Cricket: Cairns a bad boy who became a legend

Chris Cairns

"I'm a great believer in failure," said Christopher Cairns, a cricketer and, more importantly, a man who flirted with the concept of failure close to a decade ago.

"Failure is the greatest teacher of all."

This is no glib assessment of a sportsman contemplating a string of low scores or a series of expensive bowling spells. Cairns, who announced his retirement from international cricket on Monday, does not run from the fact that 'failure' was a factor in all facets of his life. You suspect only someone who is now completely at ease with where he is could concede that.

The Chris Cairns of the mid-90s, who clashed with his coach so bitterly that it led to a walkout, and whose mid-test inebriation so offended his early-morning taxi driver that he felt compelled to 'out' him in on national radio, would never have conceded that failure was part of his make-up.

The Wellington taxi incident was also the night that Cairns started to grow up. His cricket, to that point dynamic but plagued by injury and inconsistency, grew up too.

Psychoanalysts would have a field day theorising why a young man with such overwhelming talent seemed so intent on wasting it.

But they would not have to look so deep to see why he turned it around: John Graham.

"He had an amazing mana about him - he's just very honest and very trusting. Yet he's as tough as old boots as well. There's something about him which makes you say: 'Hey, I'm not going to keep letting this guy down."' Graham was New Zealand manager at the time Cairns hit his nadir.

"After Wellington, as an individual, I couldn't go any lower. From that day forward I don't think I've looked back."

The image before us now is almost impossible to reconcile with the past: here is Chris Cairns, the one-time bad boy of New Zealand cricket, at home alone on a Friday night - wife Carin is out - baby-sitting his sons Thomas and Bram.

Cairns will leave the sport a hero. He's cheered as loudly in Auckland as he is in his hometown Christchurch; his big-hitting game is held in awe from Nottingham to Nagpur.

"The game's littered with guys who are angry and frustrated but I'm stoked with what I've achieved."

He's writ a large chapter in the Cairns legacy to New Zealand cricket, a legacy started by six-hitting swing bowling father Lance.

"I've often thought what it would be like to be a Nathan Astle or a Stephen Fleming," Cairns said, referring to the fact both carved out stellar careers with no family background in the game. "But then I flick out of it pretty quick because I don't like dwelling in what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. It was good and bad because you had that pressure on you but then again you were looked at more than others."

There was only five years difference between the end of Lance's test career and the beginning of Chris'. Most were surprised that son was equally as powerful as father but far more technically inclined.

"That was born out of Billy Ibadulla. I give him all the credit for giving me the attribute of defence. He used to draw circles where your feet had to go and you would have to stand there for a minute."

So Cairns was a disciple of batting guru Ibadulla. That would be close to the only thing Cairns has in common with Glenn Turner, the coach he walked out on in the West Indies.

"We were just polar opposites," Cairns said. "I think it was always destined to end that way."

Cairns admits he was momentarily discomfited by the fact Turner was added to the selection panel while his career was still in progress.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't," he said with a chuckle. That paranoia was unlikely to be eased by the fact that one of the first squads picked by the new panel didn't include Cairns.

"But the dynamic of that selection panel is that Glenn, Dion [Nash] and Richard [Hadlee] are advisers really. It's not a voting panel as such. John Bracewell gets veto.

"That is why I stopped worrying about Glenn's involvement. If it was a voting capacity, I'd have been a bit concerned about whether there was a hangover from the past.

"If Johnny had wanted me in the team, I'd have been in the team."

Cairns was an impulse away from quitting there and then when he was not named to tour South Africa in October. He came home and talked the matter through with Carin. "She's my sounding board for everything."

Whatever was thrashed out that night, it was decided that Cairns would not sulk about the decision - "prior to that I would have" - and would work hard to go out on his terms. He dragged his body back to full fitness and was reselected for the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy.

"I climbed a massive hill over the last three months," Cairns said. Then he looked ahead to the World Cup and saw too high a mountain.

Cairns will now spend more time with his kids and advance his business interests in confectionery and high-speed cricket analysis systems.

He has teamed up with former New Zealand cricket video analyst Zac Hitchcock to market the system.

They recently tendered for the contract to supply the England and Wales Cricket Board with the technology but missed out. "It was a hugely educational process," Cairns said. "We'll go back to the drawing board and look at other options."

He doesn't want to look too far ahead but business excites him. Cricket never allowed him a higher education so he gets a thrill from learning about the business world.

But he won't divorce himself from the sport he loved as a kid and learned to love again post-Wellington. He is in negotiations with Sky's cricket executive producer Martin Crowe about a commentary role and would welcome the opportunity to mentor others.

"I will never, ever be a coach though," he said, before qualifying that by saying "when you commit something to print you should never say never but I can't see it."

He can see himself sitting down and talking about the mental side with up-and-comers - "understanding what it requires to win."

Cairns said it took him a long time to work it out himself. "I only got there via Timbuktu," he joked. "When Steve Waugh 'leaked' that memo in Wellington that said I was mentally fragile, I thought I had exorcised a few of those demons a year or so earlier.

"So succeeding against Australia was the last one to strike off the list."

Which brings Cairns back to failure. "Often sportspeople don't embrace it. You have a lot more bad days than good days. Everybody can deal with a good day but only a small number of sportsmen can deal successfully with bad days."

He's soon a 'former' player though, and smiles at the thought.

"You find that past players become a lot better when they've finished because they never fail again."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY