Sidarth Monga has a remarkable story in Cricinfo on Ewen Chatfield, the former New Zealand medium pacer. Monga reports that Chatfield now drives taxi for a living. For someone who played 43 test matches and 114 ODIs and took over 260 international wickets, Chatfield displays no sense of entitlement.
A refreshing contrast to our cricketers, who even if they have played four first class games, would milk that for the rest of their lives.
May be, we shouldn’t surprised in Chatfield’s instance. Read what Gideon Haigh wrote in Cricinfo a couple of years ago:
The most telling images are two photographs of Chatfield’s 100th Test wicket, which show him first with arms raised although more in relief than exultation, then the first to peel away from still-celebrating teammates and head back to his mark. The tendency today, an age where every cricketer has a hundred-dollar haircut, an earring and a tattoo, is to find him a little comical. But, without defiance or demonstration, he was undeniably his own man, and unmistakably of his own land. (emphasis mine)
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