The fine crew at The Spinoff let me write about Martin Crowe on their website, alongside a few people I am in awe of. Behold:
As a cricket-berserk youngster, never happier than when cleaning a thigh pad or something equally unnecessary, many of my best early memories were formed sitting on a couch and watching Martin Crowe bat. All his peers made the most of their homespun techniques (think Jeremy Coney’s elbow-y drives or Andrew Jones’ leaping, leaning backfoot play), but Crowe was the real deal. Endless summer days were spent happily indoors, obsessing over his old-school bat-on-the-ground stance, dead still until the last minute before leaning on a straight drive, or crashing it over the Basin’s outfield practice wickets, or manhandling a pull over Eden Park’s short boundary with those gargantuan forearms.
He started out as a boy in that streetwise, mustachioed 80s team, before becoming the team captain; an old gun in the young guns. I drove to Eden Park with some mates to see the team play South Africa in the 1992 World Cup, where his wonderful dobber-attack restricted the mysterious visitors to just 190, before prototype pinch hitters Greatbach and Latham pummeled 114 at a then-unheard-of run a ball. He and Warren Lees out-thought the world that summer, and he out-batted them too.
He was intense, and very Auckland in that brash, 80s fashion. Ex-Grammar, all headbands, necklaces and immaculate hair that disappeared on him too soon. He wanted things to be better, whether it was the New Zealand cricket team or the way we watched it on TV, and worked hard to make it so. He got a fearful dose of tall poppy treatment and you could tell it stung. I’m glad he appeared laid back and at peace strolling through the 2015 World Cup as the virtual guest of honour, with everyone wanting to just shake hands and say hi. His ICC Hall of Fame speech was as graceful as his back foot drive.
Martin Crowe was a world-class New Zealand Test batsman and we haven’t had many of them, really. He was a top man too. Like a mate said on Twitter today, if you’re too young to remember Hogan, make sure you watch Kane Williamson all you can. Guys like this don’t play for us too often.
