Cricketer respite has become an official cricket policy with a whole new understanding and approach assured for future cricketer generations.
There has been considerable experimentation in recent years as to how best to handle such an on-field situation as cricketers do get worn out, they can become prone to career affecting injury, cricketer families have dad away a great deal, and at the same time, there is a better recognition now that cricketers want to play cricket.
Cricket is the primary focus of cricketer's activity - career, future employment prospects (coaching, umpiring, management, media, business, cricket tourism), and therefore every endeavour is to ensure these avenues remain open to them.
Retired cricketer Shane Warne was very vocal earlier this year that a policy that saw too many cricketers playing for a variety of Australian cricket teams created another difficulty, that of player recognition.
This was highlighted in a letter to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald where a once staunch cricket loving family switched off the cricket on television as too many of tour cricketers were so unfamiliar to them.
There was a time when the Australian team members were so familiar to us all, that they were like a second cousins. So a rehash of the determinations regarding how best to apply respite or enforced rest of cricketers is well and truly under way.
The other kind of Respite, one that I have been providing for elite athletes from the Australian Institute of Sport since 1992, and that is a break away from the concrete edifices of modern sport. For 14 years we served these athletes at Basil Sellers House in Moruya (NSW south coast) and since 2006 at Basil Sellers Tweed (Tweed Heads).
Published twice a year
The Retired Australian Cricketers Bi-Annual Newsletter is published 30 March and 30 November each years and was initiated in November 2000 after my 17 years as the Australian cricket team chaplain. I moved sideways to establish Life After Cricket.
The editorial team continues to be Allan Border, Greg Chappell, David Boon, Kim Hughes, NSW and VIC Cricket representatives, with me as the cricket chaplain as publisher. Each State posts out the newsletter to their own retired Australian cricketers and current Australian cricketers and an e-vision is sent for those with email.
Four issues ago the format changed. It was initiated as a page of cricket news, and the reverse, my Chaplain's Chat, with an occasional guest writer such as the then Victorian cricket chaplain Barrie Sutton and the AIS chaplain Peter Nelson.
After 22 issues it altered its focus to Well-Being Australia's "Cricket Family Respite" which is part of the Life After Cricket program. In 2007 I consulted cricket stalwart Allan Border to widen the Respite ministry from the AIS athletes and coaches to include the cricket fraternity. Together we came up with the phrase "Cricket Family Respite". We kicked around a few "name ideas" until this one gelled.
There was so much cricket news available across the breadth of media it seemed that this newsletter needed a fresh approach and therefore refocused itself to the respite ministry and the three available respite facilities.
Well-Being Australia provides Respite in Moruya, Timeout in the Tweed and now also at Laguna Quays (Whitsundays).
This issue is a colourful newsletter hosting the Basil Sellers Laguna Quays Respite cottage on the Whitsundays main land. Mr Basil Sellers AM recently funded a open car-port bbq entertainment area and it is this significant development that is the major focus of this 27th issue.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html