Name: Luke Woodcock
Playing Style: Left hand bat, Left arm spin
Nickname: Woody
Secondary School Attended: Newlands College
Club: Johnsonville
Earliest Cricket Memory: Playing backyard cricket with my brothers
Favourite Ground to play: Basin Reserve
Most memorable cricket moment: Getting selected for NZ in 2011 World Cup
Favourite player growing up: Brian Lara
The non-cricketing sports person or team I most admire: Roger Federer
If I wasn’t a Firebird I’d be: Be somewhere else in sport
Favourite superhero: Batman
Favourite holiday destination: Sunshine Coast
In my spare time I like to: Sit on Cricinfo
My signature dish is: Anything Mexican
My favourite song is: Lightning crashes
My favourite movie is: Anything with Bruce Willis
My favourite food is: Mexican
Chores as kid: Was always washing up
Favourite school subject: P.E
Worst school subject: Science
Do you have any pets? No
If I could have anything, I would want: My hair back
The biggest influence on my cricketing career is: My brothers
Something you didn’t know about me is: I am a twin
Wellington Firebirds debut: v Otago Volts 2001-02 (first-class)
Best bat: 220 not out v Central Stags, Basin Reserve 2009-10 (first-class)
Best bowl: 4 for 3 v Otago Volts 2001-02 (first-class)
Luke Woodcock’s stocks continued to rise ahead of the 2011-12 summer of cricket having been selected in the BLACKCAPS for his second overseas tour in October, in the One-Day and Twenty20 series against Zimbabwe. This follows on from him making his international Twenty20 and One-Day debuts against Pakistan in December and January and then travelling with the BLACKCAPS as part of their One-Day World Cup squad.
Previously, Woodcock enjoyed an outstanding season for the Wellington Firebirds in 2009-10. He scored 988 runs and broke Wellington’s all-time single season scoring record by a hundred runs and deservedly won that season’s Wellington Player of the Year trophy .Highlights included his mammoth 220 not out and ninth wicket record partnership of 225 with Malaesaili Tugaga against the Central Stags and his 93 and match winning 125-run partnership with debutant Joe Austin-Smellie against the Northern Knights.
He also averaged 31 at a strike rate of 96 in the One-Day competition, and to top off a great season, his performances were duly recognised with his selection in the New Zealand ‘A’ side for the second consecutive year.
Woodcock is also an attacking left arm spin bowler who regularly picks up wickets in all three forms of the game.
He won the Best Allrounder’s gong at the previous year’s end of season Cricket Wellington Awards, as recognition of a fine all-round 2008-09 season. In the first-class competition he scored four half centuries and one century and took 16 wickets. He took 12 wickets in the one-day competition and captured three consecutive three-wicket hauls and added some valuable runs in the middle order in the domestic Twenty20 series.
He is also a regular accumulator of runs in club cricket for his club team Johnsonville, reaching the milestone of 4,000 club cricket runs in November 2008.