McGlew, Jackie (1929-1998), an outstanding South African cricketer of the 1950’s, was one of the finest opening batsmen in the game. His tremendous powers of concentration made him difficult for opposing bowlers to remove. He was also a bowler, specializing in leg breaks and googlies (see Cricket ).
Between 1951 and 1962, McGlew played in 34 Test matches for South Africa and served as captain in 14 of them. He was in three South African touring teams to England (1951, 1955, and 1960) and one to Australia and New Zealand (1952-1953). He scored 2,440 runs during his Test career at an average of 42.06 per innings. His highest score was 255 not out against New Zealand in the 1952-1953 tour. He topped the Test batting averages in 1955 with 58.46 and was named by Wisden, the United Kingdom cricket publication, as one of its 1956 Cricketers of the Year.
Derrick John McGlew was born on March 11, 1929, in Pietermaritzburg, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. He played for Natal from 1947 to 1948 and from 1966 to 1967. In 1963, in a match between Natal and Transvaal at Durban, he became the first cricketer to achieve a cross-innings hat trick. Bowling for Natal, he removed the last two batsmen of the Transvaal team with successive balls at the end of the first innings and gained the first Transvaal wicket of the second innings with his first ball. McGlew died on June 9, 1998.
