Last year, which Jacob Duffy finished with 81 wickets across international formats, he set a New Zealand record and the man he threw off the top spot slipped into his DMs.
"So we obviously dispersed post the [Mount Maunganui] Test match [against West Indies] and he just sent me a message as I was flying home. I had to think about it, because he didn't sign-off 'Sir Richard Hadlee'. He signed off 'Richard'. Who's Richard? I've got a cousin, Richard. I sort of might have thought it was from him."
Duffy was born in Lumsden, a town of 530 people. He went to school in Invercargill, home to 51,200. He is the first Southlander to play for New Zealand since 1993. At last count, there were just over 100,000 in the region. Sometimes it really hits him, how far he's been able to come.
New Zealand don't exactly have a team based out of where he's from. So they stuck him with the closest approximation, Otago, which wouldn't be so much of a problem if it wasn't for a rivalry dating back ages.
"Southland's sort of the little brother, it often gets forgotten," Duffy said. He has been part of a campaign working to remedy this situation, and last December they got something special under their tree. Otago's teams in the Super Smash dropped the Otago bit from their name. They are simply the Volts (men) and the Sparks (women) now in recognition of the fact they represent communities across a much wider area with supporters in four different districts.
On February 10, this movement took another big step. The traditional blue and gold of the Otago jersey made room for Southland's maroon during a Ford Trophy match against Canterbury (which was rained out). Duffy helped design it, taking inspiration from the Stags, the local rugby team that plays in the National Provincial Championship. It's also been feuding with Otago since 1887.
"Obviously growing up there, the Ranfurly Shield is a big deal," Duffy said referring to a tournament where the champion is challenged and every game is for the title. "And I've been there for a few of those ones and they were very special times. I know the people down there get in behind their sports team very hard. So it's a full community part of it."
New Zealand's games in the group stage of the T20 World Cup were at a lovely time for them to follow one of their own. The Super Eight is taking place in the dead of night. Sri Lankan conditions made Duffy surplus to requirements against Pakistan. But still, the coffee will be on and WhatsApp groups will be buzzing. People might even get tired of other people constantly bragging about having played with a future Black Cap when they were younger.
"Dad rolled a pitch into our backyard when we were very young in Lumsden. And then when we moved to the bigger city in Invercargill, backyard got very, very serious," Duffy said. "I've always said, a bit of a theory of mine, the youngest brother gets the benefit of playing with the older brother. You imagine a 12-year-old kid playing with these 15-year-old guys, you're obviously going to get better faster playing up that level. I certainly think that's helped.
"We played a lot. Our backyard was the backyard in town. All the local kids would come round to our yard. Very, very competitive. We played a lot. We lived out there. It was good fun.
"We had a wee scorebook. We'd do Test matches against each other. On certain days, I'd be New Zealand and Ryan [who has a first-class century for Otago] would be Australia. Whatever it was. We had a mate who loved being in the West Indies for some reason.
"It'd be quite cool to find those scorebooks one day and keep that sort of tally charts and everything, all the runs we scored. Had to retire at 50 and come back and start at 50 again. But yeah, it was very competitive. Some of my best memories growing up, for sure."
Duffy's strengths included a natural ability to move the ball, both in the air and off the pitch. He needed discipline to go along with that and playing most of his cricket at University Oval in Dunedin helped.
"It's quite funny, so I talk to Matt Henry a lot and we arrive to a ground and he goes, well these are small boundaries, and I look at them and I go, actually, not too bad. It's amazing what you get used to. He's obviously from Hagley [Oval, Christchurch], big boundaries.
"I'll certainly prefer to be in my shoes where I'm thinking everything's a bit bigger than it might be. But certainly it toughens you up. You learn to, especially say you're playing four-day cricket on flat wickets, it teaches you to be accurate, that's for sure, and develop skills, and sort of making the game go long and things like that. So it's certainly helpful in that regard. Probably not so good for your numbers and things in the long run, but good for learning and growing."
Duffy exhibited that last summer when he kept dismissing Shai Hope with the short ball. It's not really his thing, running in and banging it into the pitch, but he's seen one of the best to ever do it from close quarters. "Neil Wagner's obviously quite a different bowler than me, but what he did show... He's amazing. We call it an engine, you know, so he just keeps on going all day long. He sort of showed me what it's like to be resilient, what it looks like to run in for your team all day and sort of give it your all for long periods of time."
New Zealand played three Tests against West Indies in 2025 and, in a strange twist of symmetry, also lost three seamers to injury. Duffy compensated for that, bowling a total of 154.3 overs and carrying a ten-man team which was held to a draw in Christchurch but surged to victory in Wellington. He had only made his red-ball debut a few months prior. Already he was the team's go-to man in a crisis.
"I guess what's special, obviously we had some hard times in that West Indies series just recently, obviously a few bowlers down. When you grow up with a guy with a no-excuses attitude like Waggy, who kept on coming in no matter how sore his body was, it sort of teaches us that resilience and shows you what it's like and what has to be done for the team."
The New Zealand tourism website lists the highlights of Lumsden and running out of things to say they mention it's a stopover point on a famous cycling trail. Maybe they should consider putting Duffy's name in there somewhere. With every step he takes forward, he's putting the place on the map. Truth is, he left when he was seven but let's not ruin a good story, which could peak if New Zealand make it to the T20 World Cup final and he's in the XI, standing at the top of his mark with 70 times the population of his hometown watching him from a stadium in Colombo. It could be 200x if it's Ahmedabad.
The New Zealand captain has his 'fingers crossed' given the in-game injuries his fast bowlers have suffered during this series
An important part of this journey was, ironically enough, stepping off it. Duffy took a season off in 2016-17 at the suggestion of Rob Walter, who was Otago's coach then, and credits it for the bowler he is now.
"I knew something was wrong," he said. "I'd lost everything I was good at in terms of my swing and my accuracy. The plan to sit out and restart again and miss a whole home summer felt pretty daunting at the time. But, in a way I didn't have another option because I was bowling that badly that I was going to get dropped anyway.
"So yeah, I bought into it 100%, I had a Christmas off, I wasn't playing cricket, so I tried to look at the positives in that way. But like I said, that's set me up now for just one, understanding your own action when under pressure and match situations, I feel like I know my body, I know my action so well now, because of that process, that I can sort of get back to where I need to be in any situation, which is when you talk about experience and career experience, I think that's helped me certainly in the later stages."
Knowing what goes wrong with him has offered perspective, especially when he starts adding new skills.
"Duff has developed, I won't say what ball specifically," New Zealand bowling coach Jacob Oram said, "but he has developed other deliveries which if you go back and see [the UAE] game, you might see one of them in particular. But you know he's still trying to grow his game. He understands even though he is now in his 30s, he's still quite young and inexperienced in international cricket and he's getting a taste for it that he loves, he's getting franchise opportunities, and he just wants to keep that snowball going."
Jacob Duffy has 14 wickets from New Zealand's first two Test against West Indies
Ryan Duffy actually ended up in the stands, watching his littlest brother make his debut for New Zealand. Three years later, in 2023, it was time for the family to toast another little achievement. Duffy had taken over a record that had stood for almost 30 years. A Southland kid had become Otago's highest wicket-taker across formats.
Otago's influence has played a huge part in Duffy's career. They helped avert catastrophe when he lost all his rhythm in the search for a little more speed and hardened him for the ups and downs of international cricket. There's love going both ways here but he's not going to stop pushing for that name change. It hasn't taken at Plunket Shield level, for example, because that team's "been around for hundred plus years". Whether he succeeds or not, whether he has a good T20 World Cup or not, he is already an inspiration.
"I grew up watching Duff," Ben Lockrose, 25, says. He's another Southlander who plays for Otago and also helped design the maroon jersey. "I think I've actually got an autograph from him from one of my first cricket games that I ever went to. I reckon it was in 2012-13, maybe. They played Wellington in the T20 in Dunedin. Jesse Ryder was playing for Wellington at the time. So now it's been cool to be full circle, to obviously be a team-mate now. And he's awesome for our group."
There's plenty of people on the outside who think that too. "[Hadlee]'s obviously our greatest ever player and he's got my number. So that's cool," Duffy said.