THE IMMORTALS - SAMPLE BIOGRAPHY

Turner’s attitude turned heads from the moment he became New Zealand captain. He declared he must be paid for doing interviews, but he did not differentiate between the types of interviews, especially those short, newsy ones that promote the game and are part of any sports captain’s role.

The chairman of the New Zealand council, Walter Hadlee, and the board supported Turner initially, but they soon came to loggerheads. The council forbad Turner from writing a Sunday newspaper column, for example. The squabbling was not good for the game’s image.

Turner felt he was being badly treated and pulled out of test cricket in 1978. He then underwent suspension following a dispute over air tickets.

It was a cruel blow to New Zealand’s test chances, but didn’t seem to concern Turner, who continued in one-day cricket and for his county and for Otago. He eventually played two more test matches, against Sri Lanka, in 1983, his last year in the game.

Turner then took very successfully to television commentating and from 1985 to 1987 was cricket manager with the New Zealand side. He was thus the bona fide coach of the team. For those players who could relate to his blunt assessments, Turner was excellent value. Jeremy Coney was one who thrived. Others, such as Chris Cairns much later, did not.

Turner was at the centre of player unrest while coach in 1995-96.

Because of his TV work, Turner was prevented from becoming a selector in the early 1990s. When he won a selector’s position, he promptly withdrew because he was not prepared to serve under the convenorship of Don Neely.

However, Turner, who was Otago’s coach in 2001-05, won his way back onto the selection panel from 2004-05, serving under Sir Richard Hadlee, and working with coach John Bracewell. He had also been a national selector in 1973-83 (on tours) and in 1995/96 (as the coach).

Turner was an Otago Cricket Association coach from 1971-76 and was also coach of Otago in 1979-83. He coached Northern Districts in 1976/77.

Turner was chief executive of the Otago Sports Trust 1983-85 and a television cricket commentator at home and abroad between 1980-96.

Turner’s older brother Brian, was a New Zealand hockey representative and is a well-known writer of sports biographies. Younger brother Greg was a professional golfer.

In 2006, Turner was living in Wanaka. His recreational interests were sailing and boating, fishing, tramping, swimming and cycling, plus international affairs and the environment. He is married to Sukhi Turner, the former longterm mayor of Dunedin.

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What you can expect. Here's a sample of one of the 230 biographies of the New Zealand test players through history:

Glenn Turner

Glenn Turner would surely be one of the first names written down when any New Zealand all-time greatest XI is debated in cricket’s Valhalla. But he would also be judged one of the most controversial, a player and a man who polarised opinions.

Turner rewrote the record books throughout his long career from 1964 to 1983. He is the only New Zealander to pass 100 first-class centuries, finishing with 103. That is 32 more centuries than the next-best, Martin Crowe, or John Wright (59 centuries), Bert Sutcliffe (44) and John R Reid (39).

He played in 455 first-class games, a New Zealand record, and hit 34,346 runs, another record, being more than 9000 runs than the next-best player achieved. His average was 49.7.

In the meantime, he gradually developed his batting from the tentative, very limited style on debut as a 17-year-old opening batsman for Otago to the beautiful flowing strokemaker who thrilled crowds around the world.

Turner had fine footwork and could play shots to any part of the wicket. His drive was especially magnificent. While his defence was sound from day one, he learned to specialise in a flat-bat square drive and later, in one-day cricket, a chip shot over short mid-wicket. He was also an excellent slips fieldsman.

But success did not come easily for Turner. He had to work hard for it. He started as a frail teenager with few shots and little power. He was ridiculed by some as he struggled to learn to hit the ball off square in those formative seasons. The years of English county competition also helped develop his remarkable concentration and the conscious decision to remove all emotion from his play.

Turner played for Worcestershire from 1967 through to 1982. But the hard life of a professional from such a young age put an edge on his personality as well as his ability on the field.

As the achievements flowed, Turner would become embroiled in controversy, especially with the New Zealand Cricket Council after he became New Zealand captain. He led New Zealand in 10 tests but relinquished the job after a disagreement with authorities.

Controversy would dog him on a number of other occasions and even when he later became New Zealand coach and a selector over two periods.

But Turner’s stubbornness in doing things as he thought best (his first book was appropriately called My Way) and seldom to compromise, also produced perhaps his greatest legacy to the New Zealand game.

While his feats are enshrined in the records, his influence was greater in that it paved the way for a generation of other New Zealand professionals. Players such as John Wright, Geoff Howarth, Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe were early beneficiaries of his career struggles, and probably his foibles, but so are today’s players. They all play in an atmosphere of better terms and conditions than those that Turner bridled against.

Though Turner’s 41 tests and 2991 test runs at 44.64 are not as high as New Zealand’s other great modern batsman, Crowe (66 tests and 4777 test runs at 46.83), he remains the country’s batting equivalent of Hadlee, the bowler. The centuries and the milestones came in a blur.

Examples include his 387-run partnership with Terry Jarvis in the West Indies in 1972-73, which remains a New Zealand record for any wicket and was the second-highest opening stand in all test cricket.

His 100th century, for Worcestershire against Warwickshire, a county that had once declined to give him a contract, in 1982, came and went as Turner took his score to 311 not out when his side declared.

The innings made Turner the first batsman in 33 years to score more than 300 runs in a day in England.

His succession of milestones includes: the youngest player to bat through a test innings (in 1969, in the Lord’s test, when he scored 43 not out); a Worcestershire record with 10 centuries in a season in 1970; 1000 runs for the county before the end of May in 1973; a record 1244 runs in a New Zealand season in 1975-76; and a score of 141 not out against Gloucestershire when Worcester totalled 169 in 1977.

Turner scored four double-centuries on the tour of the West Indies in 1972. He hit 672 test runs at 96.0 and 1284 runs overall at 85.6.

Perhaps his finest test performance was in 1974 at Lancaster Park when he hit a century in each innings to help steer New Zealand to its first-ever test win over Australia.

Turner was the first New Zealand professional to continue playing cricket in both England and New Zealand each year. He was surrounded by amateur players here, but gave the game a shake-up by insisting that a professional needed to be treated differently. Though he withdrew from almost all test cricket earlier than he might have, he ushered in the greatest period of success by the New Zealand team.