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Tom Maynard: A Life Too Short

A week is a long time in sport. In life, however, a week is simply taken for granted and often forgotten over a lifetime. It has now been two weeks since Tom Maynard tragically passed away, and that means two weeks that he has not had the chance to experience. 

The tragic death of Tom last Monday hit home hard; a young cricketer of prodigious talent and huge prospects, his exciting future was prematurely ended in just a few fatal minutes.

 
Although his cricketing talent is what most will remember Tom by, the outpouring of emotion and grief from childhood friends, school friends, team-mates and many more bare testament to the engaging and likeable young man that Tom was. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; if anyone truly embraced the ethos of carpe diem, it was Tom.
 
In the days following Tom’s death, his popularity won by his infectious personality has been validated by the  scores of people expressing their sorrow at his death.
 
At Millfield School, Tom was one of those superstars: a sporting hero with a hint of mischief. He was someone who lived life to its fullest extent and I don’t think I’d be the only one to admit that he epitomised both who and where we wanted to be in life.
 
To me, just starting out on the cricket scene at one of the biggest and most daunting sporting institutions in the country, he was a sign of what could be achieved. Too often the sporting superstars, or ‘jocks’, as we used to call them, at schools across the country carry about them an air of arrogance and superiority as a result of their talents.

Not Tom. Confident of course – he had every right to be – but coupled with that was an approachability and warmth rarely seen among the sporting elite and these things truly set him apart.
 
Tom’s death is a tragedy and it may seem churlish to try and seek any good that has resulted from such sorrow. But it only seems right, for both Tom and for his family, that we should acknowledge that the last few days have brought everyone that knew Tom – be it through his time at Millfield School, or simply through being part of the greater cricket community – closer together, united by the strength of the bond that was and is Tom.
 
I only crossed paths with Tom through our cricketing circles at school, but in sharing many mutual friends, it is clear that he was both admired and adored by those of us lucky enough to have met him. It is for these qualities through which he must be remembered.  A life lost is always a great tragedy, but of one so young, so affable and with such sheer potential is a tragedy beyond compare. 

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