Kyle Mills was his usual 6ft 3in tall when he got up this morning. By dinnertime tonight he was going on 10-foot tall, and growing.

The tall slim Auckland cricketer had just completed a Shell Trophy season with a 101.1 batting average. His Auckland team had beaten Canterbury and stitched up third Trophy spot.

And Mills had just been named in the New Zealand 'A' team to play the touring Pakistanis at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval at Lincoln University starting on Saturday.

Not bad for a keen cricketer who in December and part of January was waiting for a broken wrist to heal.

The 21-year-old Mills, the latest gift to cricket from Maclean's College and the Howick-Pakuranga club (following in the steps of Brooke Walker, the New Zealand Test player) won a place in the Auckland side as a medium-fast bowler of classical style.

From the days he started cricket on his brother Heath's shirt-tails Mills had always regarded himself as having genuine batting talent, even if his bowling took precedence.

After breaking his left wrist in the Max final, Mills had plenty of downtime which he filled in with plans for his cricketing future - and batting was very much part of the future.

Then came Mills' epic hundred against the odds at the Basin Reserve.

Then followed a run of scores - 67, 63, 89 not out,18, 90 not out, 50, 5 and 9 not out.

That last "not out" was important, for it enabled Mills, with 606 runs for the summer, to move his average for six completed innings from 99.5 to 101.1, a very rare feat for any domestic cricketer and certainly for one below international level.

Now Mills is "over the moon" about his New Zealand 'A' selection, and the prospect of putting some experience-polish on his game with an off-season of club cricket in Nottinghamshire, along with his team-mate Andre Adams.

But when he comes back to New Zealand cricket next summer, will he take the batting path, or the bowling?

"At the moment I guess it could be a 50-50 thing. I want to carry on with my bowling, and I enjoy batting."

"I guess the answer is to give them both 100 per cent, and see how it turns out."

© CricInfo