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'I will be doing everything I can to get back'
Ryder ponders giving up alcohol
Cricinfo staff
February 26, 2008
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An uncomfortable Jesse Ryder faces the media in Christchurch
© Getty Images
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Jesse Ryder has said he will give up drinking until he has recovered from the surgery to repair severed tendons in his right hand.
He later expanded on that by telling a local TV station that he was considering giving up alcohol completely and would agree to stop drinking if that was a condition of his return to the national side. "It's been a goal all my life and now I've had a taste and I enjoyed it more than anything," he said. "I will be doing everything I can [to get back]."
Reaction to his predicament has been mixed. Perhaps the most worrying for Ryder is the silence of Mark Greatbatch, his former coach at Central Districts who went so far as to take him into his home to keep him on the straight and narrow.
What has also caused concern is Ryder's insistence during Tuesday's media conference that he did not have a drink problem.
In the Hawke's Bay Today, Anendra Singh wrote: "NZ Cricket has to look at the bigger picture. No more feeble excuses and mollycoddling. Let the Knight Ryder face his demons. Not even he is bigger than the sport."
And in The Guardian former England fast bowler Mike Selvey said: "his reputation as a difficult person precedes him. What has not been documented, but must have been recognised, is the reliance he places on his drinking. That in the Stock Exchange was not an isolated incident. Ryder drinks heavily after games but does so beforehand too. I asked one player about a report I'd heard that he was knocking back tequila slammers in the early hours before a Twenty20 international, and was told that this was the tip of the iceberg and by no means a one-off."
He went on to quote a senior NZ official as saying: ""He needs parenting ... he needs looking after and counselling. Maybe it would work or maybe not. But let us hope that if it doesn't work out, it is not cricket that has given up on him, but that Jesse himself has given up. We certainly won't."
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