Chris Cairns cleans bus shelters

Auckland: With legal bills mounting, former cricket star Chris Cairns, 44, is out working for his family ... any work. He is driving a council truck and water-blasting bus shelters around Auckland for $17 an hour, reported nzherald.co.nz.“He’s trying really hard and supporting his family the best way he can. He’s not moping around, he’s showing guts and doing hard work by cleaning bus shelters. All I can do is support him, but as a friend it is really hard to watch his name being dragged through the mud with no conclusion in sight. He’s a champion guy and he will come through this stronger,” Dion Nash, Cairns’ best friend, said.

 

The manual labour is a far cry from the glitz and glamour of Dubai where the former high-flying Black Cap worked in 2010 as a diamond trader, using his skills to purchase the 3.2 carat rock with which he proposed to his third wife, Mel Croser.

 

This week, the mother-of-two told a women’s magazine that her husband had resorted to taking the cleaning contract because “he has no choice, he has to provide for his family... We have bills to pay like everyone else. We don’t own a house, we’re paying rent like many other people and getting by is a struggle”.

 

Cairns and his wife, who works in a project management role, live in Herne Bay, Auckland’s most expensive suburb, where neighbours include Karl Urban, David Cunliffe and best friend Nash. —