Annette Sharp: Old-school values the secret to a happy marriage for cricketers

If newly wed Australian cricketer Pat Cummins needs any advice on how to sustain a long and happy marriage, he should look to the captains who have gone before him, writes Annette Sharp.

Jane and Allan Border have been married for 42 years. Picture: Ali Rasoul

When it comes to cricket and the high-profile role of captain of the national team, one simply can’t go past old-school values.

The wedding of Australia’s latest cricket captain Pat Cummins to the mother of his young child and partner of nine years, the older and cutely named Becky Boston, would suggest it’s something Cummins, 29, has come to appreciate, if he hadn’t previously.

Unsanctioned pictures taken of the couple on their wedding day at a private estate near Byron Bay on Friday — taken from a long distance and without permission — stand in stark contrast to wedding images frequently sold today to the highest bidder by stars for whom everything is for sale and nothing is sacred.

Cricket purists will likely be heartened by the fact that Cummins, who still has much to prove in his new role as Australian cricket captain, has chosen not to sell the rights to his wedding.

At press time the couple had also resisted the urge to succumb to public and sponsor pressure and post photographs of their wedding to their very active and well-subscribed social media accounts — a fact that at the very least suggests the couple are treating their marriage with the dignity it deserves.

Becky Boston and Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins with son Albie, just before Christmas. Picture: Instagram

It also shows Cummins values his privacy, something the nation’s greatest cricket captains, some of whom he has already been favourably compared to, might recommend.

You can tell rather a lot about a sportsman when it comes to the onus they place on their privacy.

Former Australian Test captain Richie Benaud and Daphne Surfleet after their wedding in 1967. Picture: Supplied

In a modern age in which the media, both social and traditional, put far too great an emphasis on guts, glory and the amplification of ego for the benefit of one’s personal brand — and bank balance — and too little on courage, steadfastness and heart, it’s harder than ever to measure “class” in a sportsman or woman.

But these three things — courage, steadfastness and heart — make for good marriages, too, and can accurately indicate the true measure of a person and leader.

Spending nine months of the year on the road and away from one’s family, living out of a suitcase and rarely out of the public eye while serving as an ambassador for one’s country 24/7 can crystallise the distinction between the two, making clear the boundaries a professional cricketer should keep and maintain around one’s family.

The greatest and classiest Australian cricket captains recognised these distinctions and their marriages – to strong, secure, committed and independent women who had little interest in sharing the public spotlight – survived.

Allan Border, who for 42 years has been married to one woman, his teen sweetheart Jane, is often hailed as the greatest of all Australian cricket captains.

“AB” proved himself amply capable of making sound leadership decisions both on and off the pitch, as his choice of wife reveals.

If mother-of-three Jane Border were to offer Becky a measure of advice today it might be to learn to “stand on (your) own two feet” while accepting you’ve married an “occasional husband” who may return to you permanently within the next decade.

Being a cricket wife taught Jane, or so she said in a 1994 interview, to “get off my backside and go out and do some things for myself”.

Former Australian cricket captain Allan Border and wife Jane in 1990.

Mark Taylor’s wife of 33 years, Judi, is made of similar stuff.

Mother-of-two Judi could no doubt prepare Becky for the maelstrom of criticism she will invariably suffer as the wife of an under siege Aussie cricket captain.

Few cricket wives have spent as many long and lonely nights sitting on the couch at home nervously talking to her husband on a television screen while looking and sounding “nuts”.

When “Tubby” achieved the unthinkable and equalled Sir Don Bradman’s batting score of 334 in 1998, Judi was at home tending to two young sons while her husband was being lauded in Pakistan.

A year earlier she revealed the personal strain of being Mrs Mark Taylor when she gave a TV interview in which she said she couldn’t believe there weren’t more important issues in the world for the media to dissect than her husband’s form.

But these women — and the Jessie Bradmans, Meg Simpsons and Daphne Benauds of cricket — never knew the extent of the direct, flagrant and personal criticism levelled at the wives and partners of sportsmen today courtesy of social media.

They also never felt compelled to post shots of themselves in bikinis to bolster an embattled sport’s marketing appeal.

One imagines had they been asked to do so, Jessie, Meg, Daphne, Judi and Jane would have relished the opportunity to reject such a proposal in the interests of privacy and good taste.

Something the new Mrs Cummins may benefit from knowing.

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