New Zealand's wicketkeeper-batter Max Chu is uncapped in international cricket but, like Bevon Jacobs before him, he has broken into T20 competitions around the world on the back of Super Smash success, enjoying a jet-setting winter.
Chu, 26, captained New Zealand A during a one-day series in Sri Lanka in April and then, in June, he jetted off to play in the EuroT20 Belgium league in Zemst. Soon after, he travelled to Chennai to hone his skills against spin at the Super Kings Academy. He is now gearing up to travel to Australia with the New Zealand A side for a white-ball tour, including the Top End T20 series. Later in September, he will be in action for Vancouver in the Canada Super60 competition before New Zealand kick off their home summer.
"I just enjoy the opportunity to play with different players and you get to see the way the game is played in different parts of the world," Chu told Cricinfo in Chennai in June. "To have guys like Moeen [Ali], Gup [Martin Guptill], David Wiese, Mark Watt - it was really cool to listen to their international experience on the bus rides and in the changing room. Franchises throw their trust in you and there's people who turn up and watch. So, trying to put my best foot forward, entertain them, and have some fun as well."
Apart from keeping wicket, Chu can play 360-degree shots, including the scoop and various varieties of the sweep, which has made him a player of interest for the Black Caps as well.
"Yeah, absolutely [I aspire to play for New Zealand]," Chu said. "But if you look at the current Black Caps team, there's a lot of blokes in there who are playing their best cricket ever. So I think to be in a rush would be amiss. I totally understand where I sit in the landscape of New Zealand cricket right now, and we know that guys don't just play their best cricket at 23-24. And if you get to 28, then your career's not over.
"I hope to head to the UK and do some work with Moeen in Birmingham. And it's always not just technical, it's also tactically how to play different roles. For example, Moeen's probably batted [in various positions] all around the world for franchises. He shares his knowledge - he's very, very generous with that" Max Chu
"I think you see the success of guys like Daryl [Mitchell], who came into the team, even Beast [Michael Bracewell] came into the team later and has done incredibly well. I think there's no need to be in a rush. It'd be fantastic to play, but at the minute, I just want to play what's in front of me and play my best cricket for whoever I'm suiting up for."
When Chu was at Antwerp Anchors in Belgium, he had an opportunity to open the batting with Guptill after years of plotting against him in New Zealand domestic cricket. Though Chu didn't have a particularly productive season with the bat, he used the time to pick the brains of Guptill and Moeen.
"One thing you admire about Gup is how level he is and not much flusters Moeen as well," Chu said. "It's much cooler batting with Gup than watching him score runs against Otago (laughs). And it's great to listen to Moeen's theories on the game - he has done some coaching as well. He can be dangerous at different points of time, and learning what method you use to get there - that's the couple of things I've taken from Moeen.
"I hope to head to the UK and do some work with Moeen in Birmingham. And it's always not just technical, it's also tactically how to play different roles. For example, Moeen's probably batted [in various positions] all around the world for franchises. He shares his knowledge - he's very, very generous with that."
Visa troubles left Chu overstaying in Belgium, but he has learnt to embrace the nomad life during the New Zealand winter.
"I think we played eight games in nine days in Belgium and there were a couple of visa issues in the lead-up to the Chennai trip," Chu said. "I got around on a bike. I think I paid 12 Euros for a bike pass and cycled around the city. Some beautiful old buildings there, you know, Europe has different architecture to New Zealand. I got a couple of gym sessions in too and it was really good."
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Chu got drawn to cricket when he was five years old after his grandparents gifted him a pair of wicketkeeping gloves on Christmas Day in Hawke's Bay, where his mother is from. Chu's father, meanwhile, has Chinese and Malay heritage.
"My earliest memory of cricket was that Christmas Day," Chu recalled. "[I] remember playing with my mother's cousins down in Wairoa in sort of rural Hawke's Bay. My grandparents' house had a sort of a concrete outdoor, I guess it was sort of a hallway, an outdoor area. And I was just the one who had the gloves on and I loved wearing my gloves. I didn't even want to bat most of the time. But yeah, I'd stand back there all day and catch to whoever wanted to throw a nut at me."
Billy Ibadulla, the former Pakistan allrounder who moved to Otago and played a vital role in the early development of Glenn Turner, also had a hand in Chu's progress.
"He had an enormous impact on not only my development, but quite a lot of players in Otago," Chu said of Ibadulla. "He coached out of the cold corner of the ecocentre in Dunedin four nights a week, pretty much 51 weeks of the year. And from when I would have been nine to 18, I would have trained with him. I credit a lot of his coaching to my development and love of the game."
In 2019, Chu made his first-class debut largely as a specialist keeper, who batted at No. 8 below Nathan Smith, and on his Super Smash debut he was not needed with the bat, but listed further down at No. 10. But he didn't sit still with his skills and instead improved his power-hitting by bulking up and playing club cricket in Essex after he was dropped from Otago's side around 2023.
Since the start of 2024, he has had a strike rate of 149.35 in the Super Smash, the highest by an uncapped middle-order New Zealand batter in the competition during this period (for a minimum of 150 balls faced). His strike rate is comparable to Glenn Phillips' 149.75 and not too many points behind Jacobs' 156.69.
"One of the best things that happened to me was being dropped from the Otago Twenty20 team because it helped me re-evaluate what skills I needed to perform at this level," Chu said. "And then to shoot higher, what skills I needed to play at the international level. I went away, talked to different people and played club cricket in England.
"Rob Walter was my first domestic coach. And I think he would probably be the first person to also admit that I was a bit of a scrawny kid who didn't hit it very far when I was 18-19. So, I think from an early age, I thought: 'well I need to find a way to score'. I needed a few more years in the gym to sort that out. I think I'm blessed that I'm playing golf and stuff as well. So you get some hand speed from that. I guess it's just a little bit backing yourself, trusting your hands to hit the ball a little bit harder."
Chu has now combined his trick shots with power to emerge on Black Caps' radar. A good run with the A team in Australia in the Top End T20s and the one-day series will keep him on that radar. With Tim Seifert accepting only a casual contract once again, Devon Conway signing up with the ETPL and SA20, there could potentially be an opening for Chu at some point in the future, though Mitch Hay is also in the mix. Chu is preparing to be ready for that with his A team experiences and overseas exposure.