Martin Crowe: Cancer helped me get grip

He has learnt to take control of his life and eliminate the stress - most of which was caused by cricket, according to him. Crowe was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma (a cancerous tumour in the stomach) late last year.u00a0

Martin Crowe

Crowe said the cancer has helped him take control. "Cancer gave me the wake-up call and forced me to look and find out why. And once I found out why, I was able to take back control," Crowe told Stuff.co.nz website in an interview on Saturday.

Crowe recently released his book Raw on his cricket fears and the process of recovering from cancer.u00a0Crowe now wants cricket, which has been a part for most of his life, completely out of his agenda.

"I don't care, that's what I tell myself. I have to. My health comes first, obviously. I just say ‘I don't care'. It's a way of reminding myself that it's not that important," he said.

"I'm not going to write about it. I'm not going to commentate it, I'm not going to get up and watch games. I'll see it on the news and that's it."

Crowe also refused to talk about his good friend Ross Taylor. "He's 29 and he has the grasp, he's a very good batsman, but I told him he could always call me as a mate," is all that he said.

Big row
Crowe had huge fallout with New Zealand Cricket when they unceremoniously ousted Taylor from the captaincy earlier this year. Crowe is adamant the stress it caused him seeing Taylor dumped as skipper, resulted in a 4cm by 3cm "egg shape" tumour forming in his stomach.

When asked about his regrets in life, Crowe said: "Yep, 299 (against Sri Lanka in the Wellington Test in 1991). That's haunted me ever since. But I'm not going to regret it anymore. I let that haunt me for a long time, too long.

"I had one opportunity in my life to do something historical and I didn't take it. The thing that saved me in the aftermath was the partnership with Andrew Jones, that's where I put all my focus." u00a0