If the ball was full and straight, he drove straight. If it was short and wide, he cut. Short and straight, he pulled.
To watch the highlights of any of his 21 international centuries (17 test; 4 ODI) is to watch an around-the-clock study in technical perfection.
You could spend many words waxing lyrical about the 188 at the Gabba, the one-legged 142 in England in 1994, or the 108 not out at Lahore (which some teammates regard as the greatest of them all), and none of them would be wasted.
But as a man, Crowe, who died yesterday aged 53, is much harder to write about because, by his own admission, it took him so long to figure out who he was himself.
In 2006 I was lucky enough to be invited to his uptown Auckland apartment for a chat about a story. He was at the time producing a series for Sky TV called The Chosen Ones, which involved lengthy Ian Smith interviews with such sporting luminaries as Michael Campbell, Danyon Loader and Sir John Walker.
My hook was that he'd ignored the most obvious subject - himself. Destined for greatness, it seemed, since his days as a schoolboy star at Auckland Grammar, if anyone was "chosen" it was Crowe.
Entering the apartment the first thing you noticed was that every available surface seemed to host a self-help book; there was not a novel to be seen.
What followed was a revealing and at times downright sad interview.
"From the age of 14 when I was picked for the Auckland under-23 side and then as 12th man for a Shell Trophy final," Crowe recalled, "I was basically given a script that was way beyond my years. Emotionally I was totally unprepared and ever since, I've always been playing catch-up with that emotional stability."
We'd all heard stories about Crowe the teammate: brilliant, commanding and inspirational most days; dismissive (particularly to those whose talent he didn't necessarily rate) on others. On this day he seemed almost embarrassed by his past.
"All I kept feeding was an ego," he said. "In terms of my emotional development I was always three years out of my depth and I've had issues throughout my career with it."
The reality was he had nothing to be embarrassed about. He left cricket, and New Zealand cricket in particular, in a far richer place than when he found it. His bouts of introspection never obscured an unbridled love of the sport and a bone-deep care for its past, present and future. He turned that love of the game into some of the most perceptive columns written on cricket.
Crowe had occasional disdain for this profession but was also quick to praise work he thought was well-researched and reasoned. A pat-on-the-back note from Crowe was always cherished.
By way of return, any one of us who has ever called ourselves a cricket journalist would have been proud to have claimed lines such as this one, on the sport's governing body, as our own:
"The ICC, as we know, is an oligarchy. It's ruled by a dictator and two mistaken identities. It is in serious trouble, given the present cast on stage."
Or this, on Brendon McCullum's triple-century, which he described as like removing a stone out of his shoe after he fell for 299 in 1991: "He showed that with responsibility he could seek a new wisdom, a better way, and that a large picture can only be created one fluent stroke at a time."
Or this, on the singular talent that is Kane Williamson, a player he recently anointed our greatest batsman-elect (and while he is right, Williamson will never have the emphatic presence at the crease Crowe possessed): "Batting suited him from the minute he picked up his first bat; he had the perfect height, balance, fast-twitch muscles, electric feet, an inquisitive mind."
Or this, poignantly, about himself: "Death is something I have contemplated lately, only because the medical experts say it's nearly time."
I could go on, and am tempted to do so, because when Crowe gave you a glimpse inside his life, or the benefit of his extraordinary cricket wisdom, it was a window to genius.
As his long-time colleague and teammate Ian Smith said: "His thinking on the game was sometimes a year ahead in terms of strategy and on where the game was heading ... he could see the game unfolding as quickly as anyone I have ever worked with.
"He could read bowler and batsman's mind better than most."
Crowe took a couple of final walks in public in 2015, both unforgettable.
On February 28, during the lunch break of New Zealand's unforgettable one-wicket win over Australia during the pool stages of the World Cup, Crowe was inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame. He left the field with the crowd chanting his name and the tears not quite in check.
The adoration was universal and it was obviously appreciated.
The next time was the New Zealand Cricket Awards, a month or so later, and this time it was interviewer Simon Doull who barely kept the tears away, knowing Crowe's predicament.
That night, in a five-minute segment that stretched beyond 15, Crowe was humble, he was funny and his every word was clung on to by the assembled crowd and those watching on TV. We were watching not only a great of the game, but a man totally at peace with himself.
During that interview Crowe acknowledged his dad, Dave, was his first cricket hero. He gets to join him now, far too early, in perpetuity somewhere over their beloved Cornwall Park.
- Dylan Cleaver
