Ken Wadsworth is a New Zealand-born cricketer who is best remembered for his wicketkeeping role in the New Zealand ODI and Test team during the 1970’s.
While he was famous for his progressively better performance for his wicketkeeping career in the national team, which made him a big threat to almost any batsman playing opposite to him, he also had a long-spanning domestic career.
Batting and Fielding Averages of Ken Wadsworth
| Mat | NO | Runs | HS | Ave | BF | SR | 100 | 50 | 6s | Ct | St | |
| Tests | 33 | 4 | 1010 | 80 | 21.48 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 92 | 4 | ||
| ODIs | 13 | 1 | 258 | 104 | 28.66 | 334 | 77.24 | 1 | 0 | 13 | 2 | |
| First-class | 118 | 23 | 3664 | 117 | 25.62 | 2 | 265 | 26 | ||||
| List A | 30 | 3 | 603 | 104 | 30.15 | 1 | 2 | 39 | 6 |
Back at home leagues, he mostly played for the Nelson in NZ’s Hawke Cup for the latter part of his career. His first-class cricket debut, however, was in 1968 for Central Stags. This was a tussle at Basin Reserve where Central Stags went toe to toe against Wellington for the Plunket Shield, and his performances in that session as a 22-year old promising wicketkeeper and aggressive batsman already earned him enough renown for a chance in the National colors next year. His first proper wicketkeeping debut in first-class cricket, however, was two months after the Basin Reserve debut. In that match, he played for the South Island side against a touring Windies team, and at the same time, bagged his first ever the first-class century.
The early days of his international cricket career were heavily geared towards batting because he showed immense potential at that department. Pundits often remark that Wadsworth would have been a gem of a batsman, the finest in his generation, were he not too aggressive in his play style.
Wadsworth’s first Test Debut was at Lord’s in an away tour against England, where he was chosen ahead of Barry Milburn as a lower middle-order batsman. His first ten test matches, however, earned him a net batting average of only 7.0, and it was much later in a Melbourne Test match in 1974 that he would reach his peak Test score of 80, also scoring an ODI century in the same tour in a Christchurch matchup. In his decade-long career, Wadsworth had been responsible for 92 and 13 catches in International test matches, and respectively 4 and 2 stumpings.
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