PRESTATYN’S young star cricketer Will Owen has been awarded a full-time professional contract by Glamorgan in an historic first for the club.
A product of Prestatyn’s flourishing youth programme, strike bowler Owen, a former pupil of Prestatyn High School, has so impressed in his two years apprenticeship with Glamorgan that he has now earned a foot on the first-class ladder at the age of 21.
Prestatyn chairman Tony Young said: “It’s a tremendous achievement and we are all absolutely delighted with this great news,” said Prestatyn’s chairman Tony Young. “We always knew that Will had the talent and the natural ability to break into the highest levels of the professional game and now the way is wide open for him.”
Owen, clocked at 90.9 mph in a recent match, has already turned in some starring performances, including a top 5-49 stint as well as claiming the cherished wicket of the country’s leading run-scorer Mark Ramprakash in a 2-36 spell against Surrey.
A serious shoulder injury kept Owen out of action for most of last season but now he is back to peak fitness and raring to go and could well figure in Glamorgan’s championship match against Lancashire at Colwyn Bay in August.
His elevation extends a family link with the game dating back to his grandfather, the legendary former chairman of Denbigh Cricket Club and prominent North Wales umpire and administrator David Thomas Owen, not forgetting his sporting father Haydn Owen, a past chairman, player and Second X1 captain of Prestatyn.