Paying the price for honesty

Press, 29 July 1978, Page 12

Paying the price for honesty

The worth of Glenn Turner is perhaps better appreciated in England than in his native New Zealand. JACK GODFREY, of the Worcester “Evening News” talks to the former New Zealand captain, and Worcestershire vice-captain, after his suspension by the New Zealand Cricket Council.

So. for a matter or a few hundred dollars New Zealand has kicked out the best batsman that has ever played for it. Probably the most knowledgeable captain that has ever led its test team. Worcestershire’s Glenn Turner will be flying back to his native country in January wher he wil* personally hand back to the New Zealand cricket board the money he owes it.

It’s the price o' the air ticket he never used to fly him back from England when he decided to stay here to organise his Worcestershire benefit in preference to leading New Zealand in the series azainst England during the winter.

But why all the hullabaloo over such a small sum?

Ft typifiec the smallm ndedness of the people who are running cricket out there to bri.Jg out into th< open a domestic squabble.

Worcestershire’s accomplished opening batsman doesn’t like the way cricket is run in his country. He makes no bones about it. Never has. The administrators resented being told during Turner’s captaincy where they were going wrong. The air fare matter is th excuse for kicking him in public. But there’s much more to it than this. One day perhaps, Turner will be proved right and some of the advice he has offered as a bonus to ungrateful authorities for the mere pittance of his playinc expenses will be heeded.

It should be understood tha professionalism in sport is not accepted in New Zealand in the same wa>. as it is in this country.’ “If you are a profes-

sionai cricketer in New Zealand they tend to look upon everything you do or say with a great deal of suspicion,” says Glenn, adding: "They feel you must have an ulterior motive and self-interest.” The question of the air fare is but a trivia', matter as compared with the other grievances he has with the authorities. Turner told me he has fought for years to try

and make his country’s cricket council understand that "we have to think big to be big. To treat people right to get the best from resources available.” But instead they allow themselves to be kicked around and to treat their own players little differently.

“I have stressed very strongly to the board the importance of putting the best possible team into the field when we play test matches. The only way we can do that is to be more realistic in the expenses paid to players. “Our test programme over the past 10 years since I have been playing has meant a tour every year or somebody touring New Zealand. Yet the board make it impossible for some of our established players to give up work in order to play, because they will be out of pocket.

“The ridiculous thing is that, along with the other two professionals in the tour party to Pakistan, I was getting less than the amateurs. We were all

getting the same expenses and the amateurs who were playing were also being paid by the firms for whom they worked. “I have coached and played for Otago for years but they could not continue to pay me when I went on tne tour, so I collected simply my expenses for the tour. “Then we tend to tour countries when it suits them and not ourselves.

We go to India and Pakistan too soon after the monsoons when the pitches are at their worst and before what they consider a major series to follow. “We agree to play at non-test match venues. They try us out on them. And only once since 1969 have we played a fivematch series. All the others have been three or two. "So many things are against us — and me.

“Once the chairman of the board said to me they wished I had been born somewhere else because they can’t afford to have me.” Strange thing to say about someone who served his country so admirably for 10 years for mere expenses. Turner said he may appear stubborn in not refunding the money he now owed the New Zealand Board, but there was

never any suggestion that he wasn’t goin B to do so. “They have made me wait six months or more for the refund of air fares when I have had to find the money myself to fly to New Zealand to play, so I wasn’t in any hurry to return the money I owe them. “Stubborn or not, I take strong exception to the inference that I am a bad payer. I am very involved with playing for Worces-

tershire in my benefit year but I shall be paying them back the money in January when I visit New Zealand as a non-cricket-er.” It has been suggested in New Zealand that Turner is a loner in whom the patriotic flames burn low. Perhaps the decision of the board to drag the air fare squabble into the open may have implied this. But Turner’s brushes with officialdom were always made with one aim in view — a better test team and a better deal for those players striving to achieve this end. The New Zealand board is reported to have offered Turner the right of appeal against his suspension. But he has still to receive from it the letter officially notifying him of the drastic action in banning him from any matches under its jurisdiction until he repays the air fare.

All he has so far received is a telegram telling him that details of his suspension are contained in a following letter. I suppose they could have asked for an extradition order to get him jailed.