OBITUARY: Peter Roebuck: cricket's turbulent priest

By Sid Astbury Nov 13, 2011, 22:01 GMT

Sydney - The sometimes poisonously clubby world of cricket has lost its antidote with the death of Peter Roebuck, an eccentric advocate for the game who flayed players, administrators and fellow commentators alike with a tongue so sharp it could be shocking.

Roebuck was found dead Sunday in a hotel room in Cape Town, South Africa, at the age of 55.

'Ricky Ponting must be sacked as captain of the Australian cricket team,' the Englishman thundered in a 2009 front-page column in the Sydney Morning Herald.

'If Cricket Australia cares a fig for the tattered reputation of our national team in our national sport, it will not for a moment longer tolerate the sort of arrogant and abrasive conduct seen from the captain and his senior players over the past few days.'

What roiled Roebuck was the churlishness of the Australians towards the visiting Indian team.

'The only surprising part of it is that the Indians have not packed their bags and gone home,' Roebuck concluded.

The former captain of the Somerset county side - he played first-class cricket from 1974 to 1991 - was ready to have a go at anybody.

He excoriated Australia and other Test sides happy to visit benighted Zimbabwe and belt the national team in one-sided contests that augmented the averages of the visiting batsmen and bowlers.

And he gave no quarter to the game's purists, arguing that all players should learn to bat left handed and that, to redress a balance he said had moved in favour of batsman, it was time for four wickets either end instead of three.

Bill Guy, one of dozens who pinned their thoughts to a blog edited by national broadcaster ABC, said: 'Very sad news, but image how good the commentary will be of the tests in heaven!'

'Peter was easily the most eloquent, intelligent and fair commentator in cricket. His ability to see how the game was part of society and politics around the world was unparalleled,' Chris Jones wrote.

Fellow cricket scribe Gideon Haigh said on television that Roebuck had revolutionized coverage of the game.

'He was so fresh and so different and so off-the-reservation that he made it easier for all the writers who came after him,' Haigh said.

Roebuck, who in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and in Sydney, Australia, was never far from controversy.

After a law degree at Cambridge, he defied his father and took up a career in cricket.

When at Somerset he made enemies by lobbying successfully for the removal of imported stars Viv Richards and Joel Garner.

He also courted controversy in his private life.

In 2001, he was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to assault. The charges were brought by three young Indian cricketers whom he caned on their buttocks for breaking the training regimen he had set them.