Turner now among ‘greats’

Press, 5 August 1981, Page 40

Turner now among ‘greats’

Bv R. T. BRITTENDEN

Year by year, New Zealand cricket learns to look more and more wistfully at its former test batsman, Glenn Turner, for year byyear, he makes his place among cricket’s immortals all the more certain.

It is almost five years since Turner last played a test match. They have been anything but unproductive for the talented Turner, and the present English season has put him much further up the lists of the batting great.

When he made 161 and 101 for Worcestershire against Northamptonshire last Week, it was the fifth match in which he had scored a century in 'each innings. Only W. R. Hammond (seven times)

and J. B. Hobbs (six times) accomplished this feat more often. One of the greatest allrounders in sport, C. B. Fry, had two centuries in a matches five times, and Turner has now reached Fry’s mark of 94 first-classs centuries. Even the greatest

of them all, Sir Donald Bradman, had two centuries in a game only four times, but that may be because he often made so many in one innings that he was not required to bat again. Eighteen players have made a century of centuries and Turner, only 34 years old, now seems almost certain to join them. If he does, he and Bradman will be the only overseas players to reach that mark although Turner, in effect, has been an English player for the last 14 years. Turner first had two centuries in a match in 1972, playing for Worcestershire against Warwickshire — and he tossed in another century in the Sunday League match

between the sides played that week-end. In 1973-74; Turner’s 101 and 110 not out were mainly responsible for New Zealand beating Australia at Lancaster Park, and a season later, he had two centuries in a match twice — 135 and 108 for Otago against Northern Districts, 105 and 186 not out for Otago against Central Districts. And among the other Turner triumphs was his 1000 runs before the end of May during the 1973 tour of England — one of only seven players to go so far so soon and only the second overseas player, with Bradman. In all, Turner has now scored about 32,000 firstclass runs.