Summer game littered with feuds and fads
IAIN GALLAWAY turns 90 on Boxing Day. I am sure he won’t mind me mentioning this.
A former first-class cricketer and president of New Zealand Cricket, he’s probably best known as a topflight broadcaster and radio commentator; a pioneer whose gravelly tones (sometimes from distant, exotic lands) brought the game to life for thousands of Kiwi sports followers. In terms of our national team, few others can match his breadth of perspective.
I was thinking of Gallaway last week as debate continued to rage over the New Zealand team’s captaincy switch; particularly the treatment of deposed skipper Ross Taylor. Listening to some of the comments offered, you could be forgiven for assuming the game had descended into unprecedented levels of acrimony and spite but those with longer memories might beg to differ.
To some, it must seem like history repeating.
Take Gallaway. He was a central figure in Otago cricket (and the Plunket Shield team’s wicketkeeper) when local favourite and ‘‘wharfie’’ George Mills was overlooked for the 1949 team to tour England, the selectors preferring the claims of Frank Mooney. So incensed were the Otago faithful, particularly by a rumour Mills was not wanted because of his working-class background, the watersiders threatened to go on strike.
Then Gallaway watched the class of 1953 jettison some of its best players for the tour of South Africa on account of their waistlines.
The 1958 version became hopelessly obsessed with youth; the 1965 vintage with the need for right arm-leg spinners.
He saw Glenn Turner’s showdown with NZ Cricket chairman Walter Hadlee; Jeremy Coney’s non-speaking spat with Walter’s son, Richard; the rift between Ken Rutherford and Martin Crowe. Turner versus Chris Cairns and Adam Parore.
But there are some good yarns too. In Otago’s match against the MCC in 1947, Bert Sutcliffe made 197 before being dismissed, at which point Gallaway strode to the crease and was bowled first ball.
How enthusiastic was the Carisbrook crowd’s applause for Sutcliffe? So clamorous it continued unabated as Gallaway followed him back to the dressing room. Gallaway reckons it was the first time he ever had a standing ovation for a golden duck.
Perspective comes with experience. Gallaway’s first overseas tour as a correspondent was New Zealand’s 1955 visit to India and Pakistan. Just eight years after partition, conditions were extreme. He wrote in his book Not a Cloud in the Sky of witnessing the indecent contrast between poverty and wealth; the ‘‘shocking squalor of people living and dying on the streets’’; the ‘‘horror’’ of the refugee camps, the ‘‘maimed and the starving’’.
How hard was it? Some members of the touring side developed illnesses from which they never fully recovered. Sutcliffe returned two stone lighter, missed the historic 1956 win against the West Indies and was still looking gaunt on the 1958 tour of England.
Johnny Hayes and Tony MacGibbon were worse; continuing to suffer relapses for decades. Against the backdrop of that, today’s controversies might well seem like small beer.
Gallaway was also a fine rugby player and later an expert commentator on the 15-man game. But it’s fair to say cricket is his main sporting love. Certainly, he was a reluctant lawyer. A cadet reporter for the Otago Daily Times before the war, he served in the Navy and opted for a career in the legal profession only after returning to Dunedin to find the ODT was offering no more in the way of remuneration than when he left, some 41⁄ years earlier.
Still, the good news was Gallaway was able to find the time to pursue his passion for journalism via the microphone, becoming one of New Zealand’s most admired and treasured commentators. To this day, when I see his name or hear his voice, I think of summer. It’s nice too, at a time of such finger-pointing and upheaval, to reflect on the turmoil and hardship he’s seen within the game here – if only as an exercise in context. A big part of celebrating New Zealand cricket is the ability to remember where it came from.
Gallaway’s contribution in that regard has been immense; I am not sure there’s been any bigger.
In the most fundamental sense he ranks as one of our best Kiwi story-tellers (non-fiction section); someone who, solely through his measured words was able to draw pictures in our minds and have them play games.
We’re all the richer for that, and the perspective he brings us. Merry Christmas everyone. And Iain – happy birthday.