NZ’s baffling test XI
The Black Caps have had their fair share of dibbly-dobblers, strange selections and downright donkeys – Ian Anderson selects his team of test oddities.
Some played just one test and flopped. Others had a couple of seasons at the highest level before falling away rapidly, some deserved better from the selectors, while the most well-known example set the benchmark as a test cricket onehit wonder.
Welcome to New Zealand’s Most Baffling test cricket XI.
Debates over the merit of a cricketer’s inclusion in a team have switched from the bar to the water-cooler to social media over the past 90 years in NZ. No doubt there will be further arguments over this team of players – some memorable, others barely-known – who had turbulent times in tests.
The aggressive opening batsman took a long time to establish himself with Central Districts’ but a pile of runs in latter seasons led to his test selection in 2010.
That followed an unbeaten 245 in a Plunket Shield match, where he and team-mate Jamie How put on 428 for the first wicket in a successful final-innings chase for 445.
He made his test debut against Bangladesh aged 31, making 42 off 47 balls in his first innings at No 3 in Hamilton (as BJ Watling and Tim McIntosh opened) and 13 in the second. But as predicted by seasoned first-class watchers, his technique was exposed by Australia in Wellington the following month as he made 5 and 1 in a 10-wicket loss in his second and final test. He did play 8 ODIs and three T20s.
The schoolteacher, who made 5623 first-class runs at a healthy 39.87, suffered crushed vertebrae in his back and dislocated his knee in 2014 when when his tractor rolled on a steep bank at his farm.
He remains the only NZ test cricketer with a surname starting with I.
It’s one of NZ cricket’s bestknown ‘mysteries’.
On test debut against Pakistan at Eden Park in 1973, the lefthander hammered a rapid century in the first innings and made a half-century in the second. It was the last test he played.
Redmond went on tour to England in the following months but struggled with his eyesight – switching from contacts to glasses during his career – and John Parker was preferred as Glenn Turner’s opening partner.
He played domestically for a couple more seasons and left the game with a test average of 81.50. Son Aaron later played for NZ.
It seemed Watt got his test chance chiefly by virtue of being Bert Sutcliffe’s opening partner with Otago.
The defensive right-hand bat, who averaged 23.30 in first-class cricket and didn’t make a century in 48 games that spanned 20 years, played his only test at his home ground, Carisbrook, versus England in 1955 and made 0 and 2 batting at No 6.
One of 10 players to make a pair in their only test. Butterfield’s came against Australia in Wellington in 1946 when NZ were thumped by an innings and 103 runs, being dismissed for 42 and 54. He went lbw both times to Bill O’Reilly and never got to bowl in what was to be his last first-class game. In those 18 matches, he took 38 wickets at 19.65 and averaged 22.65 with the bat. Later in life he had a two decade-long stint as the chief stipendiary steward for the New Zealand Trotting Conference.
One test, one victory – over England – and never wore the whites again for New Zealand.
Adams played 42 one-day internationals for his country, but a back injury stalled his test ‘career’ soon after his debut at Eden Park, when he took six wickets in the first ‘‘unofficial’’ day-night test under lights in 2002.
Adams did get a helping hand from umpire Doug Cowie to dismiss Andrew Flintoff however.
The Auckland allrounder was then pigeon-holed as a white-ball specialist.
But Adams later moved to the UK and became a huge success in county cricket with Nottinghamshire. He ended his first-class career with 692 wickets at 23.95, while also averaging 21.31 with the bat, and it’s possible he may have been an earlierera Colin de Grandhomme-type had he been persevered with.
Mark Who?, said many casual NZ cricket fans when the Otago offspinner was called into the test squad during the absence of Daniel Vettori and Jeetan Patel for the tour of the West Indies in 2014.
Craig made a storming step-up – he captured 8 for 188, the best figures by a Kiwi on debut – as the Black Caps scored only their second test win in the Caribbean an a 186-run triumph in Jamaica. Later that year he took 10-203 and made 65 off 85 balls in NZ’s huge yet hollow win over Pakistan in Sharjah that was interrupted by the death of Australian batsman Phil Hughes.
He had match hauls of five wickets in tests against Sri Lanka and England, and captured 38 wickets in his first year of test cricket.
But Australia proved his rapid downfall. In four consecutive tests against our trans-Tasman rivals, the offie took just three wickets at the cost of an ominous 666 runs.
He played just one more test – a wicketless one in Kanpur against India and finished with a test bowling average of 46.52 for his 50 wickets – while proving to be an extremely capable lowerorder bat, averaging 36.81.
Has since struggled to earn a spot in the Otago side, not helped by illness and injury.
The legspinner who played one test and never bowled.
Loveridge was ear-marked early as a potential test player but, ironically as it later proved, a broken finger slowed his progress initially.
He made his test debut against Zimbabwe in Hamilton in 1996 and when batting at No 9 on his 21st birthday, he had a knuckle in the finger of his right bowling hand shattered by a delivery from Henry Olonga.
‘‘I tried to bowl in the nets the next day and blacked out. It wasn’t pretty, I had surgery the next day.’’
When the finger had healed, Loveridge said: ‘‘I was sent off to Adelaide to work with Terry Jenner [Shane Warne’s mentor]. He changed my action and that was it, I never got it back.’’
Loveridge went to study at Cambridge in England and is now the managing director for Robert Jones Holdings Ltd, on the NZ Rich List, and owner of a number of expensive properties.
The legspinner did a decent job in his debut test – he captured two Australian wickets for 30 runs at the Basin Reserve in 1946, with his scalps being notable ones in skipper Bill Brown and star allrounder Keith Miller. But Burke seemed to pay the unfair penalty for being in a team that lost by an innings and 103 runs, as NZ’s batsmen failed horribly, being dismissed for 42 and 54.
NZ’s only played one test in the next three years and there was no spot in the side for Burke, who took 200 first-class wickets at 25.99
Became the youngest man to play test cricket for New Zealand when he debuted as a Nelson College schoolboy against England in Christchurch in 1933. That record lasted until Daniel Vettori’s debut in 1997.
Aged 18 years and 197 days, the legspinner had only been playing first-class cricket for two months. Unsurprisingly, Freeman made minimal impact in an outclassed home team in two tests in Christchurch and Auckland.
His sole highlight was the wicket of legendary opener Herbert Sutcliffe in the second test. He played only one further firstclass game and spent the next 20 years working in Fiji for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company.
The quick bowler couldn’t have had a better start in test cricket.
In the second over of the first test against England in Christchurch in 1933, the 20-year-old bowled opener Eddie Paynter with a swinging delivery to the
left-hander. That put the visitors at 4-2 after Herbert Sutcliffe made a duck to the first ball of the test, and Walter Hammond was dropped in the same over off Ted Badcock.
Reprieved, Hammond made 227 as England reached 560-8, with Smith finishing with 1-113 off 20 overs. The Toowoombaborn seamer was relegated to 12th man duties for the next test and was never selected again. His first-class career consisted of 11 games in three seasons for Otago and Canterbury, taking 17 wickets at 33.52 and scoring 404 runs at 22.44.
The offspinner was a surprise selection to play against the mighty 1955-56 West Indies tourists.
His 4-73 in a game against the tourists before the test series swayed the selectors, but his two tests against the likes of Garfield Sobers and Everton Weekes produced just one wicket, at a cost of 120 runs. He did have the joy of dismissing Weekes in his first test, but the world-class middleorder bat had already reached his century by then.
Sinclair played only 15 firstclass games in three seasons, despite taking 41 wickets at 27.34.
Made his debut in the same test as fellow Baffling XI member
Greg Loveridge.
A tall, springy medium-fast bowler from Otago, he took 3-28 in his first innings of test bowling in a match where Nathan Astle and Geoff Allott also debuted.
But Kennedy struggled with the demands of reverse-swing and had his confidence badly battered after his second test by an ODI display during the same tour by Zimbabwe, that saw him give up 12 wides and five no-balls at Napier’s McLean Park, conceding 67 runs from nine wicketless overs.
He played two more tests on tour in the West Indies that year, but that was the last of his test career, ending with six wickets at 63.33.