There was one part of our email friendship that was ironic. He knew that his days were numbered while I worked under the illusion that mine were endless but it was he who would reply promptly, he who always seemed to have the time. That was Martin Crowe, whose best innings was perhaps his last.
He died last week at the age of 53, one of the finest cricketers of his generation. I can’t say he hadn’t warned me. His last email came five days before he died. In it he wrote about the cancer that was killing him.
“I am the proud father of a 15x15x15cm humungous-sized tumour sitting nicely on my duodenum, talking to me every day, although it gives me hours off to share with family and friends, who have been incredible. Some friends have dropped off, scared to enter death’s den, as the reality of it all becomes clearer.”
He wrote without pity and often with mischief. In that last email he told me it would be better to reply sooner rather than later. “Best not to keep it so long next time as once this little s**** [Irish accent] reaches 20x20, the bloody thing will be peaking out of the top of my throat.”
So cheerful and uncomplaining you couldn’t imagine within days his life would be over. There are many things I will remember about him, but most of all it will be the courage and the selflesness of how he dealt with imminent death.
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We met only once. That was exactly 12 months ago at a cafe overlooking Kohimarama beach on Auckland’s east shore. It was getting towards the end of New Zealand’s summer, there were still swimmers in the sea and Auckland’s bay looked beautiful. “You should try the smoked fish,” he said. He had the same: smoked fish salad followed by cappuccino after cappuccino.
The interview lasted for two hours, the conversation a further four. It is one of the perks of this job that sometimes you meet someone who sees you as a fellow human being, not just a journalist with a recorder. He was different to any athlete or former athlete I’d interviewed. Everything he’d achieved at the crease was to him no more important than the smoked fish salad we both enjoyed.
I can hear him argue that the chef who put together the salad probably did a better job. Three days before he’d been inducted into New Zealand cricket’s Hall of Fame. He said it was a bad decision. Undeserved. “I was the classic case of someone who couldn’t get over the last hurdle, whether it would be choking or a single thought intruding at the wrong time.
“I was the guy on 299 who swapped the mindset of ‘watch the ball, watch the ball’ to ‘wow, first New Zealander to score 300’. I never even saw the ball that got me out on 299.”
He talked about his cancer, the follicular lymphoma that seemed controllable for a time until it morphed into something more aggressive and how it was racing towards its last stage, an adversary he called “double hit lymphoma”. Doctors said he had six months, but that was 12 months earlier.
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What right did they had to give you a precise sentence, he asked? “They should be looser in their estimations.” His own guess then was three to six months. He got more because his zest for life meant he had something to slow the arrival of the inevitable.
What was it like to be in your early 50s and to know, I wondered? “You ask yourself if you want to live, and it’s a real question. Do you want to die? Have you had enough? Clearly I haven’t had enough; not in my role as a husband, as a father, as a son or as a brother. I haven’t stopped fighting.”
His fight was without anger or aggression or bitterness, for down that road stress waited and he’d learnt that stress only made things worse. Throughout the past two years he thought about how best to live the remaining days. Biggest thing, he said, was to divest oneself of ego for once that had been done, everything becomes easier.
What would he want to be said about him after he’d left the room? This was something he’d thought about and written down. “He cared. He served. He offered his wisdom. He had a good heart. He laughed. He learned. He loved. He lived.”
Our conversations weren’t always so philosophical. Last July I wrote to him about an evening I’d had in the company of former West Indies’ fast bowler Michael Holding and how impressed I’d been by his honesty and integrity. What was it like to bat against the man they called Whispering Death?
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“Mikey was a double-edged sword,” he wrote. “You watched the sword move swiftly and gracefully, and then grace turned to swift death if one wasn’t careful or lucky. I spoke at length to Greg Chappell yesterday and we concluded that you could have a crack at these chaps [West Indies’ attack] at the start of their third spell. However, being well-grooved machines and hunting in a pack, itmeant reaching third spells was rarified air.
“At that point in the day the ball was softish and its energy was waning. This was for a 15-20 over period, max. Mikey is exceptionally honest but slightly less open-minded than he might be in this day and age. He can shut down subjects rather quickly, a bit like his bowling.”
Through the final months Martin Crowe refused to shut down any subject. His best friend Grant Fox would drop by every week and with the former All Black he’d shoot the breeze about the sporting world. They’d talk about Grant’s son Ryan making his way through the foothills of professional golf and they loved moseying through the memories of New Zealand’s brilliance at the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
“Martin had a way of cutting to the quick and was generous too
Julian Savea in the quarter-final against France, Dan Carter in the final, but the story he and Fox loved most was Steve Hansen telling assistant coach Ian Foster to cut Conrad Smith for Sonny Bill Williams at half-time in the final. At that point the ABs were losing 13-12 but with Williams in the midfield, the game changed and two tries soon followed. In great teams there can be no egos.
He was generous, too. “I saw the Lance Armstrong documentary [Stop At Nothing] the other day,” he wrote in October. “Enjoyed seeing you piece the story together. Then I saw the Graham Norton show and the actor playing you in the movie was on. Very funny. I think I will prefer the real thing, the documentary, over the movie. Lance is so real in the doco, not quite as good I sense in the film.”
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He had a way of cutting to the quick, warning me about the dangers post-Armstrong. “You are seen as the man who finds the truth. Expectation has you by the b***s.” And he again advised me not to hang around before writing back: “Blink again and I will be dead. So if you could help me keep one eyelid open that would be helpful.”
In the last paragraph of his last email he told about the source of his strength. “In the meantime while you work your ass off, I am probably working harder — to stay alive another day. You will know what I mean when you get there yourself one day. To see the look on your soulmate’s face when you wake to a new dawn is easily the most glorious feeling. You only need one fabulous reason. That’s why folk climb Everest, or sit for weeks without eating. You do what it takes to pass. And you pass every time. Until you don’t.”
