Ryder's abusive rant revealed

Reuters

WOE IS ME: New Zealand cricket's bad boy Jesse Ryder.

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Jesse Ryder's most recent disciplinary breach was not bad enough for New Zealand Cricket to enact its "last chance" threat, according to New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan.

The Star-Times understands Ryder hurled an expletive-laden tirade at team manager Dave Currie after Currie told him off for smashing a chair with his bat after getting out in a match against Sri Lanka at the Champions Trophy in South Africa in September.

Currie was told to "F*** off, you stupid old ****."

Rather than let Ryder settle down, Currie copped another spray when he tried to get the injured Ryder to see a tournament doctor as soon as possible.

Because Ryder had a serious groin injury, Currie wanted a doctor to assess him, thus allowing New Zealand to bring in a replacement player in Otago batsman Aaron Redmond.

It was revealed last week that NZ Cricket had tried to keep secret the fact it had fined Ryder for the incident.

Now that it has been made public, the Sunday Star-Times reminded Vaughan that he had previously gone public last year with a warning that Ryder was on his "last chance" after a drunken episode in a Christchurch bar in which Ryder slashed a tendon in his hand when he punched and broke a window.

"When we said that, it was in relation to a particularly serious incident where he did himself harm by carrying on like an idiot," Vaughan told the Star-Times, adding that the latest incident did not fall into that "serious" category.

"Jesse is still a work in progress and we didn't want to raise the last incident because there seemed no point in publicising that."

"Every sporting code has these types of individuals who are enormously talented yet have other issues and we're still working out how to unlock the key to getting the best out of Jesse Ryder but it's Jesse who has to understand that more than anyone and figure out the way forward."

That injury has kept Ryder out of cricket for the past two months and he's at least another month away from returning to action.

One of the reasons he's staying on the sidelines so long is that NZ Cricket is determined he will not return to cricket until completely fit.

It was felt Ryder came back from his last injury too quickly and as a result that precipitated the injury he sustained against Sri Lanka.

"We're going to have to be tough on him," said Vaughan.

"We've been caught in the past, and not just with Jesse but with other players, by bringing people back too soon; our team doesn't need that.

"When Jesse comes back we need to be absolutely certain he's fit and ready to go, we're not going to rush him back just because he's such a good a player, that's not the way we want to operate."

Asked if Ryder needed counselling or any other programme to improve his off-field behaviour, Vaughan said: "In the end we could mandate all sorts of things but if Jesse doesn't want it, it's going to be futile."

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