Never scored a hundred.
Barely reached 50.
Could not bowl.
Carved out a niche as a part-time keeper in the lower reaches of club cricket.
But an unconditional love developed for the game regardless. Unrequited — but unconditional.
That love was paid back in mostly tears.
The Black Caps were a punchline for the endless jokes for what seemed like endless years.
And as the Young Guns morphed into the Slack Caps, the despair which shrouded supporters settled low in our souls.
But we all felt like champions when Richard Hadlee skipped in, and Martin Crowe lifted our spirits when he dispatched the ball down the ground.
We greatly admired Brendon McCallum’s pluck, and Chris Cairns was held in high esteem until, well, let’s just find a way out of this sentence without ending up in court.
But for the most part the Black Caps were battlers — a bunch of dibbly dobblers who delivered ritual floggings on their desperately hopeless followers.
Well, take off your shirt, rub your belly, swig a pint of beer, throw your withered arms in the air because today you are a champion.
You weathered the disappointment of the 2015 Cricket World Cup final. You settled for second best when England snatched the 2019 World Cup on a boundary countback.
You can finally lift your head from your hands following the awful tour of Australia and look Tim Paine in the eye again.
The Black Caps are World Test Champions.
Let that settle instead.
Watching Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor embrace before they walked off the pitch in Southampton victorious in the World Test Championship final against India, who can say they were not transported back to a time when that idea filled our every dream?
Who was not that child belting the ball around the backyard again?
That moment was worth it. Worth all of it.
The lost sleep.
The two subscriptions you need to follow the team now.
The bottomless faith.
The heartbreak.
The disinterested colleagues who avoid you at the watercooler.
The sweet sadness which comes having reached the top of the mountain.
Will we every see a better Black Caps side again?
BJ Watling enters retirement having forged a reputation as our grittiest wicketkeeper-batsman.
Taylor is probably not far behind. He got to hit the winning runs and that seems a fine way for a champion batsman to go out.
Williamson has closed the gap on Hadlee as our greatest ever player.
Tim Southee and Trent Boult cemented their place as our best opening bowling partnership.
And somehow the perfect team has got even stronger with the arrival of Devon Conway and Kyle Jamieson.
It will be their job to lead the side in the future when the team faces a rebuild.
We will be watching and hoping and dreaming.
Because if we have learned anything, it is that you should never stop dreaming, no matter how many times you miss that blasted golf ball.
