Wasted Talent

The verdict on the tragic death last year of Surrey and England Lion's, Tom Maynard, was pronounced today as accidental by the Coroner's jury. Cause of death was said to be electrocution and multiple injuries received when he laid on the track of a tube train at Wimbledon Park station after fleeing police when his Mercedes car had been stopped by officers because of his erratic driving.

Maynard was said to be 4 times over the legal alcohol limit to drive in the UK and also high on cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy). Just a week before his death he had been run over whilst drunk at Brighton and had been disciplined by Surrey for this. The inquest also reported that Tom Maynard had been a habitual, daily, user of cocaine (from hair samples taken) for up to three and a half months at least but colleague, captain, flatmate and lifelong friend, Rory Hamilton-Brown was totally unaware of this. This might put County cricketers and Surrey cricketers particularly under the microscope following this accident.

The Professional Cricketers' Association agreed that stepping-up drug testing for both performance enhancing drugs and especially recreational drugs would help detect those players in the future that have a problem. The PCA and ECB were in full agreement that the stepping up of out-of -competition drug testing was needed.
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/21588350

Tom Maynard remains well thought of by the people that knew him. A tragic waste of life and talented cricketer and his family hope that the circumstances of Tom's death don't define Tom's life.

Wednesday 27/02

Ian Bell fresh from an unbeaten 127 in an England warm-up game, joined calls for more testing for drugs on cricketers; Michael Vaughan also joined those calls.