By DPA
Wellington : New Zealand’s newest sporting hero – a flamboyant 23-year-old cricketer called Jesse Ryder – was in disgrace Tuesday after revelations of heavy drinking before and after a key match.
The escapade resulted in a career-threatening hand injury when he smashed a toilet window in a bar.
Ryder reportedly abused staff at a hospital emergency department, where he was being treated after the incident at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, following an all-night drinking session, swearing and demanding, “Don’t you know who I am?”
It was revealed Tuesday that Ryder had also been drinking at another bar until 1:30 a.m. before Saturday’s one-day international game against England, which New Zealand won.
Ryder scored only 24 before being run out and proved an expensive bowler, being hit for 50 runs off five overs without taking a wicket.
Lindsay Crocker, manager of the New Zealand national team, told the New Zealand Herald: “You don’t go out until 1:30 a.m. the night before a big match. There are no curfews because we haven’t needed them.”
Ryder was ordered to apologise to hospital staff and do charity work for an emergency care foundation.
A powerful opening batsman who starred in the five-match, one-day series against England, which New Zealand won, Ryder will not play again for his country unless he controls his drinking, the Dominion Post reported.
Surgeon Howard Klein, who operated on Ryder after he smashed a bar window trying to get into a locked toilet, told the Herald that the cricketer’s career was saved by two millimetres of tendon.
“If this had been severed, then Ryder wouldn’t have been unable to extend his finger,” the paper reported.
Ryder will not be able to play for the rest of season, but Klein predicted he could make a full recovery in three months.