It was a "dream to play more international cricket" that made the newly-retired Luke Ronchi switch allegiances from Australia to New Zealand back in 2012.
Steady performances since his first-class debut for Western Australia in 2002-03 - and an untimely injury to Brad Haddin - shoehorned Ronchi into Australia's tour of the Caribbean in 2008. He showed promise with a 22-ball fifty in only his second ODI innings but then his numbers dipped. Eventually, he found himself out of favour.
Ronchi returned to his country of birth - New Zealand - in a bid to restart his career. A first-class century on debut for Wellington in March 2012 might well have assured him to keep at it. "In the end, it wasn't really a hard decision," he told ESPNcricinfo last year. "I wanted to play international cricket and I wanted to play more. It wasn't like I had retired or wasn't playing or dropped and wasn't getting picked. The thought of not trying in New Zealand would've been a lot harder for me.
"Everyone was right behind me, even players from Western Australia and coaching staff. That was a nice feeling. You get a bit worried about what might happen, but everyone was fully behind me."
Thanks for all the msgs, very humbling. Must say a big thank you to @BLACKCAPS for the opportunities to play as long as I did, loved it
— Luke Ronchi (@ronchi04) June 22, 2017
Also a thank you to @CricketAus and @WACA_Cricket for giving me the start all those yrs ago, wouldn't be here without it
— Luke Ronchi (@ronchi04) June 22, 2017
In 2014, Ronchi made his ODI and T20I debut for New Zealand. He fell for ducks in both those games but was persisted with until he smashed 170 not out off 99 balls against Sri Lanka. That innings remains the highest score by batsman at No. 7.
Ronchi played his first Test in May 2015. Coming in with his side trailing England 0-1 in a two-match series, he struck 88 and 31 at Headingley, to help spearhead a memorable victory. "It was something I always dreamed of and wanted to do well in," he said. "Leading up to the match, I thought I shouldn't go in nervous, because if you go in nervous and muck it up, that might be the only time you ever get to play. So I sort of went out there, just being relaxed, and, just free off whatever happens. To get the win in the end was pretty cool. It was pretty cool to be one from one (win-match ratio)."
As for career highlights, Ronchi said "you can't get past the World Cup." New Zealand, fuelled by passionate home support, earned their first ever final after beating South Africa in the semis - a game that went down in history as an ODI classic.
"To be involved in semi-finals, to get into the finals, even thought that wasn't our best game of the tournament... For the New Zealand team to get into a World Cup final and play in front of 90-odd thousand people, the whole six-eight weeks was a fantastic time to be playing cricket."
Having been on both sides of the Trans-Tasman production line, Ronchi, in 2016, believed "Australia has got a little more depth and more money to put into development and facilities.
"But having said that New Zealand cricket has been doing fantastically well at the moment in all three forms," he added. "So, depth doesn't always make a big difference but if you want to stay consistent - like how Australia have - you need to have the depth to keep pushing guys and making guys perform and getting better. I think New Zealand's getting there. We still have a little way to go, but we're doing pretty well at the moment."