True allrounder well suited to cricket
Donald Owen Neely cricketer, cricket coach and administrator, businessman b December 21, 1935 d June 16, 2022
Don Neely, or ‘‘D O’’ as he was popularly known, fell under cricket’s spell at the Basin Reserve, in Wellington, in March 1946. It was the start of an affair with the sport and the ground that stayed with him for life.
He devoted endless hours to the game as a player for Wellington and Auckland, a national selector, an innovative coach, an accomplished speaker, outstanding administrator, the author of numerous books, and an historian, recognised internationally.
Much of his early sporting days were at Miramar’s Crawford Green, often with his elder brother Bob. There was a lot of cricket and softball in the summer, and, as Neely’s wife Paddianne tells it, one day Bob said it was going to be softball for him in future.
Don decided to go his own way, preferring cricket, a move that was reinforced soon after when his teacher at Miramar South School invited any boys interested to accompany him to the Basin, where Australia were playing New Zealand in a test match for the first time.
Sir Donald Bradman was just about the only player missing in an Australian side packed with greats of the day, and the result was such a hiding that it wasn’t till 1973 that Australia deemed New Zealand strong enough to be worthy of another test. It was over in two days, the home team bowled out for 42 and 54.
Despite that, Paddianne said the occasion had ‘‘stirred Don’s interest’’ in cricket. Many years later, among the former Australian players the Neelys hosted at luncheons and reunions at the Basin during test matches was World War II fighter pilot Keith Miller, from the team that had beaten New Zealand in 1946.
Neely found someone with his passion for cricket in Barry Sinclair, and they would excel in the 1st XI at Rongotai College, and at the Kilbirnie club (now Eastern Suburbs).
In the book The Barry Sinclair Story, Sinclair talks about them meeting when he was maybe 10 and Neely was a year older, and the two of them playing ‘‘apple box (for stumps)’’ cricket on the street in imaginary England v Australia Ashes series, using a very basic bat and an oftenbattered tennis ball in the days when there was little traffic.
It was a friendship that would last a lifetime, and include them playing for Wellington, and Sinclair going on to play 21 tests for New Zealand, three of them as captain. It was before cricket became professional in New Zealand, and before batsmen wore helmets, and there was little or no coaching.
They learned the game on their own as best they could, yet they practised and trained with an intensity and application well ahead of its time. Most of it was at Kilbirnie Park, where they fashioned strong batting techniques. In an era when an emphasis on running between wickets wasn’t the priority it is today they shone batting together, such was their understanding and speed.
Neely played 34 first-class matches as a middle-order batsman, 21 of them for Wellington, 16 as captain. He led them to a Plunket Shield title, and made one century, 132 not out, against Otago.
He was seen as a natural leader, a sharp observer and an original thinker, and that would help lead him to becoming a national selector in 1979, after three summers of selecting Wellington teams.
For 14 years, seven of them as convener of the panel, the choices he helped make achieved remarkable results. The 1980s was a golden period for New Zealand cricket, only rivalled by the period that had the Black Caps become world test champions last year.
The side was just about unbeatable at home in tests, which included beating a fearsome West Indies 1-0 in a tense threematch series in 1980 (the other two matches were drawn), and beating England and Australia in away series for the first time.
Neely was still convener when they won their first seven matches in the World Cup one-day tournament in New Zealand in 1992 before losing to Pakistan in the semifinals. Among the players of the 1980s, who need no introduction, were Geoff Howarth, Sir Richard Hadlee, John Wright, Lance Cairns, John F Reid, Bruce Edgar, Jeremy Coney, Andrew Jones, Ewen Chatfield, Ian Smith and John Bracewell, and two related to Neely, Martin and Jeff Crowe.
Neely was influential, too, in the development of a young Edgar, another from Wellington’s eastern suburbs.
Neely started as an administrator at his beloved Kilbirnie club, and served on the Wellington Cricket Association’s management committee, where he would become a life member. He was also on the New Zealand junior cricket board, was a trustee and chairman of the New Zealand Cricket Museum, located in the western stand at the Basin, and a member of the Basin Reserve Trust.
It was no surprise when he became a life member of New Zealand Cricket in 1995, and from 2006-09 he was its president, his deep knowledge and love of the game and ability to speak eloquently on it having made him an ideal choice.
Neely’s thirst for the game as a youngster soon had him searching, largely in vain, for books on the sport at the public library. Arthur Carman’s former bookshop in Lambton Quay would become a popular haunt, a place where Neely could read overseas cricket books. Carman wrote and published the first New Zealand Cricket Almanack in 1948.
Neely soon found, though, that there were gaps in the sport’s historical literature here after the early works of T.W. Reese. In 1973 he wrote the first of 19 editions of the New Zealand Cricket Annual. Soon after, Neely produced 100 Summers, The history of Wellington cricket, and in 1986 came his best-known work, the bulky Men in White, with Richard King and Francis Payne, a history of every game a New Zealand team had played from the first in 1894 to 1985, which was updated in 2008.
With work and a family it was an exacting task, taking Neely five years to complete, and Paddianne was moved to remark at the time that for the last 26 years he had a mistress, ‘‘cricket’’.
A favourite of Neely’s was The Summer Game, an illustrated history of New Zealand cricket, published in 1994, in which Paddianne had a particular hand, including travelling around the country in search of photographs. They were a great team. She helped him with his books, and in later years Neely assisted her with her archivist work at a number of colleges. ‘‘Don was my first love and my last,’’ she said this week.
Both have received national honours, Neely twice for services to cricket, and Paddianne for services as an archivist. A privately financed permanent reminder to Neely at the Basin, an electronic scoreboard, was erected in 2008, and named after him.
The couple started out as teachers, meeting at Masterton Intermediate in 1960. Neely enjoyed teaching, and Paddianne said he was very good at it, but the pay was modest.
He then worked for several businesses, in particular being sales and marketing manager of Rembrandt Suits Ltd for many years. He would have been well suited to it. Neely was slight, and dressed immaculately. He would wear ties, often with a cricketing association, and jackets a lot of the time.
The Neelys were wonderful hosts. Plenty of cricket players, officials, journalists and broadcasters, many from overseas, could attest to that.
Neely stood out as modest, and the mark of the man was his interest in cricket no matter the level. He enjoyed watching his grandchildren play, and passing on his passion to them. He left an enormous legacy in a lifetime of serving the game, even to being seen as a key figure in its evolution in New Zealand.
Neely died with dementia at Te Hopai Hospital in Wellington. He is survived by Paddianne, children Kristen, Sean and Jason, and seven grandchildren. His funeral was held yesterday at the Basin.
It could hardly have been anywhere else. – By Peter Bidwell