WELLINGTON: Chris Cairns, the legendary New Zealand cricketer, revealed on Saturday that he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, a new health setback.

Cairns was recently released from the hospital, five months after undergoing a life-saving heart procedure and then being paralysed by a stroke.

“Another fight ahead but here’s hoping this one is a swift upper cut and over in the first round,” the 51-year-old, one of the world’s top all-rounders in the early 2000s, said on social media.

“I was told yesterday I have bowel cancer… big shock and not what I was expecting.

“So, as I prepare for another round of conversations with surgeons and specialists, I keep remembering how lucky I am to be here in the first place.”

Last September, Cairns, which is based in Canberra, needed emergency heart surgery due to an aortic dissection, which is a tear in the inner layer of the body’s major artery.

He had a stroke during the operation, which left him paralysed in both legs.

Between 1989 and 2004, Cairns appeared in 62 Tests for New Zealand, averaging 29.4 with the ball and 33.53 with the bat.

He was the sixth player to reach the all-rounders’ double of 200 wickets and 3,000 runs, and he smashed 87 sixes, a Test world record at the time.

However, his on-field accomplishments were overshadowed by match-fixing claims, strongly denied by Cairns that resulted in two court cases.

Despite being cleared on both instances, he said his reputation had been “scorched.”

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