Kiwi ‘second only to Bradman’
His name adorns the northern entrance of the Basin Reserve, a lofted drive from where he grew up on Kent Terrace.
Thousands of cricket fans and pedestrians stroll through the CS Dempster Gate, season after season, many without knowing the significance of the name to New Zealand Cricket.
For the fleeting fan, Stewie Dempster may be the greatest New Zealand cricketer you’ve never heard of.
How good? The title of a new book by cricket author and former NZC board member Bill Francis gives a clue: Second Only to Bradman – The Life of Stewie Dempster.
Ninety years this January since he became New Zealand’s first test century-maker – against England on his Basin backyard – Dempster’s batting average remains second to the great Sir Don Bradman among those to play 10 or more tests.
Behind Bradman’s stratospheric figure of 99.94, Dempster slots in with 65.72 ahead of modern-day great Steve Smith (64.56, and climbing).
Francis says the batting average was merely a starting point for telling his remarkable story, after Dempster spoke of writing a book but never got there before his death in Wellington in 1974, aged 70.
Dempster scored that landmark century in New Zealand’s second test in 1930, and 18 months later repeated the feat in his first overseas test, at Lord’s. His test career spanned just 10 matches and three years.
In all first-class matches for New Zealand, Dempster scored 11
centuries, then another 18 for Leicestershire as he built a successful 14-year career in England before returning home and struggling to find his niche before entering coaching.
Francis describes Dempster as ‘‘a distant and somewhat neglected figure of New Zealand Cricket history’’.