Dudley Owen-Thomas

One of the stranger choices, Owen-Thomas shone as a schoolboy and then for Cambridge University, signing off with a hundred in the 1971 Varsity match and then helping Surrey to win the Championship later that summer. In 1972, his first full county season, he scored three hundreds and narrowly missed out on 1000 runs, but that was still enough to win him the Young Cricketer of the Year award. But his form fell away markedly - only one more hundred came in the next three summers and by the end of 1975, aged only 27, he had drifted out of the game.
Martin Williamson