Cricket: A decent spin on life

The left leg Tim Lythe owns now bears little resemblance to the one he was born with 25 years ago.

To rid his body of fast-multiplying cancer cells, doctors sawed his femur off at the halfway point and replaced it with a titanium rod.

The hinge joint in his knee went, replaced by a prosthesis requiring none of the ligaments and cartilage of the natural, but complex, piece of anatomy it replaced.

He has one remaining piece of himself, his patella or knee cap, "but it's just for show really".

As any right-arm off-spinner will tell you, all your energy comes from your ability to pivot around your left leg.

And that's what Tim Lythe is - an off-spinner. An off-spinner highly regarded enough to last week be awarded one of Auckland Cricket's 11 contracted places for the coming season.

Six years ago Lythe was about where he is now, give or take a law degree and the snappy suit.

Although there was no such thing as a paying contract for first-class cricketers, Lythe was on the cusp of Auckland selection and planning a big career in the sport.
He had been the 12th man for the team three times without getting a chance to twirl.

It is what has happened in the intervening years that make Lythe's story a remarkable one.

He's being doing anything but running to stand still.

Instead of refining and rounding his game, he has had to reinvent it after being diagnosed with, and beating, bone cancer.

It was in some ways apt that as testicular cancer-survivor Lance Armstrong was manipulating his bike over the tortuous climbs on the Pyrenees and down to what will almost certainly be his seventh Tour de France victory, Lythe was back at the base camp of his own mountain.

The off-spin bowler was told by doctors when they diagnosed him with bone cancer that, never mind the fact he had a potentially fatal disease, he would never be able to run or jump again.

Lythe's cricket contract is further proof that medical science is often no match for the power of the mind.

He needed every shread of mental strength he could muster when he returned from an off-season playing in Bristol in 1999.

A golf ball-size lump had developed behind his left knee while overseas. It didn't hurt, but it was beginning to hinder his movement ability.

So, he thought he should get it checked out by a sports doctor before he made his push for the Auckland side.

"I thought it was just a cyst or a bone spur that I wanted to get sorted out so I could get on with the cricket season," Lythe recalls.

"I saw a sports doctor, he got it x-rayed and it turned out to be a bit more than a bone spur."

In the re-telling, Lythe makes it sound like a muscle injury that needed just rest and rehabilitation.

But to do that would betray the hours of mental and physical agony a cancer victim goes through en route to an uncertain recovery.

Especially when the victim is 19 years old, and extremely fit.

"I seriously never entertained the thought it could be cancer," Lythe says, recalling the shock as his sister translated the doctor's diagnosis for him.

Lythe comes from a large sporting family. He has four netballing sisters and two league-playing brothers, one of who - Ben - played for the Warriors.

His father Brian coached the Mt Albert league team for several years, and his mother Mary has been involved in coaching his sisters' netball teams.

LYTHE ALWAYS saw his future defined by sport rather than vice versa.

Perhaps that was why his initial thought when hearing his diagnosis wasn't "I could die", but rather, "I might never be able to play sport again".

In fact, even in moments of introspection, Lythe rarely allowed himself to think the worst.

"A couple of times I did think of [dying], but you can't do that to yourself. It's just too scary really..."

The surgery was one thing, the chemotherapy another. Six sessions; three before, three after.

All in all, it was the seven worst months of his life.

"You just feel absolutely like s---. You're listless, you have no energy. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

"At the time, you are actually thinking 'I don't think I can make it through. I can't do that'. But you actually can."

And Lythe is living breathing, running and, every now and then, jumping evidence of that.

He also used his lengthy rehab period to sort out a life after - or instead of - cricket. In 2001, he changed from a degree in sports science to a law degree at Auckland university.

He now works for Minter Ellison in downtown Auckland and will sit his professionals this week.

The company, he says, is prepared to be totally flexible to fit around his cricket, but even he must have thought it was a pipe dream to make it back to the verge of the first-class scene.

To start bowling again on his reconstructed leg must have required a giant leap of faith. Following his treatment, he dipped his toe back into social cricket.

Then, in the 2001-2002 season, he started playing a very immobile brand of club cricket with University.

He's at Suburbs-New Lynn now and realises he's never going to be quick between the wickets, or able to hare around the outfield, but he's learned to play and, more importantly, live within his limitations.

Selection for the Auckland seconds followed and Lythe realised he must have been doing something right.

But even he was not expecting a contract with the first-class side.

"Not really, especially with Brooke [Walker] being there the last few years," he said.

"When Brooke retired, I guess in the back in my mind I was thinking there was a possibility, but I was thinking more about the possibility of getting a game here and there, rather than a contract."

The saying "don't hide your light under a bushel" should have been written for Lythe.

He is anxious to be recognised for his ability to bowl an off-break; not for his powers of recovery.

He doesn't court publicity or want to be recognised as a role model.

For Lythe, that is not so much shy-ness as it is a desire to simply be seen as ordinary.

It is why he never got around to writing a letter he wanted to send to Cameron Duncan, another young West Auckland sports star and film-maker who was struck down by osteosarcoma.

In the letter he was going to tell Duncan that he too had dreams of representing New Zealand at sport - Duncan was a softballer - and that it was possible to live a normal life again once you had beaten the cancer.

"I thought it would come across as too arrogant," he says.

"Telling somebody they could beat it just because I did."

So he never did write it, and Duncan never did beat the cancer.

But Lythe was one of the lucky ones.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY