Chris Cairns was my first favourite cricket player. I loved him. Nobody in the world could hit a cricket ball harder and further than Cairnsy in his prime, and that slower ball was one of the most lethal weapons a bowler ever had. Injuries meant we didn’t get to see him don the Black Cap nearly as often as he should - Cairns missed almost as many test matches as he played (62 played – 55 missed). Maybe he felt like cricket owed him something more? That he never quite achieved what he should have done? Who can say?

My dilemma is this: Cairns is so deeply involved in this match fixing business as Mystery Player X that his guilt is basically beyond doubt. Despite the reprieve that we thought we’d had when he won his court case the other year, there’s no point now in trying to kid yourself that he wasn’t a knowing party in any of this corruption. However the fruit went sour well after his illustrious Blackcaps career ended. In fact it’s pretty obviously traceable back to that whole ICL fiasco – the short lived rebel T20 league – which ran from 2007 through 2008 (Cairns played his last test in 2004, his last ODI in 2006), leaving all of his stats and accomplishments untainted by these new scandals. So, as a fan and a dedicated scholar of the game, can I still revere Cairns for his wonderful career and the joy it inspired knowing the choices that he has made since?

We expect so much from our sports heroes. Not just on the field but off it too. It actually isn’t fair when you think about it. Do we ask the same of other celebrities? No, we don’t. In fact, in the music/Hollywood scenes, immorality is almost encouraged. Those places are full of gamblers and womanisers and drug addicts and all of that. It’s all about living fast and dying young. Jimi Hendrix’s entire career was under the influence of performance enhancing drugs. Should he be banned from the radio? The entertainment industry is full of fixes and corruption. If you want their money and rewards you’ve got to do as they say. Sports are held in a different light though. For some reason we assume that everything is above board and the deciding factor is always talent. Why? Because it’s performed live? WWE fans might have something to say about that.  

Cairns’ biggest problem here is his reputation. It’s what he went to court over in 2012. Unfortunately for him, society likes to make its mind up on people quickly and it doesn’t like it at all when those opinions are forced to change. He was a hero. Now he's become the villain. There’s no way that can be a smooth transition. Ask Lance Armstrong, ask Alex Rodriguez, ask Russell Coutts. If he had been a bad boy from the start then the public forum… okay they’re not going to be forgiving or anything, but they’d be less caustic at least. If Jesse Ryder had done this there’d be a universal shake of the head and a disappointed sigh. But Cairns was a national icon. The amount of distance he has to travel from one end of the spectrum to the other is going to cultivate so much hate. Think if someone (presumably an Australian) broke Steven Adams’ leg, sunk Team New Zealand’s boat, burned Eleanor Catton’s novels and told Lorde that her hair was dumb. And then took money from Kim Dotcom. There’d be effigies burning in the streets all the way from Cape Reinga to the Bluff. Cairns still has plenty of goodwill to burn out before he starts sinking into the negatives, he’s playing with house money so long as there’s no conclusive proof, but once that comes the public shaming will follow hard and fast.

People do make bad decisions though. They do things that they regret and they crumble under the pressure of higher powers. Cairns didn’t orchestrate these things. He was in the same position as Lou Vincent, just a rung higher up the ladder. Someone got a hold of him, probably through money, and he had no choice but to play ball lest they go public with his name. (This seems to be what’s happening now, given Cairns’ statements over ‘Dark Forces’). And before people get upset over him selling his integrity for money, remember that everyone has their price. Money is the ultimate evil and the greatest corrupter of men. If you really think you’re immune to its poisonous charms then you should probably quit your job and go live on a plantation growing your own veggies and bathing in a muddy river. As long as you keep wishing you had a bigger house and a faster car, you’re ripe for the picking.

There was this movie last year called ‘The Counselor’. Directed by Ridley Scott, written by the legendary Cormac McCarthy, starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Javier Bardem. It’s a brilliant film, but understandably divisive. Fassbender plays a lawyer in and around the USA/Mexico border, who gets involved in a drug deal with the Mexican cartel for money. It goes astray and he tries to fix it all. Bad things happen. And the more he struggles to put things right, the more he comes to realise that there was never any hope of salvation. He made his choice. That was it and he could never recover once it went wrong. Instead of a climactic duel to end the film, we had Fassbender crying alone in a hotel room after having everything he loved taken from him. Cairns made the decision to get into this whole shady business and now that he’s been compromised, he’s trying to put his name right. It won’t happen. The more public he makes this by fighting for his reputation, the more the dark powers that be will throw him to the dogs. He’ll be made the scapegoat for this entire thing. There is no law in the jungle. No honour among thieves. No loyalty among the lawless. This game Cairns has chosen is played by kings and queens and he is just a pawn. He was a king as a player, sure. And like so many other sports legends, perhaps he felt that his success would follow him into unmapped territory. It didn’t. Instead of coaching or administration or media or any of that, Cairns chose to play much higher stakes. He bet it all on red and it came up black. Now the Taxman’s come calling.

I think it’s important to note that humans are complex creatures though. Despite the fact that people do it all the time, we really shouldn’t define others by individual aspects of their character when there is always so much else to them. Lance Armstrong cheated and disgraced his sport. He also made millions of dollars for cancer research and treatment charities. It is possible for Chris Cairns to be both a legendary cricketer and a spot fixing bully. Those two sides of his self can co-exist; one needn't trump the other. Because we agree with one and strongly disagree with another is not the point. That money that Armstrong helped fund didn’t disappear because of a disastrous confession on Oprah.

On the same note, though, we shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of poor decisions by our heroes. The Simpsons hasn’t been any good for 15 years now; the first 8 seasons are still the greatest things ever made. It’s been much longer than that since The Rolling Stones made a classic album; Exile on Main St is still every bit as incredible. The films of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are no less influential because they were made by perverts. Tiger Woods still has all of those Majors. We don’t have to live by these people’s mistakes. We can pick and choose what we take away from them.

Unlike Lance Armstrong, Chris Cairns didn’t cheat to get where he was. He used where he got to cheat. That doesn’t excuse his character one bit. It does, however, excuse his career with the bat and ball. So you can all worry and fret about the next incriminating headline on the front page of the NZ Herald if you want to. I’ll be remembering the good times.

  - Wildcard