At a glance

Highest test cricket batting averages (minimum 10 tests): 99.94: Don Bradman, Australia (52 tests)

65.72: Stewie Dempster, New Zealand (10 tests)

64.56: Steve Smith, Australia (68 tests) 63.05: Sid Barnes, Australia (13 tests) 61.87: Adam Voges, Australia (20 tests)

‘‘I’d come across Stewie a lot in my research [for other cricket books] and his record was second to none in his era,’’ Francis said.

‘‘All his contemporaries, everywhere I looked, said he was the greatest player we ever had.

‘‘He’s often forgotten about in discussions about the greatest New Zealand test team. He was pretty exceptional, and the great players like Wally Hammond and Jack Hobbs ranked him as good as there was.’’

Francis launched the book at the Basin Reserve’s Norwood Room on Monday night with assistance from Dempster’s only child Kay Martin – a major contributor to the story – with her son and two grandsons also there.

Former test opener and Wellington

coach Bruce Edgar was one of ‘Stewie’s Boys’, along with Ian Smith, Robert Vance and Evan Gray the future test players coached by Dempster as schoolboys.

Edgar wrote in the book’s foreword of walking past the Dempster Gate: ‘‘I’m always reminded what a humble and special person he was – someone who I and my squad mates looked up to with enormous respect.’’

Francis writes Dempster defied a challenging childhood.

‘‘[Dempster] was an only child whose father, a sea captain, got into trouble with the law, and whose mother had a dalliance with a plumber that led to the divorce courts.

‘‘Natural ability combined with relentless practice took him to the top of the batting tree – a giant step removed from some of the travails of his upbringing.’’

Dempster also had a reputation as a ‘‘ladies man’’ who had a broken engagement and three marriages.

Writes Francis: ‘‘Stewie himself was inclined to call a spade a spade and sometimes may have rubbed the odd person up the wrong way. Yet, overwhelmingly while researching Stewie’s story, people variously described him as humble, approachable, a gentleman with a lovely nature.

‘‘The boys he coached in his twilight years professed a love for the man who gently and quietly told them how to go about perfecting batsmanship.’’