What's less well known than who he coached, is how early it began. Greatbatch was still sending balls scorching through cover or sailing over midwicket when a 12-year-old Ross Taylor approached the pavilion at Masterton's Queen Elizabeth Park.
"We were playing a first-class game and he wandered up an introduced himself. He asked if he could do the drinks and be the 12th man over the three days," Greatbatch, 51, said this week.
"I said: 'do you play?' And he said: 'yeah.' And I said: 'well, bring your gear down.'
"So he did a day's work with us in the dressing room and he was great and a good kid and then I went out after the day's play with him and his gear and started throwing some balls to him. And this 12-year-old started hitting them back rather firmly so I thought I better go back three or four yards and I ended up having to do that another couple of times.
"He was very raw and my memory of him was of Ijaz [Ahmed] The Axe Cutter from Pakistan. He was like a smaller version of him."
Greatbatch was so impressed with Taylor, he talked to a few people around the CD age-group system about getting the boy some better cricket. Taylor had no sooner turned 13 than he was scoring hundreds for CD's under-15 team.
Greatbatch was then instrumental in Taylor becoming a boarder at Palmerston North Boys' High School, where the youngster's cricket really blossomed. Greatbatch was CD's director of coaching by then and took huge satisfaction from seeing players he'd identified and nurtured, such as Taylor, Jamie How, Jesse Ryder, Jacob Oram and Bevan Griggs, progress through to the full Stags side.
