Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

11 So close Gomersal by his fellow-countryman Scott McHardy (of Otago, Wellington and Gomersal), and ‘proved a great asset’ as his team came with a late run to win both the league and the league’s cup competition. He began with half-centuries in his first three innings, but his most valuable knock was surely the ‘sparkling’ 95 (centuries still elusive!) that he ‘hammered’ 3 in a vital league match in September against then-leaders Methley - who were fresh from winning the final of the National Village Championship at Lord’s. Glenn took wickets steadily too, but his runs above all were his major contribution to the team’s success. The need to develop a life outside cricket now took over, and for the next six years he stayed in London, working in the finance sector. He married his long-term girlfriend, and they returned to New Zealand just before the birth of their first child; their family now consists of a daughter and two sons. All three are, in Glenn’s words, heavily involved in sport, and the boys in particular love their cricket. At Christmas 2015, he told me, the requests to Santa were for cricket gloves for their five-year-old, and cricket shoes for his older brother. They are all admirers of Brendon McCullum, both for his personal style of play and for the way in which he has transformed New Zealanders’ love for the game. “He will be sorely missed, although Kane [Williamson] is my five-year-old’s favourite. He took out a bat and ball to the yard the other day and when I came out an hour later he informed me Kane was on 459 not out”! Since returning to New Zealand, Glenn has been working for BNP Paribas in Wellington. He tells me that he loves being back home among family and friends, “although in saying that I also loved England. I miss going to Lord’s and the Oval. I miss Arsenal a lot. I also miss those beautiful calm autumns walking through the great parks … oh, and the pubs.” It is assessments like this, as well as his earlier honesty about his life in cricket, that make Glenn Wilkinson come over to me as a very sensible, contented, level-headed and likeable man, with a very happy family life, and entirely satisfied with his career away from the sport that he once thought might be his living. Four more runs at the Basin Reserve in March 1997 would indeed have secured him a place in the lists of those making a century on his first-class debut (though his achievement of scoring 77 and 96 in that game places him very near the top of the list of ‘most runs in one’s only first-class match’) 4 , but it seems that he quickly reconciled himself to appreciating the magnitude of what he did achieve, rather than fretting over what he didn’t . Whether all those recording a 90 in their only match can say the same, we can only wonder. I don’t know why, but somehow I doubt it. 3 All the words in single quotation marks in this paragraph are from reports in the Yorkshire Evening Post. 4 In fact he is third in that list, behind Norman Callaway (207 for NSW v Queensland in 1914/15) and Glenn’s fellow New Zealander Avinash Sharma (185* for Oxford in the 2010 University match). Glenn’s 173 is the highest aggregate recorded by any player who batted twice in his only first-class match, and also the highest aggregate recorded by any player whose only match was a game in his country’s major domestic competition.