A letter came in the mail the other day.
Find us Jock Edwards, it said.
A cult hero in his time, Edwards is 58. If that was his cricket score, it would only have taken him half that number of balls to reach it.
From 1973-1985 he drew people to first class cricket grounds like nobody else.
Short and tubby, Edwards came with a Gray Nicolls one scoop bat and never bothered with a helmet or a thigh pad.
Reputations never mattered to him. He once hit a yorker from Ewen Chatfield into the lake at Pukekura Park in New Plymouth.
But that wasn't his biggest strike.
"We were playing at Trafalgar Park [Nelson] and someone bowled me a beamer and I cleared the grandstand and it landed in the back of a Transport Nelson truck.
"The driver found the ball when he got to Spring Creek in Blenheim. He brought it back home to the old man. It was 30-odd miles. That was the biggest one."
Edwards represented Nelson and Central Districts, he played eight tests for New Zealand and six ODIs.
His greatest game was for Central against Australia at Trafalgar Park in Nelson in 1977 when he scored 49 and 99.
Those were the good times, but what about now.
Edwards is home today, in Stoke, Nelson.
He's a gatekeeper at Port Nelson, where he has worked permanently for 11 years and casually for 20.
He's just completed three 12-hour shifts from 6am-6pm so has earned a couple of days off.
He used to also work nights until six years ago when he required a triple heart bypass.
Unbeknown to Edwards, he'd already had three minor heart attacks before the big scare.
He'd brushed them off as indigestion and instead of calling an ambulance each time he reached for a bottle of ginger ale.
"But I went to bed one night, got up at 2am and couldn't breathe, so I ended up in hospital for three weeks and then they bundled me off to Wellington and I had a triple bypass."
He hasn't had a cigarette since and is watching what he eats, but luck isn't on his side at the moment. He is currently beset with fluid retention, which he hopes medication will fix sooner rather than later.
"I struggle to do a lot of things now. I'm very limited to what I can and what I can't do.
"I can't walk a long way and I can't do a lot of exercise. I'm going through a problem at the moment where I'm retaining all my fluid. It's a pain in the arse. I'm on lots of pills to help me pee all day. I've lost 19kgs but you can't tell.
"I can't put my jeans on because I can't get my legs in. It's bloody frustrating, so I have to wear tracksuit pants all the time."
Who knows if his lifestyle has played a part in his problems.
During his playing career, everyone wanted to buy Jock a beer and the cricket competitions were sponsored by various cigarette companies.
Then, no sooner had he hung up his white shirt and flannels, Jock began working in the hospitality business. He ran a pub in Murchison before he and wife Sam bought their own in Kokatahi (20km inland from Hokitika).
"It was a good life, but it was hard life," Edwards said.
"They party pretty hard down there. You can have nobody in the pub at 8pm and by 10pm it can be chokka, especially when the cows are dry. We were a bit worried that the boys were falling behind in their schoolwork so we decided to come back home [to Nelson]."
The boys are Ryan and Ricky, both in the Nelson representative cricket team, the former as captain and the latter as a wicketkeeper-batsman, just like Jock.
"Ricky is a bit like me. He likes to play a couple of shots before he likes to block."
Jock is no one trick pony. He played senior club football, kept wicket of course, and was a Nelson bowls representative until he "buggered his back" when he dropped a keg of beer one day.
Speaking of ponies, Edwards loves a punt on the horses. He also has to like his bowls, with his brother Dave, the national coach and married to world No 1 Jo Edwards.
So, Jock has some problems but generally not too many regrets.
"I enjoyed the game. I missed it a lot when I finished, more the guys than the game.
"I gave it a nudge and everybody liked it."
- © Fairfax NZ News
