Glenn Turner was 'no good anyway'

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 20

Glenn Turner was 'no good anyway '

There’s $lOO,OOO worth of his and her’s Mercedes in the drive, a practice bunker and putting green in the shrubbery, a little more greenfly than his wife would like in the rose garden. For Glenn Turner, cricketer, of Dunedin, this is home, his first in more than 13 years and, he hopes fervently, his last. He delights in his acre of elegance just below Roslyn, this home-grown sporting maestro, for the $lOO,OOO-plus property sums up just a few of the rewards a . cricketing career has brought. The matching Mercedes — both 280SEs, royal blue JA8262 for his wife, spor-

ty silver JA8263 for himself — are icing on his cake at present. The businesslike Turner frankly admits he brought them back from Britain for the profit. He’s selling one (the silver sport) and managing, just, to resist the urgings of Iris wife to sell the second. “When you’ve become used to . a Mercedes, not much else will do,” he confesses, with a rare but pleasant smile. The road to Roslyn has been long and sometimes difficult for the Harbour Terrace youngster who set out as a 20-year-old to break into the world of professional cricket in England. But steer himself to the top he. did. to the stage where he is now recognised as one of the very best batsmen in the world — certainly as the most prolific run-scorer New Zealand has ever produced and that the

world has- seen in the last decade. His record is impressive. It includes:— 39 tests for New Zealand. More than 30,000 first class runs. New Zealand’s highest test score (259). A century in each innings in New Zealand’s first test win over Austra- . lia (1974). The seventh play'er in history to score 1000 in an English season before the end of May. The youngest player in the world. to bat through a test innings (age 22, in 1969, v ' England). The only player to score a century against every English county. The player to score the most first-class runs. in the world in the 19705. Today’s Glenn Turner — 33-years-old in. May, selfcontrolled, self-assured, some say arrogant — is a far cry from the callow, Dunedin-born youth who, in 1964 at the age of 17. first played for Otago while in his last year at Otago Boys’ High School. “My main benefit from becoming reasonably good at the game,” he puts, it simply but rather too modestly, “is that it has given me confidence in every other walk of life (to the extent, even, of listing his recreations in New Zealand Who’s Who as ‘sex and sleep’).” That confidence was not there as a youngster, he acknowledged during an interview in his two-storeyed mansion, hours before he left Dunedin for an invitation match in Bombay en route to Worcestershire and his 14th season with the English county, a few weeks ago? Nor was there an early conscious decision to become a professional cricketer. “In the 19605, few youngsters in New Zealand knew anything about English county cricket. I was good at the game, sure, but I had no thoughts about a career

in it. It was Billy Ibadulla (in Dunedin coaching) who put the suggestion to me. “I was a bit lost at the time, with no particular vocation appealing, although I had gone into insurance on leaving school. When Billy’s idea was confirmed, I worked for a year on the night shift at a bakery to earn my passage to England. “Many people felt at the time I was taking a hell of a risk. Our way of life here was so stereotyped; you were supposed to get into a safe job, a regular income and all that, and here was I

planning to go to England without seemingly having, at the time, much chance of succeeding. “They thought I was wasting a year and a round-the-world air ticket, but even if I failed. I felt I would have had good experience in travelling, so little was really going to be lost. 1 wanted to succeed and that was a big help. But confident? No way, not as a youngste’r.” In looking back, Turner finds his family influenced him more than he realised.

“My father (Alf Turned a W'eil-known cricket umpire) was a reasonable cyclist. I think he got to the last eight at the national championships once. He used to be keen on my brother Brian and I playing cricket, but he was a verv hard taskmaster. “We would come home and if we’d done well, it was ‘about bloody time.’ If we’d done badly, we were ‘no bloody good anyway.’ It was really quite a harsh sort of way of going about it, but it must have been his tactics, his way of trying to get us to come good. “I’ve got to give him

credit for that because I’ve since learnt that he used to secretly boast about us and what we had done. But as far as we were concerned, we were ‘no damned good.’ “Now, Brian (three years older and a promising cricketer at school) suffered in his cricket, because he got fed up with this. He flagged it away, but maintained his hockey where he eventually played for New Zealand. “In my case, maybe the old man had run out of a bit of steam with me. His

tactics probably made me more determined. They were make-or-break tactics. really.” The young Turner suffered criticism, too, from Otago supporters in his early years with the province’s Plunket Shield team. He was frequently barracked for slow play, though few denied that he had the makings even then of a great player. Was his slow, deliberate tenure-of the crease part of a long-term plan to build himself into a champion, rather than a crowd pleaser? “No, I can’t take the credit for . having worked -it out so cleverly at the age of 17 or so.. It was just natural for me to want to succeed and the only way I found I could succeed was to graft, to occupy the crease. Basically, I didn't want to get out. As I said, I , lacked confidence as well. I tended to think the other guy was a bit better than me and I had to put my head down and work very, very hard to succeed.

“It was only much later that this confidence came

and I was able to play more shots. Eventually, of course, the advent of limi-ted-over cricket in Britain and the number of times I was forced into the position of having to play differently, brought me out of mv shell.

“The grafting play and the sort of criticism I got for it made me form a sort of hard skin around me. I got a lot of stick for it at the time, but looking back, I believe that probably the safest and .soundest way to develop my career was to build de-

fence first then branch out from that.

“Whether that .approach is the right one now is a different matter. Cricketing pressures today, especially with limited-over atches. mean that kids are encouraged to go out and put bat to ball. They often find they go too far the other way and keep getting out early. Then they’ve got to come back and in the end build a sound defence.”

Turner never really had the temptation to go out •and slog the ball, to bat in a blaze of glory, even when he achieved the rare honour of playing for Otago while still at school.

“I was never a dreamer, you see. I never lay in bed at nights — nor do I now — like I’m sure some people do and dream of what they might do or hope they might achieve. I’ve never wasted time in dreaming. I’ve always been a doer rather than one who sits down and thinks al! the time of what might happen. It's best to get out and make it happen. I guess I’m a realist rather than a romantic.”

Glenn Turner is the most successful player New Zealand cricket has known: he is also' now a young man of means. ROBIN CHARTERIS. of Dunedin, commences an interview and analysis of Turner, the second and final part of which appears on Wednesday.