Career
Cordner comes from a famous Australian rules football family with three brothers, Don, Denis and Ted all having noted careers for the Melbourne Football Club. John spent just one season with Melbourne, in 1951, and played six VFL games. Playing against Queensland at Brisbane he dismissed both openers, Leyland Sanders and Wally Grout, with his left-arm fast-medium bowling to finish with figures of 2 for 37 in the first innings.
Despite playing another three first-class matches he only managed to take one further wicket.
The last of those matches was for English side Warwickshire when they took on the touring Indian cricket team He was in England at the time studying nuclear science.