PAUL CARRICK shares his story of how he met the cricketing great and down-to-earth Bishan Bedi.

“No Problem, No Problem” was the cheerful response to a cold call I had made to one of the statesmen of the world game. A friend of mine had procured his number and I wanted to get something signed. “But how are we gonna do this” he continued,” you can come over to my place I live quite a distance from the city centre, but your welcome to come over”.

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As part of our continuing series, World Cricket Watch and Balanced Sports invited Glenn Mitchell, sports broadcaster and mental health advocate, to write about his favourite cricketer, Justin  Langer.  Glenn’s website is glennmitchell.com.au and he tweets @mitchellglenn

I clearly remember standing in the middle of a rain-soaked Sinhalese Sports Club in September 1999 as the third and final Test of the Sri Lanka-Australia series came to a very wet conclusion and the hosts on the precipice of a historic 1-nil series win.

Beneath the light drizzle that day I had a chat with Justin Langer near the heavily covered pitch.

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lead image (c) Darren Pateman

MATTHEW WOOD, of the excellent Balanced Sports, reviews Game for Anything by Gideon Haigh.

If Bill Simmons is the everyman sportswriter full of pop culture, in-jokes and homer-isms, then Gideon Haigh is his antithesis. You read Simmons as he thinks aloud, a man down at the bar with his mates. However, he’s just self-aware enough to know that because he monopolises the conversation he should fling jokes about to keep his audience engaged. There’s obvious research, but done on the sly; he’s no stat-geek, but muses on feel and zeitgeist.

Haigh, deliberately and with culture incomparable, compiles cricketing words that evokes a history professor’s magnum opus. Immaculate research, mirrored by thoughtful prose. Simmons’ raison d’etre is entertaining learning. For Haigh, it is the reverse. And they’re both brilliant.
Haigh’s compendious “Game for Anything” released in Australia his collected writings for publications such as Wisden Asia and the now-defunct periodicals The Bulletin and Wisden Cricket Monthly. It features several learned insights into periods of the game about which I, a studious and informed cricket fan, knew very little. Each essay is structured magnificently, being economical yet descriptive; each word is steeped in context. That he quotes an assortment of historical figures from Jardine Machiavelli to Mark Waugh exemplifies his remarkable reading range.

In fact the stand-out point of Haigh’s work is just that – his research. Articles are based not around his palpable love of the game, it’s correct spirit and statutes; his writing is revolves around a prescient “angle” and why it emerges as such a story from a multi-textured background.

There are elements of whimsy as well: he defines his favourite cricketer as the English batsman Chris Tavare, decries the rise of park cricket sledging and, most beautifully of all, develops delicate snapshots of cricket history. These short trips are, unlike the footage that comprises most of our memories, full-colour and high-definition – he makes Bradman more than ridiculous numbers and grainy footage of a fourth-ball duck.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about his text is how easily he makes just the right words fit together on paper. Despite obvious labour over books, newspapers, journals and microfiche, Haigh’s words appear with economic precision – as if he has the most severe of editors. When writing for a mass audience using such a scholarly approach, Haigh is to be praised and respected for balancing intellect with ease of reading. Characters like Lawrence Rowe, Richard Wardill and characteristics such as gambling are all treated with the same laconic, precise respect. A memorable example was my favourite essay from Game for Anything, concerning the late-19^th century Australian captain Harry Trott and his commitment to Kew Asylum.

If you learn about politics from a book by a political master, you learn about cricket from Haigh – far more than from any other writer today. His words lack Roebuck’s flair but also his occasional florid tones. He analyses the game from a removed, scholarly position; writing not because he loves the game (although he does) but because he feels it has stories to tell. In the prologue, he encourages young writers to do likewise.

It’s so utterly characteristic of Haigh – a book of cricket essays where his opinions are so subtly obvious yet with only this one proclamation. Highly recommended.

For a different perspective, the SMH also reviewed this work.

Balanced Sports and World Cricket Watch are inviting cricket writers from around the globe to wax lyrical on who they consider their “favourite cricketer”. This week, Purna Hassan of Cricket Minded chooses one of the most controversial cricketers the game has ever seen – Hansie Cronje. Purna tweets @cricketminded.

I fell in love with cricket because of Hansie Cronje and the team he captained. My Dad introduced me to cricket as he was an avid fan of India, I followed his passion. It was only at age eleven that I began to grasp the concepts of the game and realized cricket’s meaning differs between countries.

In India, it was religion bordering on fanatic levels. In West Indies, cricket was an aura that had stunned the world. In Australia, it evoked a chase between a wild animal and its prey. In South Africa, it was an avenue for a country to step up and etch their place on the map. In the 1997-1998 Test match between South Africa and India, Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock captured my attention, Jonty Rhodes made me clap rowdily and Hansie Cronje – he simply demanded my respect.

He wasn’t as flamboyant as a batsman could be. In fact, his batting numbers are far below what he should have achieved. But I have no complaints. Hansie was too busy being a leader, instilling faith in players that had been overlooked for years because of the unfortunate state of their country. Hansie was too busy being there.

I am trying here to express what he represented, for his team and his country. I’m not South African, but do come from a country that has always struggled to rectify the overblown, deeply concentrated negative images displayed for so long in the media. Hansie was put in charge of such a team at the tender age of 24; despite relative youth, he never showed any greenness.

Hansie feared no one, or if he did, I never saw it. His confidence, ego and intensity were, in my opinion, exactly what the new era Proteas needed. After all, this team had defend every single outburst (racial or otherwise) which would have been termed ‘part of the game’ for others. The world was watching and Hansie and co. had to prove that South Africans were capable of much more than just apartheid.

His greatest power lay in the knowledge that he was there to play cricket. His love for the game resonated in his eyes and his smiles. He could have a good time on the pitch even when times were hard. He was a prankster and I fondly remember his banter with Jonty and the then young Jacques Kallis (ed: I could have sworn Jacques Kallis was born at age 32 with bat in hand).

Allan Donald was his go-to man, Pollock the newcomer of distinguished lineage. Herschelle Gibbs marked the role of restless youngster to perfection and Dave Richardson his reliable old sage. Even as a young man, Cronje instinctively knew how to handle, utilise and shuffle his pack. I can’t remember a single instance where his decisions on the field were questioned by his team-mates; when those choices were dubious or cost them the game, Hansie was the first to admit his mistakes and the quickest to learn from them (alas, apart from the choking). He was in every sense a leader.

It was little wonder that South Africa quickly rose to the top of the international game. Talents like Gibbs, Boucher and Ntini flourished from the nutrition provided by Hansie and coach Bob Woolmer. The results began to evolve as they won the Asia Cup – their only ICC trophy – in Dhaka. I remember as he held the trophy; I was watching with tears in my eyes. All he said was ‘It’s heavy, but I don’t want to put it down’.

In the 1999 World Cup, South Africa were the hot favourites. It was there that I saw the first signs of my captain’s weakness. Hansie took the field with an ear-piece to communicate with Woolmer, a move he later paid for. South Africa’s previously impressive top order began to rely more on Lance Klusener’s WMD finishes. In the excitement and amid a remarkable run of “Zulu” form, the otherwise perceptive Hansie Cronje let his team play; he should have united the team and reminded them of their duties.

Personally, I loved it. Klusener is and will always be my 1999 World Cup hero, but in there is no way Allan Donald should have been the man at the other end with Zulu when the likes of Kirsten, Gibbs, Cullinan, Kallis, Cronje and even Pollock came before. I thought the 1999 World Cup semi-final was the first and last time the Proteas would break my heart.

And then came Cronje-gate.

I distinctly remember the day Hansie confessed his crimes. I was leaving for a vacation and woke up early to start my travels. I picked up the newspaper – it’s first page featured a huge picture of Hansie crying and the headline “Match-fixing scandal rocks the Cricket world”. To say I was devastated is an understatement. Till then, I had vehemently defended Cronje, strongly believing the allegations to be a set-up. Anyone and everyone who loves cricket was shattered by the revelation but for me it was more personal: it was the ultimate and immutable demise of my hero.

I was disgusted that he had persuaded team-mates to join him and shocked by the tremendous flaw that the match-fixing scandals revealed in a man I respected. It pained me to see what he had reduced his cricket to, to what he had reduced himself. Those are the only emotions I recall from those days – betrayal and an overwhelming sadness. Even still I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, rather I was grateful when he stepped aside and accepted his bans with grace. I couldn’t bear to see him stoop lower.

Cronje broke my heart a third time with his untimely death. It’s indicative of the man that sometimes I feel he’s still alive, on an island and living it up. In these times, he’s grinning from ear to ear as only Hansie can.

It’s probably pretty plain that I forgave him quickly. His incredible betrayal could not taint the memories he had given me over the years and neither could it stain his leadership and passion for the game. Hansie Cronje may have changed cricket forever with his misguided activities, but for me it doesn’t detract at all from the confidence he provoked in the Proteas and, by extension, his gift to the cricket world.

Previous Favourite Cricketers

Brian Lara by David Siddall

Allan Border by Ben Roberts

Douglas Jardine by David Green

Curtly Ambrose by Matthew Wood

Sachin Tendulkar by Subash Jayaraman

Ian Botham by Jonathan Kilroy

Shane Warne by Murray Middleton

Rahul Dravid by Sujith Krishnan

Wasim Akram by Blaise Murphet

Glenn McGrath by Gary Naylor

Ed Giddins by Nick Harrison

Adam Gilchrist by Will Atkins

Angus Fraser by James Marsh

Paul Allott by Jonathan Howcroft

Tim Bresnan by Yorkshire Len

Sourav Ganguly by Christopher David

David Boon by Jimi Stephens

Herschelle Gibbs by Justin Lawrence

Bob Woolmer by Nigel Henderson

Darren Lehmann by Daniel Gray

Kumar Sangakkara by Nishant Joshi

Justin Langer by Sarah C Robinson

Andy Bichel by Nicko Hancock

Chris Tavare by Gideon Haigh

Gavin Larsen by Ken Miller

Ray Bright by Dan Lonergan

Chris Pringle by Michael Wagener

Anil Kumble by Rishabh Bablani

Shoaib Akhtar by Assad Hasanain

Stuart MacGill by Kristian Gough

Michael Vaughan by Max Benson

Graham Dilley by James Morgan

VVS Laxman by Minal