Highest run scorers of Under-19 World Cups: Where are they now?
The Under 19 World Cup has always given the budding cricketers an opportunity to express themselves. Many cricketers have gone on to become stars of international repute after graduating from that level.
However, for every Virat Kohli,Yuvraj Singh and Chris Gayle, there are way too many players like Taruwar Kohli, Brett Williams or Tanmay Srivastava who faded away into obscurity after the tournament. Very few players manage to make that transition successfully and the ones who do seem to make it big.
So we thought of going down the memory lane and find out about the ones who became the highest run-getter in the 11 editions of the tournament so far. The highest scorer of the 2016 edition was Jack Burnham for England who amassed 420 runs at an average of 84.
Jack now plays for Durham in the English county cricket and has played 11 first-class matches so far. He also scored his maiden first-class century against Surrey and his well-compiled knock of 135 earned him rave reviews from the aficionados.
But what about the other 10? What are they doing now? Let’s have a look.
Note: We are following the chronological order
1988- Brett Williams
In the inaugural edition of the under-19 world cup, which was named the McDonald’s Bicentennial Youth World Cup, the hosts Australia lifted the trophy, thanks to the efforts of Brett Williams who was the top run-getter in that tournament.
Brett scored 471 runs at an average of 52.33 in the 9 games he played and inspired his team to that famous triumph. But what happened to him afterwards, still remains a mystery.
That particular world cup had players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Brian Lara who went on to become great players in the future. However, the man who trumped them to become the leading run-scorer remained in the shadows.
Brett played only 4 first-class and 3 List-A games for South Australia till 1990 and after that, there have been no traces of him. We tried to find out what he is up to nowadays.
Besides being the Business Manager at Fleetcare, (written on his Facebook profile) which is Australia's largest privately owned fleet management company, it seems that Brett now plays indoor cricket for Western Australia and was recently selected for the Men's 45's & over Australian side in the Indoor Cricket.
We also tried to confirm whether he is the same Brett Williams or not and got conclusive evidence as well. First of all, his age matches the criteria and some of the comments on some of his photos on his Facebook profile are indicative of the fact that he is indeed the one who top-scored in that tournament.