One more shot for Lou Vincent

Lou Vincent is giving cricket in New Zealand one last chance. The 31-year-old has been living mainly in Britain since moving on from the failed Indian Cricket League. He can potentially qualify to play for England in less than two years.

"I'm still classified as an overseas player there until I get my residency and passport," Vincent says. "That means I could play as a local on the county scene. That's an option but I'm going to test myself in New Zealand first.

"Cricket's been back on my mind in recent months. I want to get back to the top level. It's time to give it one more crack. I wanted to come back and play rather than have a holiday. I can't guarantee a place with Auckland this summer but I'm going to be training every day to prove my worth."

Vincent played for Takapuna yesterday having taken his wife Elly and daughters Molly and Bessie back to their Kaukapakapa property on Friday. He hopes to join the Auckland squad next week and could play for them in the one-day competition before the domestic Twenty20 showpiece next month.

Former Auckland and now New Zealand assistant coach Mark O'Donnell says the province is lucky to have Vincent.

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"Auckland's fallen on its feet with Lou turning up. He can definitely play. Provided he's motivated, he's a huge asset; a pleasure to coach."

That hasn't always been the case. Vincent has dealt with - and continues to deal with - depression, which he monitors through medication.

"It's going to be an ongoing battle. Looking back, I was surprised to see how much I'd spiralled into a hole. You can tend to search for things to snap you out of it but in the end it's taken a lot of work and patience from my family.

"I needed to break from the cycle of cricket. You blame things to justify why life's not going great but eventually I realised my attitude wasn't right either. I needed to rebuild it from rock bottom and hopefully become a better person. It's not nice when you lose direction in life.

"You've got to re-train the brain to tackle those nasty little voices. When the monkey on the shoulder is talking, you've got to stand up to him, but it takes time. It's so easy to slip back into what's comfortable."

O'Donnell says it's also a tough thing to coach around.

"Luckily we had a really good guy involved to monitor the situation called Dr Ian Lambie. Lou was also open and honest, as Lou is. He'd say 'I can do today, I can't do today, I need a couple of weeks or I'm fine'. You just had to play it by ear, for want of a more technical term."