Not all great innings win matches. Some merely save them, as did Martin Crowe’s for New Zealand against Sri Lanka in Wellington in 1991.
The hosts faced a huge first-innings deficit of 323 with two days to go. In the event Crowe hit 299 in a ten-hour innings, and shared a world-record partnership of 467 with Andrew Jones to secure a famous draw. Crowe’s was, at the time, the highest individual Test score by a New Zealander, but of his failure to reach a triple century he later remarked: “It’s a bit like climbing Everest and pulling a hamstring on the last stride.”
Tall and strongly built, Crowe was one of New Zealand’s greatest cricketers, a classically stylish batsman who relied on exquisite timing rather than brawn and conquered some of the world’s finest bowlers.
He played 77 Tests — 16 as captain. He scored 5,444 runs at an average of 45.36, and set a slew of batting records including the most centuries by a New Zealander (17). He played 143 one-day internationals, averaging 38.55. In all first-class matches — for New Zealand, Auckland, Central Districts, Wellington and Somerset — he scored 19,608 runs and averaged 56.02 before injury curtailed his career.
However, Crowe was a “tortured genius”, to borrow the title employed by his biographer. His quest for perfection could make him moody, insular and abrasive, a difficult captain and team-mate. He was, he confessed in a brutally honest 2013 autobiography entitled Raw, “the world record holder for grievances.” He told an interviewer: “There was no forgiving or forgetting . . . No one seemed to like who I was and I don’t blame them — I didn’t like me either.”
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His personal life had its traumas too. In 1996 he separated from his first wife, Simone Curtice, an interior designer, after five years of marriage. In 2003 he had a daughter, Emma, with another partner, Huhaana Marshall, from whom he separated two years later. In 2009, he married Lorraine Downes, a Miss Universe who had been married to an All Blacks rugby player. Three years later he was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually killed him.
“Only when a cricket ball was on its way did I feel some sense of clarity in my life, of being content,” he once wrote. “At times I felt a heavenly bliss, such as when batting at Lord’s. Only then did I feel worthy. In those pure moments I was living the dream.”
“He said that he only felt contentment when he was hitting a cricket ball
Martin David Crowe — a cousin of the actor Russell Crowe — was born in Auckland in 1962. His father played first-class cricket and filled the house with copies of Wisden, cricket’s bible. His older brother, Jeff, also played for and captained New Zealand. His father once told an old coach: “Les, remember when you told me I’d never make a Test cricketer? Well, I made two.”
At Auckland Grammar school Crowe suffered a knee injury that plagued him for the rest of his life. However, he was such a precocious cricketer that he made his debut for Auckland at 17. He then joined the Lord’s ground staff and played for the MCC Young Cricketers whose coach, Don Wilson, soon declared: “Crowe’s too good for us.”
At 19 he was picked to play for New Zealand against Australia and their legendary opening bowlers, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. It was a baptism of fire. He scored just nine in his first Test innings, 20 in his first four. He was too young, and in later life he blamed his inner demons on that. He had been scared and bewildered and unable to mature, he said. His was “a disconnected spirit and soul overwhelmed by the ego and emotional instability created from my unfinished development”.
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Crowe persevered. In 1984 he played for Somerset. He quickly moved out of the flat he shared with a boisterous young Ian Botham and came good. The year after he was named one of Wisden’s cricketers of the year.
By 1986 Crowe had established himself as a key member of New Zealand’s resurgent team, and helped them to their first series victory over England with 106 at Lord’s . He became captain after Richard Hadlee retired in 1990.
The highlight of Crowe’s one-day career came in 1992 when he led his unfancied team to the brink of the World Cup final. He won the man-of-the-tournament award for flummoxing the opposition with some unorthodox captaincy. He opened the bowling with a spinner, the batting with a slogger, and constantly changed field positions.
In the semi-final he scored 91, but failed to take the field as Pakistan chased 263 because of a hamstring injury. Without him, New Zealand narrowly lost. “I made a massive mistake in not taking the field . . . because I was trying to be fit for the final as opposed to getting the team through to the final,” he admitted.
By 1995 Crowe’s knee was so bad that he could barely walk, and he was forced to retire at just 33. He underwent a “rebirthing” session in a Queensland forest to counter depression.
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He became a respected commentator for Sky Television, and pioneered a “fast and furious” three-hour form of the game called CricketMax, which was the model for Twenty20.
In 2011, aged 49, Crowe sought to make an improbable comeback. Bored, and egged on by colleagues who reminded him he needed 392 more first-class runs to reach 20,000, he turned out for his father’s old team, Cornwall, on the ground where his ashes were buried. He lasted three balls before pulling a thigh muscle and retiring hurt.
In 2012 Crowe was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, and blamed it on an immune system weakened by illnesses he had picked up while touring. “Travels during my cricket career, including salmonella and glandular fever, have compromised me,” he said. Eight months later he announced that he was in remission, but the cancer returned in 2014.
He mellowed in his final years. He took counselling and engaged in meditation. He wrote in his autobiography: “I’m so tired of that (old) life, of fighting, of ego, of trying to win opinion and of needing acceptance”.
Martin Crowe, MBE, cricketer, was born on September 22, 1962. He died on March 3, 2016, aged 53