Australian who loved her role in English cricket
Scyld Berry remembers Ruth Strauss, who has passed away at 46 from a rare form of lung cancer
Ruth Strauss, the wife of Andrew Strauss who gave up his job as England director of cricket to nurse her, has died of a rare form of lung cancer which afflicts nonsmokers, aged 46.
Behind, or alongside, every successful England cricket captain there has been a strong partner. Even so, it is hard to think any woman has done more for the England men’s team behind the scenes, given her ability to tune into everyone’s wavelength, which translated into making every new player’s wife or partner feel integrated, even before her husband became Test captain in 2009.
“Anyone who has met Ruth will know how loving, caring and passionately protective she was of her family and it gives us huge comfort that she was in Australia, the land of her birth, surrounded by those who love her, in her final moments,” said Strauss on announcing his wife’s death “with immense grief ”. “We would like to send our heartfelt thanks to those who have helped with her treatment over the last 12 months, in particular the wonderful team at University College Hospital in London,” he added. She had been diagnosed with the disease 13 months ago.
Michael Vaughan, who preceded Strauss as England captain, said: “All the plaudits go to the men, but cricket is nerve-racking and 75 per cent of the time you fail. You need a rock behind the scenes, and Ruth was the rock for Andrew – and a rock for all the other players. It’s a terrible loss for him and the wider cricket community.”
Ruth came from a family who owned a farm in the outback of Victoria near Ballarat. So the wife of the England cricket captain who won the Ashes in 2009 and retained them in Australia in 2010-11 – one of English cricket’s all-time highs – was Australian, yet the best of Australian character, full of vitality and friendliness to the point of radiance.
She trained as an actress and first met her future husband in Sydney
when he was playing club cricket there while trying to make the grade at Middlesex. As she herself told the story, she was sitting with a female friend, saw this rather gauche pair of young Englishmen at the bar who were far too embarrassed to make an advance, and raised her eyebrow as gentle encouragement. She and Andrew were together ever after.
I had the privilege of getting to know her when I ghosted a book for Strauss in 2009, and they turned up at my house on the way back from a holiday in Cornwall, shortly before the Ashes, to do a chapter. They brought, not airs and graces, but their two boys, a nice loaf and bottle of wine.
“Thanks so much for your words of encouragement,” she texted exactly one year ago. “I am alive and taking each glorious day as it comes. I made it out of hospital for Christmas and we have had some wins since then. We sure have a fight on our hands, but I am so grateful to be alive that I feel my glass is overflowing.”
Last January, she wrote: “The best holiday we ever had involved rural Spain, a tech ban and no golf clubs – bliss! We were the only people around the pool actually playing, reading books, engaging in the moment, not trying to be everywhere at once, just being. Our eyes were up and it was a beautiful sight.
“Treatment is going really well, I have not been required at the hospital for two weeks now. From death’s door to yoga class is a b----miracle and long may it last. Yay for magic bullets!”
In announcing his wife’s death, Strauss said: “Ruth desperately wanted to help those affected by this terrible disease and we will be launching a foundation in due course to raise much-needed funds to aid research and also to offer support to patients and their families.”
As Vaughan commented: “Andrew will make sure the foundation is her great legacy. Let’s get behind him and make the third day of each Lord’s Test the Ruth Strauss foundation day, just like Glenn McGrath did for his wife Jane in the Sydney Test.”