Last week, Martin Crowe lost a long-running battle with lymphoma and died in Auckland at the age of 53.
The tributes that poured in bear testament to the impact he had on the game; in his loss, it became clear, cricket did not just lose one of its finest cricketers and thinkers, it lost an avid champion of its soul.
Indeed few cricketers have ever spread themselves across the game in so many different capacities, or to such telling effect: first as batsman, then as captain, then, in retirement, as innovator, broadcaster and writer, and finally, most poignantly, as a mentor.
Kane Williamson will get there and Ross Taylor has hit those heights, but Crowe is the greatest batsman his country has produced.
Read also – Osman Samiuddin: Kane Williamson, in his quiet way, is destined to be New Zealand's greatest batsman
Not that the start of his career alluded to any such rise: his first seven Tests produced 183 runs at an average of under 16 and after 13 he was still averaging only 21.
But he was too good to be kept down and once he had made peace with his gifts and matured, he became, pretty much, the finest batsman in the world.
Or at least he was between 1985 and 1991, when he averaged 58.46, the best for any batsman with over 2,500 Test runs in the period.
That was, remember also, a period when some of the world’s finest bowlers were in operation: the two Ws of Pakistan, the West Indian pace quartets, Kapil Dev and various Australian attacks. Wasim Akram, whose reverse swing Crowe was one of the first and only to defy, thought him the best batsman he had bowled to.
And he dealt with them with such an elegant and light touch that it belied the generally fiery nature of these contests, as if he was fighting wars with a paintbrush. That came from the technical purity that had marked him out from such an early age.
In 1990, Crowe became captain of New Zealand, a post he had been earmarked for almost since he entered the game.
The results may not seem instantly impressive – in 16 Tests under him, they won only two and lost seven and in ODIs, he won 21 and lost 22.
Without context those numbers mean little. For one, he averaged 54 in Tests and 45 in ODIs, in his time as leader.
And two, those win-loss numbers do not reveal a creative streak that set him apart, for a time, from any other captain in the game.
“Marty was a very creative and brilliant thinker, the genesis came from him,” Gavin Larsen, who played under him, said. “Tactically he was light years ahead of anyone else I played under.”
The shiniest example of this came in the 1992 World Cup of course, where Crowe created a kind of ODI cricket that nobody had ever seen before.
He used Mark Greatbatch as a pinch-hitter; he opened the bowling with Dipak Patel’s offspin; he deployed a bunch of slow-medium bowlers to choke scoring. As so often under his captaincy he had to summon a force greater than the sum of the team’s parts.
The cherry was the peak form his batting hit through the tournament, one that he, more than almost anyone else, helped light up.
The original thinking did not restrict itself to on the field.
Post-retirement, Crowe worked as an executive producer of Sky TV’s coverage of New Zealand cricket and is now acknowledged as one of the forces behind what makes their coverage so outstanding.
The lateral thinker that he was, it should come as no surprise that he had approached Ian Taylor in the late 1990s to see how graphics and virtual animation could help pep up the broadcast of the game.
Taylor is head of the animation company that created Virtual Eye, a leading ball-tracking technology. Crowe wanted Taylor’s company to show the story of the bigger game beyond just batsman and bowler, the chess two captains played against each other; it was the first step cricket broadcasters took into the technologies that are now so intrinsic to the game.
A few years later, he also created Cricket Max, a shortened, two-innings format of the game widely considered the precursor to Twenty20 – one of its rules was a free-hit after a no-ball. It did not take off but it did prove how ahead of the curve Crowe was.
He saved for last perhaps his most lauded role, as a guiding light and mentor first for New Zealand’s emerging side but also for the wider cricket world itself. Taylor and Martin Guptill were “the two sons I never had”, he said, playing a big role in their careers.
Taylor spoke recently of a long email he received just before he made the mammoth 290 against Australia recently. But through his columns he began reaching out to a much bigger audience; his writing on batting techniques and the game itself were sharp and progressive.
But the most resonant were those that stretched beyond, about, for instance, depression and the “masks” cricketers wear to cope; one of his last was a plea to bring some integrity and love back into the game.
TALKING POINTS
World Twenty20
The World Twenty20 begins on Tuesday in India and, as ever with major tournaments in the subcontinent, it appears as if only at the very last minute will everything fall into place.
The ongoing delay in the release of tickets was and continues to be a major issue, making life especially difficult for fans intending to travel to India.
It is scarcely believable too that even at this stage, nobody can say with certainty whether Delhi, the national capital and a major venue, will host any of the games it is scheduled too.
Just a few days ago, doubts began to emerge over whether India will play their group game against Pakistan, as scheduled, in Dharamshala with the authorities there concerned that they will not be able to provide requisite security. And because of that, Pakistan are dilly-dallying over their participation in the tournament as a whole.
It has been this way since the subcontinent began hosting these major events back in 1987. The lack of progress in these matters is the greatest indictment of the poverty of administration in the region.
Welcome back Chris Lewis
Redemption has been a strong undercurrent in cricket recently, most notably with the return earlier this year of Mohammed Amir to international cricket. Soon, Chris Lewis will begin a tour of the 18 county grounds in England to talk to younger cricketers and impress upon them the need to not go down the path he went.
At his peak, Lewis was an effortlessly languid all-rounder who never quite reached the extent of his mesmeric gifts. But in 2008 he was arrested for trying to smuggle cocaine into the UK and eventually jailed for six years. He was released last year and is now, with help from the Professional Cricketers’ Association, trying to give something back to the game.
And it is good to see that cricket can be mature about this, that it is a big enough sport to welcome back men, or young adults, who have made serious mistakes in life and paid for it.
South African corruption
Gradually, the web is unravelling over in South Africa and what it is revealing is not particularly good news. Back in January it emerged that Gulam Bodi had attempted to fix matches during the 2015 Ram Slam T20.
By the end of the month, Bodi had been found guilty and banned for 20 years. It was then revealed that Thami Tsolekile and Lonwabo Tsotsobe, both South Africa internationals, were also under investigation. Now, probably the biggest name to be roped into this growing story: Alviro Petersen.
There is uncertainty over the nature of Petersen's role in this. Petersen tweeted that he had reported approaches to the relevant authorities and not, as a story on Wisden India claimed, been a suspect under investigation who had turned whistle-blower.
More names are expected to emerge as the investigation continues. Brace yourselves because there is no guarantee right now that it does not get bigger.
WHAT ELSE?
Last week
Asia Cup
- Bangladesh beat Sri Lanka by 23 runs
- India beat Sri Lanka by five wickets
- Bangladesh beat Pakistan by five wickets
Australia vs South Africa
- 1st Twenty20 – South Africa won by three wickets
Game of the week
Bangladesh’s improvements across formats continued anew with a bracing five-wicket win over Pakistan in Dhaka. Apart from brief late wobbles with ball and bat they bossed the game too. They reduced Pakistan’s top order to rubble and then held off a charge by the best bowling attack at the Asia Cup. It was a stirring win and further evidence of their swift rise.
Player of the week
David Miller
It does feel faintly remarkable to note that David Miller’s fifty against Australia was his first in this format internationally; he has 22 and a hundred in domestic games around the world. But it was a timely hand as well, with South Africa 95 for six at one stage chasing 158. Miller, such a presence in Twenty20 leagues around the world, took them home safely though.
This week
World Twenty20
- Bangladesh vs Netherlands – Wednesday
- Afghanistan vs Scotland – Thursday
- Bangladesh vs Ireland – Friday
Australia vs South Africa
- 3rd Twenty20 – Wednesday
Match-up of the week
Bangladesh have come on in big strides over the past year and on Friday take part in the most compelling of the first-round games at the World Twenty20. Their opponents, Ireland, know all about giant strides, still striving as they are to be granted the full member status that Bangladesh have long had and that Ireland so clearly deserve.
45.36
The final Test batting average of Martin Crowe. If it looks on the smaller side right now in age full of 50-plus averages, it is best to remember the relatively weak team he played in and the great bowlers he battled against.
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