Scrumdog Millionaire

Take Stone Cold Steve Austin’s rasp voice, add the Australian accent, and subtract the swear words. And you are talking to Brad Thorn, a New Zealander who played most of his rugby in Australia, but is now an All Black and plays for Canterbury Crusaders in the Super 14s. Not knowing much about rugby, you can't wait to get him started on the cricket v rugby banter, the old brain v brawn game.

But Brad follows cricket enough to enjoy a drawn Test match more than the one-dayers. Still, being a rugby player, risking injuries with every step he takes on the field, doesn’t he think cricket is a bit of a wimps’ game? “Maybe when you see the Ranatunga fellow,” he says. Good old Arjuna. What’s with him and the Australians?

“But seriously speaking, if you have faced pace bowling, you have a lot of respect for cricketers. One time, me and a few rugby players at high school had a session with the bowling machine. And we put the scales to 160kph. And we didn’t want to go near it. So we have a lot of respect like the timing a batsman has got. The few seconds they get to react. It is just amazing. I think everyone appreciates and respects that. It’s like you really appreciate Tiger Woods and what he can do.”

Through his long rugby career, he has seen it all, the sudden stardom at the age of 17, drinking problems, a move from Australia back to New Zealand (“I’m a Kiwi at heart, but there’s a bit of an Australian in me”), a ride back to goodness, except for too many injuries.

Which is why, at 34, he is still an important lock in any team he plays, four years older than the second-oldest man in the Crusaders team, and way past the playing span of a rugby player.

“I have been very lucky I haven’t got injured,” he says. Well you do consider yourself lucky if you have seen career-ending injuries all around you - knee reconstructions, broken joints in shoulders and ankles, replaced hips, broken jaws and noses. Their assistant coach, sitting in the stands at Rugby Park, where they train, had to cut his career short because of a neck injury.

This is where cricketers are lucky. At least players of this day and age, with all the protective equipment. With rugby you have no assurances. One bad tackle and your career could be over.

It is a light training session for the Crusaders today, and you can see Richie McCaw, the Crusaders and All Blacks captain, his knee heavily strapped, trying to take the first steps out of an injury absence. Another player sits on the bench behind him, holding a crutch, watching his team-mates raise some mild hell. You want to watch them train at full pelt the next day, but you also have a flight to catch and a cricket training session to watch, where batsmen will be wearing the helmet, the chest guard, the thigh pad, the elbow guard, the box.

But hey, they face the leather ball at – not 160 – sometimes close to 150kph.