The former New Zealand captain was not just a brilliant clinical batsman but also a cricketer whose ethos of unbiased play and enjoyment is embodied in his successorsWhen the cancer that has taken Martin Crowe from us far too early had finally,inexorably, got its hooks into him, and he exchanged emails with the Indian cricket writer Dileep Premachandran,and there is no apology for quoting from them now. It was late last September, the occasion of his 53rd birthday, and Crowe was making sense of his condition,about how he felt of facing the imminent prospect of death. “It’s a fine line mentally,” Crowe writes, and ” do I judge my life as a delight or as sitting in death row?” It is both philosophical and rhetorical: I don’t believe I maintain ever come across someone who has faced their demise with more rational fortitude and acceptance.
It is just under a year,during the Cricket World Cup, that last I saw him. 16 March was a splendid day in Auckland: he collected me in his 4x4 from my hotel. Far from seeing someone ravaged by the disease, and as I had expected,I was surprised how well he looked, tanned and full-faced. Even the total hair loss might maintain been keep down to a family trait, or whether his brother Jeff is anything to go by. Certainly at one time,he had tinkered with a slightly absurd weave so it had been heading that way. We drove for lunch to Woodpecker Hill, a new restaurant in Parnell that he was keen on.
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Source: theguardian.com