Martin Olive

Martin Olive (born 18 April 1958) played first-class and List A cricket for Somerset from 1977 to 1981.^[1] He also played Minor Counties and List A cricket for Devon. He was born at Watford, Hertfordshire.

Olive was a right-handed middle-order or opening batsman. He was a successful school cricketer at Millfield School and was playing for Somerset's second eleven at the age of 17. In 1977, he made a single List A appearance and then his first-class debut, playing in a handful of games, and then appeared in the England Under-19 team in one-day international matches.^[2] The strength of Somerset's squad restricted Olive's first-team opportunities to a single game in each of the 1978 and 1979 seasons; he did not play any further one-day matches for Somerset. But in 1980, he played in nine first-class games, and in the match against Yorkshire at Weston-super-Mare he made exactly 50, the only first-class half-century of his career.^[3] Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, in its report on Somerset in the 1981 edition, said that Olive "did enough to suggest a future as a sound opening batsman".^[4]

In 1981, however, Olive was unsuccessful in the three first-class matches in which he appeared, and Jeremy Lloyds became the regular opening batsman for the team. Olive left the Somerset staff at the end of the season and took a job in a building society in Devon: the building society was the target of a holdup on his first day.^[5] In 1982, 1986 and 1987, he played Minor Counties cricket for Devon and in 1987 he made a single List A appearance in the NatWest Trophy, opening the batting for Devon in a heavy defeat against Worcestershire.^[6]

As of 2011, he is head of key accounts at Sun Life Financial of Canada, based in Bristol.^[7]

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