This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including investigating the state of our mental health in the Great Minds series, how NZ can rebuild stronger post-Covid with The New New Zealand and how to minimise the impact of living in an Inflation
The highs and lows of a Kiwi cult hero: Lance Cairns on life, loss and his famous son Chris
New Zealand cricket great Lance Cairns reflects on cricket, life, loss and the joys of being able to hear again after going deaf. Photos / Photosport/Getty/Geoff Sloan/Greg Bowker
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And now Lance Cains has decided to reflect on a life of incredible highs and lows, in a conversation which wasn't possible for some 50 years.
Cairns started going deaf at the age of 17 and has shied away from actually telling his story, even after life-altering surgery in 2009 restored his hearing and quality of speech.
The 72-year-old has finally decided to talk at length.
In a 90 minute chat on the Between Two Beers podcast, Cairns talks about his unusual upbringing, nearly dying as a kid, how he dealt with his famous son Chris' court drama, the tragic death of two children, Chris' life-threatening medical conditions, the painful way his New Zealand cricket career ended, the famous cricketers who helped him most, how deafness turned him into a recluse, and the confusing joy of being able to hear again.
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Lance Cairns didn't just smash a cricket ball like maybe no one before him, a fact highlighted by his six hitting exploits on an unforgettable day at the monstrous Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1983.
He also took to the coaching manual with similar gusto, batting and bowling in a manner which thrilled the crowd and dumbfounded the purists. He even took a blade to the standard bat design.
New Zealand loved the rough hewn cricketer, an everyman sports hero with unusual power allied to a deft touch.
But away from the triumphs and adulation, and his overwhelming love of cricket, his life has included staggering doses of tragedy.
Even from a young age it was a life less ordinary, being brought up by a mother who he says "finds alcohol and boys and gets a bit loose".
"The start of my life was way different to the majority of people," he told the podcast.
"I was born in Picton, mum had five boys, she brought us all up on her own, all the boys had different fathers.
"It didn't worry us kids. Mum did her best - she cooked at the local hotel, we didn't want for anything.
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"I get born about two years after the eldest, I'm named Cairns, he's not my father … we are all called Cairns. People get in touch with me and saw we could be related. I say 'I don't think so'."
At the age of nine, Cairns became extremely ill, his mother was told that he would probably die, and "everybody called to say goodbye".
The problem was traced to a hip joint abscess which was poisoning his blood. Penicillin - which had only been introduced to New Zealand a few years earlier - saved his life.
By his late teens, Cairns was going deaf and it was only many years later that he realised the true effect it had on his life.
"It was the thing in life that I hid," he says.
"If I had a jog, it would be out there in the bush, so I wouldn't have to be around people.
"I wouldn't go for a meal with a group of people. I was on my own. I didn't do enough about the hearing side of it to be more social. I learnt to live with that.
"I didn't know what hearing was because it had gone, nobody could explain what was going on. They tried hearing aids etc. and I hated them. It turned me into this recluse guy who just hid away."
Off the field, it meant a caring teammate like Jeremy Coney had to pull him aside after team meetings to explain what had been said. On one occasion which still looms large in his memory, Cairns went red with embarrassment as captain Geoff Howarth - impressed with Cairns' analysis - asked him to talk at a team meeting.
On the field, all he could hear was a low murmur as the crowd went wild over his six-hitting exploits at the MCG.
"I didn't understand what I'd done - I couldn't hear the crowd, didn't hear them going nuts or whatever at all," recalls Cairns, and he wasn't exactly chasing a reaction afterwards.
"Once again, I'd be hiding," he says.
"I didn't want to be out there in the limelight. I'd stay right out of it. If you had to do interviews I would very reluctantly do something. But I didn't like to do it."
When the Kiwi team was invited to Buckingham Palace, Cairns devised a tactic of following behind the Queen at a distance, so there was no chance of being forced into a conversation with her.
And when he met legendary musician Johnny Cash at a golf tournament organised by entertainer Howard Morrison, or went backstage with Ian Botham at an Elton John concert, he was none the wiser.
"I just didn't know their music - I still don't," he says.
"Because I lost music at 17. I used to love it but I just haven't got back into it since I got my hearing back."
Cairns preferred to only mix with cricketers because he could pick up on a couple of words to get a rough idea of the conversation topic.
He says Coney, Botham and the late Aussie great Rod Marsh were his best mates, and did the most to bridge the gaps.
Although Coney disappeared off the scene for a while, after joining the 1973 tour of Australia as a replacement.
"First practice he's got trousers about four inches above the ankles, boots held together by tape, the bat's got a broken handle and Onslow fourth grade written on it," says Cairns of a player who would go on to be the Kiwi captain and a great.
"Bob Vance, the manager, gave Jerry $300 and said 'go get some decent gear'. Two hours later, Jerry came back with a 12-string guitar.
"We thought it was a hoot … it did cost Jeremy, he wasn't picked for two years. That was him."
Cairns' international career ended in 1985, at the age of 36, and while acknowledging he was coming to the end of the road, the circumstances angered him.
He says new national boss Glenn Turner "had a personal thing" against him but won't elaborate.
"I'd played 13 years - to be forced out and not be able to retire under your own steam, that really pissed me off."
His personal life since has contained incredible lows.
A son died suddenly at the age of seven months - "how do you deal with it, lots of tears, going through shit, pain".
But he and former wife Angela decided to try for another child and Cairns says son Cameron is "everything you could hope for in a kid - if we hadn't lost Hayden, we wouldn't have Cameron".
Tragedy called again. In 1993, daughter Louise was killed when a cement truck struck the passenger train she was in.
Despite knowing better, Cairns still feels guilty because Louise was answering his call to help look after Cameron in Dunedin during the school holidays.
Cairns then had to sit by as his famous cricketing son Chris - who Cairns always calls Christopher - faced a nine-week trial in England after being charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice. Chris Cairns was acquitted of all charges.
This case related to an earlier libel case Cairns successfully brought against an Indian cricket boss, who said the Kiwi cricketer was involved with match fixing. Chris Cairns swore under oath that he "never ever cheated at cricket".
Lance Cairns says: "I kept right out of it. I didn't ask him once if you've done something, have you been up to no good, what's going on, what's it all about? No way at all.
"I'd rather be ignorant, stay out of it, and he went to a jury trial, found not guilty, that's fine with me."
Late last year, at the age of 51, Chris Cairns suffered a spinal stroke after life saving surgery following a heart attack.
While battling to try and walk again, with both legs paralysed, he needed bowel cancer surgery.
"I still think of him as a kid," says Cairns.
"What kept me going, and always will do, is I know what type of person Christoper is. He won't give in, and will fight like shit to come through this.
"He rang me the day he got the call about the cancer in the bowel, he just couldn't get a word out.
"Then he started bawling. Two days later, call again, bowel cancer not mentioned.
"We've never been … we don't make a big scene. If we needed each other we can go to each other, yes we're real close, but I'm not going to talk about everything, Christopher understands what I'm like.
"I can look back at my early days - was there love in your life? It was bloody tough, but we survived it. I'm the type of person I am because of those early days.
"To me, I'm happy looking after myself … I'll help people but I'm not nosy and going to take over."
His son's health battles led to a heartwarming catch-up with three famous teammates, when he joined forces with Richard Hadlee, Stephen Boock and John Wright in a golf fundraising day.
"I do love getting back together with old teammates," he says.
"We know what we've done - people wouldn't have a clue what we've been talking about."
Which is a special statement for Cairns to make.
A conversation with Bracewell, shortly after the 2009 cochlear implant procedure, made him realise just how much he had lost through deafness.
"He said how different my voice was," says Cairns.
"It made me think … about did I sound like a real dum dum through all those days? One of the things I kept away from was conversations."
Cairns' fame helped him get fast tracked for the implant - the head of Cochlear Australia was a cricket fan who gave his surgeon $30,000 of gear and said: "Here, 'take that back and put it in Cairns' … it was a matter of weeks, instead of years of waiting.
"They turn it on about 10 days later for a few seconds, the next time a minute.
"The noise, it was just unreal. The worst one was driving in the car, when you go across different types of seal. You think something's blowing up - you haven't heard these things for so long.
"The other huge one is birds - the chirping pisses you off. Do I have to put up with that?
"The big one was hearing yourself. I didn't understand how loud I talked. Apparently I was almost screaming when I talked to people. I could only hear it faintly."
Cairns often removes the implants because he "likes the peacefulness of no sound".
But he has a loud and clear message.
"I'm very, very big on the younger ones who have to look at hearing aids - if they can go to the right people, there is help out there, to get on a list to be implanted," he says.
"For a youngster to miss out on life … Christopher's daughter Isabel was born deaf and implanted at nine months.
"Now at 11 years old she is at a normal school, in the top three kids of her class, seeded number two in Australia for tennis.
“The thought of a youngster going through life and missing out because of hearing loss when there is a fix for it - not enough people know about it. They can live a full and complete life.”
