Cricket connection plays out at graduation

Cricket connection plays out at graduation

When cricket legend and former Black Cap Jacob Oram was capped at the first of Massey University’s six ceremonies yesterday he met up with his former high school coach, also in graduation garb.

Mr Oram graduated with a Bachelor of Business Studies while Alec Astle gained a PhD at the same ceremony. The pair have kept in contact since their time at Palmerston North Boys’ High School, where Dr Astle coached Mr Oram

Dr Astle says he could see Mr Oram was a “very able student” at high school with strong academic capabilities. “I know he is delighted to finally graduate after 18 years since starting his degree – a consequence of being a professional cricketer and often playing year around.

“Jacob was in the Palmerston North Boys’ High School 1st XI cricket team that I coached in 1994 and 1995. He was captain of my 1995 side and a member of the Cricket Development Squad I took to Singapore and Australia in 1993. We still keep in touch.”

For Dr Astle, the ceremony was the culmination of an academic project that he hopes will be shared with a much wider audience because of its practical focus on sports development. As a former teacher, deputy principal and cricket coach at Palmerston North Boys’ High School for 24 years, he was determined to produce an academic study of sport development to fill the gap. He hopes to get parts of his thesis published in academic journals and to also produce an accessible textbook for sports administrators.

Mr Oram, too, says his business studies are proving of value in his contract commercialisation work at Massey’s BioCommerce Centre, as well as in his ongoing coaching roles and management of New Zealand’s only indoor grass cricket pitch at his former school.

Although it took him 18 years to complete his degree, he says he especially enjoyed the final three years of study as a mature student.

He first enrolled 1996 and completed the first semester before being selected for a cricket youth tour to England for two months. “This cut out the second semester, and I’ve never been fulltime [as a student] since.”

He trimmed his study load to one or two papers a semester. “While you do have down time on a cricket tour, the last thing you want to do is be inundated with study and assignments. You chip away at them, but you don't want to be doing it every waking minute when you’re training or recovering. It’s good to use your brain in a different way, but I had to make sure I managed it right.”

Mr Oram played 33 tests, 160 one-day internationals, 36 twenty20 internationals and 85 first-class matches. He played for New Zealand in three Cricket World Cups, including two semifinals – and is one of 36 New Zealand test cricketers to have scored 1000 or more runs. He is also one of just six New Zealanders to have reached the double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in one-day internationals. On several occasions during his career he was ranked as the world’s number one-day international allrounder.

Once his cricket career took off, he was playing all three formats and was away 10 months a year and didn't do any papers during that time. “There was a period where cricket was absolutely number one priority.”

With his retirement from cricket imminent, he decided it was time to come back to study as he faced the post-cricket transition into other career directions.

“I’d invested time, energy and money into it already and thought ‘I need to do this – its something that’s going to help me post-cricket’.

He’s done two papers a year for the last three years, knowing he had to complete by 2014 or his enrolment would expire.

“I started getting As, which for me was good – I really enjoyed these past three years, especially going up to library and spending half a day in the books.”

While scoring a 100 runs at Lords cricket ground in London – and a place on its Honours board – as well as playing in two cricket World Cup semifinals count as his top cricket highlights, wearing another kind of black cap at graduation was a big moment too, he says.

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