New Zealand's Wisden Cricketers of the Year - the firsts continue

Glenn Turner on the attack at Worcestershire

Part 2/3:

From the mid-1950s through the 1970s those honoured with the opportunity to wear New Zealand’s iconic black cap, emblazoned with the silver fern, continued the progress of the trailblazers of the New Zealand game. It was a period of peaks and troughs – more ups than downs when context is applied. There were undoubted struggles but looking back through rose-tinted glasses it was an era of international development nonetheless. At times, such as on the 1971-2 Windies tour New Zealand played largely for the draw because of relative strength of their batting when compared to often sparse bowling stocks, but that was preferable to series defeats suffered at the hands of England both home and away in 1962-3 and 1965 respectively.

New Zealand was the lowest ranked test nation throughout though there was no Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe or Bangladesh to supplement results. Yet over a quarter of a century they managed to win tests, and a series for the first time. The Kiwis had their first truly professional cricketer in the mercurial Glenn Turner, who regardless of his struggles with the game’s administration at home did wonders to lift New Zealand’s profile on the world stage, most notably in England. Whilst some of the results weren’t as strong as we were to see through the 1980s when New Zealand had, what is arguably, its most competitive side in a period when test cricket  was at a peak, this group of cricketers continued to build a base that enabled Hadlee, Crowe, Cairns et al. to flourish in the decades that followed.

XI lessons from a New Zealand summer

Part 1: Opening up at the top of the order

New Zealand’s domestic summer is over – next stop is the Windies in the Caribbean. Before we move on to reggae, rum and Caribbean cool it’s apt we look back at the home summer.

From a T20I against Zimbabwe in Harare on Oct 15, 2011 until the end of the third South African test at Wellington’s Basin Reserve on 27 March, 2012  New Zealand have played 23 matches across all international formats – the much maligned Brendon McCullum is the only player to don the black cap in every match.

The undoubted highlight was New Zealand’s victory against Australia at Hobart in late 2011 – Doug Bracewell’s heroics helped his side to their first test victory on Australian soil in 26 years and confirmed the promise he’d shown in Zimbabwe. For mind, Kane Williamson’s fighting century in the final test of the summer ran it close.