Wisden overview
This hugely talented right-hand batsman once ranked highest among New Zealand's nearly players. A dashing batsman with sumptuous strokes, Spearman looked like another Martin Crowe coming through the Auckland ranks. Like Crowe, Spearman eventually emigrated to Central Districts, and every now and then played a big innings built around breathtaking strokes either straight, or to the cover and mid-wicket fences. The New Zealand selectors picked him, perhaps too early, and began a frustrating in-and-out career for Spearman who never did well enough for long enough. In the modern game Spearman might have done well purely as a one-day player, but those days may well have passed him by. Don Cameron

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