Dion Nash wakes up in middle of nights with a start. He is 43, hasn’t played cricket in 11 years, busting his gut to keep his cosmetic-products business Triumph and Disaster viable, and he is dreaming about cricket. “It’s never a good dream, man. Never.” It’s a sense of regret at what could have been had he remained injury-free and more committed during his career. His wife Bernice Mene, a former captain of New Zealand netball team, is a wise lady. “Oh she thinks I am an idiot, and asks me to go back to sleep.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to have a life without some regrets you know. What’s that quote? Regrets are rewards of life well lived or something like that.”

Nash’s present life is what dragged me to his office in Auckland but to understand that, he yanks me to his past with a riveting observation about what hurling that cricket ball and getting a wicket meant to him. “It’s an adrenalin spike which is elation, all in one. You feel powerful and good; your team-mates are all excited. And it just feels awesome. When you are really bowling well, nothing else comes even close to that feeling. Getting Sachin Tendulkar out for example, (Nash has got him out six times), getting him out caught behind was as high as it can ever get.”

Not even a potential million-dollar deal? “Many people have made million-dollar deals but not many people have experienced that feeling: the tail wind blowing behind you, you are bowling great, taking the wicket of the best batsman in the world. It’s a burst from nothing to something, you are expecting something to happen, the expectation of a wicket is there, but it might not happen. And when it does, boy it feels just great. There is nothing that beats that feeling. No comparison, really. That’s something no one can ever take away from me.”

Grieving process

When that burst from nothing to something never reoccurs after retirement, reality hits. The first six months were a relief at a pain-free existence but things then started to gnaw him. It took Nash three years to get cricket out of the system and he still wakes up in the nights. “It’s similar to grieving process. It’s a thing you loved and further away you get from it, life starts to get hard. You look back at how people treated you, and a year later, people stop talking about you. Now they are after a new guy. You look at the new guy and go, hey that used to be me! And then you got to rationalise that – how stupid am I, move on.”

Nash sold spring water 420 for a while — it’s used in Vodka brand 42Below— before Bacardi bought the 42Below and the ancillary brands. He had a 25% stake in that water business and made some money out of the sale. He then decided to start something on his own. He created a brand of skin-care range for men, called it Triumph and Disaster, (from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, that his father had gifted him when he was 12) and it’s now selling in 400 stores across the world from Singapore to Canada to USA.

But, we have to rewind to the start and his attempts at selling water. “It was awful at times. It’s very humbling. And not enjoyable to be honest. There were days when I was particularly terrible with it. To walk out of a door without even asking the question. I would walk out of the door and go, “Gawd, I didn’t even ask them to buy. When you are not used to doing it, and when your pride suggests you don’t need to do it, it can get tough. It took me some 6 months to click into it.”

Developing a routine

Nash worked out that he needed to develop a routine before he walked into the door. A check list of what he is going to do inside, and how he is never going to leave without asking them to buy. “It doesn’t mean I made every sale, but eventually I started to work out a system how to ask for a sale. It’s about positioning and subtly influencing their thinking. I won’t say I am a great salesman and I am not one to be giving sales advice but hopefully I understand it a lot better now.”

It was during a visit to Brooklyn, New York, that the skin-care idea hit him. “I saw this guy putting on moisturiser. I looked around me. Men with waistcoats, fully groomed. I knew that there was no special product for them. That was it. On my flight back, I wrote what products I would create.”

Moisturisers and creams, didn’t the fast bowler wince at the thought? “Yeah, I can lose a bit of street creed, right?! But that was the point. To have a cream tumble out of your gym bag without you going all shamefaced about it.” A closet metrosexual, was he? “Yucky word that. Stephen Fleming is!” Back in his playing days, a pink tube of Oil of Olay did tumble out of his kit bag in the dressing room. It was five in the evening and Nash had just stepped out of the shower and trying to apply it discretely when Ken Rutherford saw it. “Why are you applying sun-screen at five? And I go, “you can never be too safe, Ken!” Nash had flicked it from his mother’s bag after reading a magazine interview with the singer Rod Stewart where he said that Oil of Olay was the secret to his youthful looks. “If it works for him, I thought fine by me.”

He laughs now but he wasn’t when he had to sell his house to raise money for this business. His wife knew that Nash will be” insufferable” to live with if he wasn’t allowed to do it and she gave in. There was another moment of gravitas when he had to sign of a cheque for 50,000 worth of stock of tubes and packaging. “I was walking in a daze for the rest of that day. I didn’t have any other income and you realise now you are committed. It’s real now. It’s a mixture of feeling ill and also, excitement. As scary as it is, it’s also incredibly exciting. In a way for the first time in life you have true autonomy over your decisions. Now that we are up and running; we are in the 4th year and we have started to make money for the last year, every month. Just a little sailor, still, trying to get through the storms!”

Is there a worry, since he has three young kids to support, about what if things go wrong? “Touch wood this works and if it doesn’t, I think I will regroup and have another go. You got to keep moving forward. I guess I have a fatalistic view to it. If it all goes wrong, you can lose your shirt but at least I am living while I am having a go.”