Martin Crowe

New Zealand batting legend passes away after a long battle with cancer

Martin Crowe, the former New Zealand batting captain, passed away on Thursday (March 3) at the age of 53 after a long battle with cancer.

Crowe played 77 Tests and 143 One-Day Internationals to end his career with 10,148 runs to his name. He led New Zealand in the World Cup in 1992 and helped the team reach the semifinal. Crowe was loved and respected by everyone in the cricketing fraternity and wasknown as someone who changed New Zealand cricket for the better.

A sad and tragic day for world cricket as we lose a great gentleman and gifted cricketer who graced the cricketing landscape during the 80s and early 90s. I had the good fortune of watching some of Martin Crowe's innings but the one that will forever be etched in my mind was the innings he played one early morning at Auckland in the 1992 World Cup match against Australia. Martin Crowe scored exactly 100 not out, and what I recall from that innings are his gorgeous cover drives with a minimal of backlift, and caressing the ball through the covers and midoff. Martin played 77 Tests for New Zealand and along with Richard Hadlee was instrumental in putting up New Zealand as a strong force in world cricket, no longer the poor cousins of Australia. I also loved reading Martin Crowe's splendid and educative articles

He was first chosen against Australia, aged 19. He was not ready. It hurt him. Sometimes it's said that young players are toughened up by being blooded early, experiencing failure and fighting back. Martin would not have agreed. Strong emotions and deep anxieties lay beneath the surface confidence. He was quick to judge others as "not good enough", not because he did not know what it was to struggle but because he did. The world he later hugged to his breast he kept then at 22 yards' length, and it worked: after 13 Tests, he averaged only 21; across the decade in which he was New Zealand's first and best hope, he averaged in the mid-50s.

Martin's love of cricket was fathomless: so passionate he needed to break from it from time to time; so profound he always found his way back to the fold. His great theme in the last while was anger and ill-feeling on the cricket field. The world was so full of it; why could cricket not provide some sort of refuge, a better example? In the last messages we exchanged, he was playful, funny, happily watching the game, even though his physical presence was entering the past tense. That invincible spirit endures.


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