CRICK: Parents play important role

ANENDRA SINGH
Hong Kong-born Dermot Reeve couldn't have done it without his parents.
His father, the late Alexander, who was a principal of a Hong Kong school, had seven ducks in a row at club level but never let that bother him.
``If I got a nought he'd say, `It's good to fail. It's good for the soul',' Reeve says of his father, who also kept wicket in the school's senior team in a men's competition.
But it was his mother, Monica, living in Taunton, who had the cutting edge. ``She'd come to watch me [in Warwickshire] and if I got out she'd really feel the pain.
``The rule in the house was not to talk cricket at the dinner table unless we won. One time she broke the rule and said, `I think it was too early for you to be hitting over the top', after I hit one over mid-off and went out for four to a spinner. She was right.
``I don't think I've ever met another woman who knows more about the game,' he says of Monica, who followed him to the cricket tour of India with England, tracking the team on trains and buses. When scorer Clem Driver got sick the team asked her to score.
``She was in the team meetings with Gooch and Gatting, talking about how we were going to play against the Indians. She was sitting in the corner and it was a huge thrill for her.' Suddenly she was getting flown around in the plane everywhere with the team.
``She said after the tour that she scored more runs than me on that tour,' he says with a laugh.
His mother paid for him to travel to England to join the MCC young cricketers in the winter and also sent him to Perth where he played nine seasons in the A grade.
``She would drive me around and get on the phone and find me matches to play in.
``I couldn't have had a more supportive mother and my dad going, `It's good for the soul', because it's very important for the game of cricket, where there's so many failures.'
While Reeve played hockey, rugby and soccer too at school, cricket was his passion because of time spent outdoors.
``I loved it. My favourite times at school were breaks and PE. During free periods I'd help out the phys-ed teacher and that's all I wanted to do if I didn't make it in sport.'
Why cricket?
``Because I improved in it better than any other sport, because from the age of 13 or 14 I was playing against men, so you probably mature much quicker.'
During summer breaks, he'd go to London in July and August and join a club there for all-year-round cricket.
``In Hong Kong they didn't let up because you were a schoolboy. When you are 12 or 13 years old and you're going out to bat and there were no helmets in those days and the guys are bowling quite quick ... that's what I love about this sport.'
Reeve, who moved to Queenstown after admitting publicly having had a cocaine addiction in 2005, hopes to coach the Black Caps.
What about England?
``No comment. We won't delve into it because of my past. I don't talk about it but the media writes about the cricketer who used to have a problem a few years ago. I feel it's something that's way behind me and I've learned from that.'