to India to prepare the turf at Bangalore's M. Chinnaswamy Stadium for an Australia vs India series using soil core samples, weather charts and mathematical equations. My favourite quote: "Preparing a pitch is science...We decide based on the data what type of roller to use. It is real art work, which they don't know about here. They don't regard curators as professions, but we are as important as the cricketers."

* The defunct Cricket Mystery website paid tribute to him in March with this endearing recollection: "Phil had obviously had a late - very late - Friday night, and it would have been optimistic to say he'd had more than a couple hours' sleep. Phil slumped in the dressing shed, unshaven, eyes red-rimmed and with the breath of a brewery. When a team-mate half seriously suggested he wasn't in a fit state to bowl, Phil had the perfect retort: 'Mate - when I'm hungover it makes me bloody angry and I'll take it out on the f***ing opening batsmen'."

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