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Even in absolute terms, Turner’s numbers are quite impressive. He had scored 2,991 Test runs at 44.64 with 7 hundreds, of which 2,828 at 45.61 were as an opener. Of all New Zealand openers, his runs are just behind
John Wright’s, and his average is the best among those who have scored 2,000 Test runs or more. If all batsmen are considered, he falls behind
Martin Crowe and
Mark Richardson, though, in terms of batting average.
Turner’s real greatness lies elsewhere, though. In the pre-Turner era, New Zealand had played 83 Tests, of which they had won four, drawn 38, and lost 41. Turner’s performances changed things around significantly — as New Zealand won 11 Tests in 14 years, losing 26 and drawing 30. The win-loss ratio, which was 9 per cent previously, had gone up to 42 per cent in Turner’s era.
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Turner became the youngest batsman in history (at 22 years 63 days, beating Warwick Armstrong’s record in 1902-03) and the first New Zealand player to carry a bat through an innings. Underwood kept denting the other end, picking up 7 for 32 — while Turner played 226 balls on his way to an obdurate 43 not out as New Zealand crashed to 131. He is still the youngest player, and the only New Zealand batsman to have achieved the feat. We shall, however, come back to carrying the bat through an innings later.
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The West Indies tour of 1971-72 turned out to be a watershed mark in Turner’s career. On the second tour match he got his first double-hundred of the tour — a formidable 202 against Board President’s XI at Montego Bay, putting up 268 for the opening stand with Dowling.
The next match was the first Test at Sabina Park, where Turner decided to take things in his own hands. He was certainly not willing to let the debutant
Lawrence Rowe (who scored 214 and 100 not out) hog all the limelight alone. Up against West Indies’ 508 for 4, Turner batted on, and on, and on, and on… carrying his bat again for a 572-minute essay of 223 out of a team score of 386. From 108 for 5 he helped New Zealand evade the follow-on.
Turner became only the fourth cricketer (after Bill Woodfull, Len Hutton, and Bill Lawry) to carry his bat through a Test innings twice. His 223 not out still remains the highest score by any batsman while carrying his bat (the previous record being Bill Brown’s 206 at Lord’s in 1938).
Turner scored 95 in the third Test at Queen’s Park Oval, but that turned out to be a mere appetiser. Up against Guyana’s 493 for 4 at Bourda, Turner scored a masterful 259, and worse — he never looked like getting out. Things looked really ominous for the West Indians.
The fourth Test, also at Bourda, was another run-fest: after West Indies declared at 365 for 7, Turner and Terry Jarvis batted for 9 hours before Jarvis eventually fell for 182. They had put up 387 for the opening partnership — then the second-highest opening stand, after Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy’s 413. Turner eventually finished with a colossal 759-ball 259 with 22 fours.
New Zealand returned with the five Test series leveled 0-0. Turner easily topped the batting charts with 672 runs at 96. On the entire tour, he scored 1,214 runs at 86.71 from 11 matches, and all his 4 hundreds were converted to double-hundreds. His superlative performances made him the New Zealand Almanack Player-of-the-Year.
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Turner’s greatest batting performance – his magnum opus — possibly came against the Australians next season at Christchurch. The Test, in
Turner’s own words, “helped our cricket come of age. It gave us that belief. It also gave a boost to the game in New Zealand at that time.”
After Congdon bravely put Australia in,
Richard Hadlee, Richard Collinge and Congdon bowled out the tourists for a paltry 223. Max Walker and Geoff Dymock hit back for Australia, and New Zealand kept on losing wickets on a consistent basis. Turner stood among the ruins, scoring 101 in 260 balls (after remaining 99 not out overnight — again) with nine fours, and took New Zealand to 255 — when nobody else had reached 25.
His job was not done, though. After the Hadlee brothers combined to bowl out Australia for 259, Walker hit back again, reducing New Zealand to 62 for three. With 166 still to get, Turner knew that he could not afford to get out: he batted on tirelessly, scoring 110 not out — and guiding New Zealand to their first Test victory against Australia. In the process he became the first New Zealand batsman to score two hundreds in a Test. Turner later called it ‘probably the most significant contribution I made’.
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