Australian batsman Dan Wilson will not be returning to York Cricket Club (From York Press)

Australian batsman Dan Wilson will not be returning to York Cricket Club

10:46am Wednesday 30th December 2009 in

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YORK Cricket Club’s Australian run machine Dan Wilson will not be returning to Clifton Park next season.

The 25-year-old has opted to stay in Queensland, and establish himself in his homeland, rather than spend another year terrorising bowlers in the Oxbridge Yorkshire ECB County Premier League.

Wilson has spent three seasons at Shipton Road but the Laidley-based batsman, who plays for South Brisbane, and has told club chiefs he won’t be back in 2010.

“He is trying to set up a life in Australia and he feels he wouldn’t be able to do that if he came back to England,” said York’s club secretary Nick Kay.

“He would have to take another temporary job and his personal circumstances mean he is going to stay in Australia. He has got his own life to think about.”

Last September, Wilson, who helped York to an unprecedented third league title on the bounce, broke the league runs record – passing Andrew Bourke’s previous best tally of 1,423.

Having missed the record by a mere 103 runs the season before, Wilson ended the 2009 campaign with 1,542 runs at an average of 73.43.

Speaking of the record, Wilson said: “I had a great chance to break it last year, but I didn’t bat very well towards the end of the season. It’s been a lot harder to break the record than I thought it would be.

“Looking back at the season, I feel like I’ve batted well and not done much wrong – and I’ve only just broken it with two games to go.”

In his three seasons at York, Wilson hit 3,759 Yorkshire League runs, including 11 hundreds and two double hundreds.

Although the loss of such a high-profile batsman is naturally a blow to York’s hopes of a fourth successive league crown, Kay said he was sure other players would step up to the plate in Wilson’s absence.

He added: “It will give a lot of our opposition a bit of confidence that he’s not there. When you are scoring 1,500 runs a season, you are scoring against nearly every opposition.

“But, from our point of view, it’s an opportunity for Liam McKenzie, for Duncan Snell to score more than 1,000 runs again, for Simon Mason, Ashley Hulme, Al Collins and myself, and we are more than capable of filling the void.

“I would like to thank Dan Wilson and, any time he wants to come back, he will be a friend for life. It will be strange not stepping onto the pitch with him but we wish him all the best and hope everything works out for him.”