Glenn Turner: A Conscious Cricketer Who Established New Zealand in Global Cricket

Glenn Turner: A Conscious Cricketer Who Established New Zealand in Global Cricket

In the last World Cup of 2019, New Zealand entered the final to play the game against England and many players like Kane Williamson, Martin Guptill, Tom Blundell, Trent Boult, Ross Taylor and Lockie Ferguson became the heroes of the New Zealand team. Even there were best cricketers like Bert Sutcliffe, John Reid, Geoff Howarth, Martin Crow, and Jeff Crow and best all-rounder Richard Hadlee have given their major contributions towards the development of Cricket in New Zealand. Before these players, there was one player who led New Zealand batting from 1969 to 1983. He was an outstanding opening batsman. He is nothing but Glenn Maitland Turner who was the first player to introduce New Zealand in Global cricket. He became the face of New Zealand cricket in front of foreign media. After the arrival of Glen Turner in the New Zealand team, there were significant changes. Before his arrival, New Zealand played 88 Test matches and won only four matches and lost 41 and drew 38 matches. Performance of Glen Turner changed this completely. During his tenure, New Zealand won 14 matches and lost 26 matches and drew 30 matches. This helped New Zealand to increase their winning ratio from 9% to 42%.

From Yogesh Gogwekar

Glenn Maitland Turner was born on 26th May 1947 at Dunedin. He did his schooling in Otago Boys’ High School. He was coached by Bert Sutcliffe and ‘Billy’ Ibadulla of Warwickshire. He played his first cricket for Otago at the age of seventeen. After seeing his batting performance, his coach Billy’ Ibadulla recommended him to play for Warwickshire. Therefore, he started working in Bakery day and night to get money to go to England to play for Warwickshire. After doing the reasonable saving, Glenn Turner came to England but management of Warwickshire told him that they already had their quota of overseas players. Therefore, he tried his luck with another county team Worcestershire and they immediately engaged him and asked him to prove his qualities by playing the game with second team and he proved himself as an excellent Batsman by scoring 50  runs average and allowed him to play into county side from 1968.

He carved a hugely successful career for Worcestershire through the 1970s and early 1980s. He has been called a giant of First-class cricket. In the match between Worcestershire vs Glamorgan played in 1977, Glenn Turner scored 141 not out of the total score of 169 which was the first class record of 83% the team’s score. Overall he scored 34346 runs with an average of 49.70 by scoring 103 hundreds and becoming one of the only four non-English batsmen to score a hundred of hundreds. Other three players were Don Bradman, Viv Richards and Zaheer Abbas. He scored hundreds against all 17 English counting. For Worcestershire, he scored highest runs i.e. 311 not out which were made by him in one day and scored hundred before lunch. Earlier, he was playing as a middle order batsman but very soon started opening the innings and became one of the best openers in the world.

He played his first test match against West Indies on 27th February 1969 at Auckland, New Zealand. He started his Test career in perfect manner and came into limelight when he scored four double centuries against West Indies in West Indies in the test series of 1972. In one of the matches against the West Indies in the same series, he scored 223 runs which is the 60% of his side’s first inning score 386 and his best performance was 259 in Georgetown in the fourth test.

Glenn Turner had shown his batting performance not only against West Indies but also against Australia. In the season of 1973-74, he made his most significant contribution by scoring hundreds in both the innings. He was the first player from New Zealand to do that. Best bowling of Richard Hadlee, Richard Collinge and Congdon bowled out mighty Australia in 223. Australian bowlers Max Walker and Geoff Dymock his back and New Zealand started losing the wickets in the regular interval. In this situation, Glenn Turner carried his bat by scoring 101 runs in the first inning and took New Zealand to the score of 255. In the second inning, Australians bowled out for 259 by excellent bowling of Richard Hadlee and Dayle Hadlee. New Zealand wanted to win 227 runs in the second inning, but they lost three important wickets when the score was 62 and still 166 runs were required to win. Turner took the responsibility and scored one more hundred and gave New Zealand their first win against Australia. For this series, Turner has mentioned in his autobiography that this test helped New Zealand cricket come of age. It gave us that belief; it also gave a boost to the game in New Zealand at that time. 

In 1976-77, he did a fair job against the Indians after losing the first test match at Auckland. In the second match at Christchurch, he scored 117 by putting back pressure on Indians to save the match and in Wellington he scored crucial 64 runs to help New Zealand to get the victory and equal the series. In 1978-79, he led New Zealand for a Test match series to Pakistan and India and lost the series by 0-2 with both the countries but his batting performance was excellent. I remembered his beautiful inning of 64 runs in Mumbai and watched him on television by scoring 113 runs in Kanpur to save the match for New Zealand.

After losing the Test matches against Australia in 1979, he resigned from captaincy due to the disagreement with the New Zealand authorities. He returned back to England to play the county matches and informed New Zealand cricket board his unavailability for subsequent test series. After retiring from English Cricket County, he became Cricket Commentator and suddenly decided to play the Test series against Sri Lanka in 1982-83. On 11th March 1983, he played his last test match against Sri Lanka. He played only 41 Test matches scoring 2991 runs in 73 innings with a batting average of 44.64. He scored seven centuries and fourteen fifties in his Test career. He began his test career by scoring ducks but very fast he started showing his talent, temperament and started building his innings steadily, soberly and coolly.

Glenn Turner was sound defensive and an immaculately straight-playing batsman; but still he had capacity to tuck the ball away especially on leg side. He eventually played his shot on demand and scored as fast as required by the team. He expanded his shots into off and straight driving and developed his own shot which he used to play by driving through midwicket with a perpendicular bat by turning the face of the bat on impact.

Glenn Turner had played 41 one day internationals in which he scored 1599 runs in 40 innings with a batting average 47. He scored three centuries and nine fifties in One day games. Out of his three centuries, he scored two centuries in the world cup 1975. He was the first batsman to score 150 runs in one day international i.e.171 in 201 balls against East Africa in a World Cup match in 1975. This record was broken by Kapil Dev in 1983 by making 175 runs. In the world cup of 1974, Turner scored 333 runs in four matches with an average of 166.50. He played his first one day international against Pakistan on 11th February 1973 at Christchurch and he played his last One day against Pakistan only on 20th June 1983 at Nottingham.

By using his natural ability, Glen turner developed the technique to find the gaps in the field with ease and he made use of full deliveries. He dedicated his life for Cricket and made his name throughout the cricket world. He always believes in more practicing technique on the field. After retirement from cricket, he became manager and coach to the New Zealand team which helped them to prove their brilliance performance in Australia. After a decade, he has been appointed as chairman of the selection committee for New Zealand cricket board. He always used to say that the more time you spend at the crease, the more you get fit to do the job and learn more techniques of the game.

John Arlott has rightly said that Glean Turner was consciously a career cricketer; who most appropriately entitled his autobiography My Way. In his autobiography he has mentioned very little about his personal life. His brother, Brian Turner is poet and another brother, Greg turner is a golf player. His wife Dame Sukhi Turner (Sukhinder Singh Gill) to whom he met in Mumbai in 1978-79 Test series. They started dating each other. In the beginning, her parents were not ready to allow her to marry him and advised her that people from the West do not take marriage seriously. Still they married. After the marriage, she migrated to New Zealand and joined the Green Party and was elected as a Mayor in 1995, 1998 and 2001. 

Yes, he was the best batsman in 70s and 80s in Tests as well as one day internationals. As mentioned above, he did not play many test matches and ODI for New Zealand due to the disagreement with the New Zealand cricket board. Therefore, Cricket World has missed his batting performances in Tests and ODI.  If someone asks me to select the best opening pairs of the cricketing world in 70s and 80s, I will select Sunil Gavaskar and Glenn Turner for the Test match and Gordon Greenidge and Glenn Turner in ODI.

Mumbai

01/08/2020