A quick check under the table confirms Matthew Maynard is wearing normal, everyday shoes. It is worth having a look because this is a man who walked from John O’Groats to Land’s End in his wellies.
His hike of more than 1,100 miles, during which he was hospitalised with a severe chest infection, was the last of a series of epic physical challenges over the past decade that Maynard has tackled to raise money for, among others, the charity set up in the memory of his son Tom as well as the Professional Cricketers’ Trust and Help for Heroes.
When he walked into Land’s End on March 24 last year to finish a walk he started in October 2023, his wellies finally gave up and split. “I thought, well, that’s a sign. You’ve done enough fundraising. Call it a day on this.”
He did it the hard way, taking a longer route to avoid walking on major roads and would sleep at night in a campervan, drop it off at the start point of each day’s walk and then look for public transport to take him back to pick up the vehicle at the end of the day. He eventually raised more than £20,000, adding to the thousands of donations from previous challenges including walking from Cardiff to Colwyn Bay, his first welly walk (he swears by French brand Aigle for those wanting welly tips).
Why wellies, though? “I was looking for something a bit different, a legacy appeal for Tom. There’s a Welsh weatherman called Derek Brockway, and he does something called Weatherman Walking. I spoke to him and I said, like: ‘Do you mind if, instead of weatherman walking, I use welly-man walking?’ He said: ‘No, no, brilliant. I’ll come and join you.’”
The inspiration for his efforts was to honour the memory of Tom and through it help deal with his grief after losing his son in 2012 at the age of just 23. Tom Maynard was a rising young player, starting to build a reputation at Surrey, after moving from Glamorgan to the Oval two years earlier when his father was forced out at Sophia Gardens as head coach. Tom toured with the England Lions the winter before he died and started the 2012 season strongly with a first-class hundred against Worcestershire.
The circumstances of his death were public and painful for the family. The inquest found he had drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy in the form of MDMA, in his system, and had been using them regularly. He was four times over the drink-drive limit and was killed after running away from police when they pulled him over for driving erratically.
“He made some bad decisions that night, which we’ve all done at times, but didn’t necessarily cost you your life. We just wish we had been there that night to say, ‘No, you’re not driving’,” says Maynard.
“He was living his life. He was loving life. He was playing well and things were on the up. We can’t change what the inquest said. We don’t believe he was a ‘habitual’ cocaine user, the word they used. We obviously know that he did take it that night. But the reports were saying that it was habitual, that he’d been doing it for months, and we just couldn’t see that because we didn’t see any changing behaviours of someone becoming a drug addict.
“Also, you can’t get away with it in the game, there’s too many drug tests, so we don’t believe he was habitual. We have the coroner’s report. I don’t believe my wife has read it even now. I think I glanced at it once because, what is the point? It is not going to bring him back. Whatever was said, we had to kind of accept it, even if we don’t agree.”
We meet at Sophia Gardens on a cold, damp Tuesday. Maynard is looking fit and strong, with flecks of white in his beard now, and is sitting in one of the hospitality suites which is adorned with bats and shirts. His autograph is on one or two, him being a Glamorgan legend of course.
Last year Maynard was honoured by the Professional Cricketers’ Association with an outstanding contribution award, presented to a standing ovation at its end-of-season ball. He spoke emotionally on stage, reflecting on 10 years of the Tom Maynard Trust, which the family have now wound down, content their work is done after raising more than £1 million, 98 per cent of which Maynard estimates was spent on their target areas, with the only employee a half-day fee a week for Mike Fatkin, the former Glamorgan chief executive who would look after the paperwork.
“We just felt it was right to call it a day. Tom had his legacy and what we wanted as a family. We were only going to go for five years initially and try to raise a quarter-million in that time. But it was being so well supported we decided to carry on and did a million pounds over 10 years. That’s a hell of a legacy, isn’t it, to come out of a horrible thing.”
The money was used to give bursaries to young sportsmen and women across cricket, rugby, cycling, Taekwondo, basketball and even frisbee. For five years the charity ran an academy in Desert Springs, Spain, for a dozen emerging county cricketers, three of them going on to play Test cricket for England. Nets for juniors at Glamorgan’s Sophia Gardens were paid for by the trust and named after Tom – his sister Ceri facing the first ball when they were opened – and the charity worked on education programmes in football, rugby union, netball and horse racing to make young people aware of potential pitfalls.
It was also cathartic for Maynard, to help deal with grief, and try to revive some of the vitality in a character renowned across the game for his warmth, conviviality, and for handing out cigars on a good day. Years of counselling, provided through the PCA, were crucial too.
“You don’t enjoy life the same way, because you’re damaged goods. For a period I was drinking way too much, wasn’t eating correctly, lost a lot of weight. Then I got out walking. Before, I used to run to train, stick music on and get it done without thinking. Now I never put earphones in. I just think, you know, I just let my thoughts go whichever way, spot the wildlife, listen to the wildlife, and I really enjoy that. I just don’t take things for granted as much. I call it small wins. I celebrate those little, small wins, maybe that is getting a birdie on the golf course. I might hole a putt, light up a cigar and enjoy the moment.
“The counselling taught me that the more you talk about Tom, the easier it becomes without breaking down. That is the one thing that both my daughter and my wife still, at times, struggle with. When my wife meets new people they ask if she only has one child, a daughter. My daughter will be asked, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ So they don’t like to be in those environments meeting new people because they still get upset by it and understandably so. You never get over it. You learn to live with it, and that loss, it changes you, changes who you are, how you see things. And you’ve got to stick together. We’re probably tighter as a family. My daughter went through a real tough time, and that was really hard for us to watch. She was just trying to escape, find her way.”
Ceri found her calling in outdoor sports, and now works as an instructor and guide in south Wales. “We’re very happy, she’s now in a good place.” She accompanied her dad for part of the last long walk.
Last year I interviewed Josh Baker’s parents, the 20-year-old Worcestershire cricketer who died suddenly at home, halfway through a second-XI match. They are hoping to emulate the Maynard family with a trust in their son’s name, a way to memorialise him, help others and give them focus as a family. “I wanted to create a legacy for Tom. I wasn’t entirely sure what, where, or how,” says Maynard. “It was a huge help for us and I think we did that and more.”
Tom was a big physical presence, a batsman who hit the ball hard and was a good fielder. He could well have broken into the England set-up in time to be part of the white-ball teams of the last decade that won the World Cup. He would surely have cashed in on the franchise circuit, too and would now be coming up to 36. “He was developing his red-ball game but I don’t know, you need a bit of luck along the way. But in short-form cricket he would have had a great chance.”
Maynard says he is now in “semi-retirement” as he approaches 60 (he is 59 in March). For a couple of hours three days a week he coaches young batsmen at Glamorgan. He works with the England and Wales Cricket Board mentoring young coaches, and is assistant coach of the Welsh Fire Hundred team. It is hard to think of a better mentor than Maynard, with his life experiences and 40 years in the professional game, firstly as a talented player probably ahead of his time, and later a member of the England backroom team in the glittering Ashes summer of 2005.
He is also a good point of contact for other ex-pros watching their sons make their way in the game, two of them his old mates from 2005 in Michael and Archie Vaughan and Andrew and Rocky Flintoff.
“I was a lot more nervous watching Tom than I ever felt as a player myself. Funnily enough, I probably felt more nervous when he was playing for me at Glamorgan than when he was at Surrey because people might say: ‘Oh, he’s only in there because of his old man.’ Once he got past 10 or 15 the butterflies would lift, yeah, we loved watching him play.”
