Blue Caps to New Zealand
Archie Mac and Martin Chandler |Published: 2024
Pages: 282
Author: Lloyd, Peter and Rodgers, Pat
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4.5 stars
Archie’s Review
The full title of this book is Blue Caps to New Zealand The NSW Tour of 1923-24. In actual fact this book is so much more. The authors briefly cover several early cricket tours to the Shaky Isles, commencing with George Parr’s England team of 1863/64. What this delivers is a fascinating potted history of how New Zealand cricket devotees fought to establish the game in their country, while also trying to lift the standard of their play.
These tours almost directly decided the fate of the game in New Zealand as the profits or losses appear to substantiate the popularity of cricket to the Kiwis. It quickly becomes apparent in Blue Caps to New Zealand that assistance from big brother Australia is given begrudgingly and when given is mostly an afterthought. The authors pull no punches in this regard and indicate that as a result of Aussie cricket apathy the Kiwis almost certainly took a lot longer to reach Test level.
Making a trip to Australia for development purposes becomes so costly, they were few and far between through to the 1970s. The Australian Board of Control (previously the Australasian Cricket Council) appears to have considered the game in New Zealand as a distraction and regularly refused to sanction tours between the countries. Of course, player power before the Great War was an added factor in formulating many unofficial tours. What this meant was that the New Zealand Cricket Council (NZCC), which was established in 1894, primarily to attract more in-country cricketing tours, often had to negotiate directly with private promoters or with state associations in Australia or look to England. The latter option was certainly more financially speculative, and as we learn in one instance, Archie MacLaren’s squad of 1922/23, all but bankrupted the NZCC.
In the end the most supportive and profitable tours came from NSW teams. Even then these teams were often not fully representative of NSW cricket but rather were considered a means of developing local talent. Again, the authors provide details of prior tours before the 1923/24 main discourse. These tours were almost non events according to the Australian newspapers, but thankfully for posterity are well covered by the home fourth estate members.
Throughout the book, the authors keep reminding/teasing the reader that the coverage of the 1923/24 tour will soon start and the eventual coverage is worth the wait. The team is captained by the legendary Charlie Macartney and is widely agreed to be the strongest NSW teams ever sent to the Shaky Isles. Apart from the captain, the team features legends of the game such as Warren Bardsley, Bert Oldfield, Arthur Mailey and, at the time the rookie, Alan Kippax. It’s a pity that the greatest all round in the game in Jack Gregory was not able to tour. Still, the team played to entertain and the scoring rates listed are mouthwatering. This team, like almost every other team to tour New Zealand to that point, was far too strong for the opposition and never really looked like losing a match.
This is the second recent collaboration between these authors, with the previous biography on NSW cricketer Bert Folkard being published in 2024 and also reviewed on Cricket Web. Both books are handsomely produced, with quality photos throughout, with many in colour. The writing is first rate, and you will feel as though you have been transported back to the roots of the game in New Zealand. You find yourself sympathising with the New Zealand lovers of the sport and their determination to raise the standard of cricket in the Dominion. Recognition of Māori Land as a Test nation would not occur until 1931.
This quality book deserves to be read by all cricket lovers. It is available from Roger Page and Ken Piesse in Australia; in England through John McKenzie and New Zealand through Ronald Cardwell. The book is a limited signed edition in both the Hardback = 60 copies and the Paperback edition = 70 copies. That’s not many, so put your order in before you miss out.
Author Peter Lloyd informs that he has begun a biography on JC. Davis, the editor and chief writer of the renowned Sydney sporting newspaper the Referee – which will undoubtedly be devoured by cricket book lovers when it appears later this year.
Martin’s Review
I have often bemoaned the continuing demise of the tour book, and at the present time at least I see no indication that the Ashes series just gone is to be recorded in print. The consolation for that loss has been the growth of the retrospective account, so I suppose it is reasonable to assume that, at some point in the future, probably when I am too decrepit to enjoy it, one of the leading cricket writers of the time will tell the story of the 2025/26 campaign.
Alongside the trend of visiting Test series past we have also seen another welcome sub-genre of cricket book appear, the account of the minor tour. These are trips where no Test cricket was played, and sometimes no First Class matches either. They will almost certainly not involve representative sides, and often concern trips to or visits from teams and places that are not the game’s main centres.
In Victorian times there were a few books that featured these tours, ‘Plum’ Warner in particular chronicling several tours that he went on. During the twentieth century however there were rarely any books published at the time about these trips, the limited interest in the tours making sure that in the days before self publishing was viable there was no commercial publisher who would be prepared to become involved.
So until the internet age these tours were almost forgotten, but increased access to archive material and the relative ease with which a small print run can be produced at reasonable cost has led to if not a flood then certainly more than a trickle of titles related to the less ambitious cricket tours of yesteryear and, with this title, noted historians Peter Lloyd and Pat Rodgers have added their first contribution to this trend, and done so in style.
Nominally, as the sub-title makes clear, Blue Caps to New Zealand is about the twelve New South Wales cricketers who undertook a tour of New Zealand in February and March of 1934. The tourists played twice against representative New Zealand sides, First Class matches against Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland and Otago as well as six other matches against a variety of other opponents.
The initial reaction might be one of surprise at the fact that an account of such a relatively short trip could take up as many as 282 pages, much longer than many full accounts of Ashes tours of the past. What could there be to say? The answer to that one is a great deal as title and sub-title notwithstanding the scope of the book is considerably greater than just the cricket that was played in those two months in early 1924.
The book isn’t quite a history of cricket in New Zealand, but it is a history of touring sides visiting the country. The first was back in 1863 when a team from England that was led by George Parr, whose powerful side included such luminaries as EM Grace and William Caffyn swept all before them. After that there were as many as 22 more visiting sides before 1924, six more from England, fifteen from Australia and one from Fiji.
Lloyd and Rodgers do not look at all of these tours in minute detail, although some of them do get an extended summary. The main areas of interest tends to lie in the background to the visits and off field matters as much as the cricket itself which, almost always, ended in substantial victories for the tourists.
The 1924 visit was an official one, organised by the New South Wales Cricket Association. The side chosen for the tour was not a full strength one, but one of the requirements was that six senior players make the trip. In the end there were seven internationals, Tommy Andrews, Warren Bardsley, Charlie Macartney, Arthur Mailey, Bert Oldfield, ‘Stork’ Hendry and Alan Kippax.
The accounts of the matches show, as you would expect, that the tourists were not seriously tested. In the very first match of the tour Wellington emerged from their drawn game with some credit, but all the other fixtures ended up either in comfortable victories for New South Wales or, in three cases, the local side hanging on for a draw. A glance at the tourists’ averages tells the story starkly, all but one of the twelve averaging at least 30 with the bat, and eight bowlers averaging 20.50 or less.
But there were some decent contributions from some of the New Zealand batsmen as well. The fascinating character that was Bert Kortlang scored 67 for Wellington, and was the only New Zealander to emerge with any credit from the wreckage of the second representative fixture when his side were dismissed for 89 and 79. There were two centuries recorded for home batsmen, one in the first representative match by future Gloucestershire pro Cec Dacre, and for South Canterbury by Joe Kane who, slightly surprisingly against that background was not to ever play so much as a single First Class match.
The tourists were then and are still well known names and there are extensive biographical details on them all, but there is much too on the lesser known of the tourists, and information regarding the New Zealand players as well. Personally however I found the most enjoyable chapter in the book to be the fourth, which contains essays on seven Australians who had, prior to the 1924 tour, made significant contributions to the development of New Zealand cricket. They are not all well known, but include Macartney, the hero of the inaugural Test Charles Bannerman, and one of the men playing at the Oval in 1882 when the Ashes story was born, Sammy Jones.
So the content of Blue Caps to New Zealand is immensely readable, and the book has the presentation to match. It has forewords from descendants of one of the tourists, Austin Punch, and former New Zealand opening bowler Martin Snedden, whose grandfather Nessie played against the New South Welshman. The book is profusely illustrated, has all the tour statistics and scorecards a decent index. It is highly recommended.
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