How things change.

By Joan Robertson in All Sorts

Bert Sutcliffe and the game of cricket, half a century ago.

In 1953 my father built some extensions to our home in North-east Valley. The former washhouse and back porch became part of a spacious sunroom, and the new washhouse was a lean-to at the bottom of the back steps. I remember that washhouse - and its tubs -- well. One afternoon a year or so later, returning from high school, and remembering that my parents were out, I went to collect the key from a ledge under the concrete tubs. Alas no key! Through the kitchen window I could see my tea laid out on the table. I bussed back into town to attend the 5 o'clock pictures (I had known a school mate was planning to be there), and then having bussed home again, I made myself as comfy as possible on the washhouse floor, to read Realms of Gold. (It was my School Certificate year). My parents, returning about 9.30, were surprised and sorry!

Those washhouse tubs (a set of two together made of concrete) had been delivered by a man mum thought she recognised when he came to the back door for payment. After he'd gone she realised: It was Bert Sutcliffe! 1953.

I've been reading the new biography about Bert: The last everyday hero by Richard Boock. The many contributors all speak highly of the man who may have been New Zealand's greatest left handed batsman. His impeccable style, his seemingly effortless strokes. But what also comes across is his modesty, his self-effacement, his generous character, and his good humour.

Bert and his wife Norma and children lived in a villa in Appold Street, Mornington, until 1960 when they moved to Hamilton

A few weeks ago, Marion, in a story for the children at church, told us about the famous match in South Africa, at Ellis Park, on Boxing Day, 1953, when the New Zealand team received news of the Tangiwai Disaster and worst of all, the death of bowler Bob Blair's fiancée. How the team members one by one were injured, and how Sutcliffe returned from hospital, with his head bandaged and bleeding, to make a further 80 runs, with seven sixes, and how Blair, although excused from playing that day, came in to bat when the rest of the team were dismissed.

And I remember hearing about the Second Test in India in 1955 where the crowds created distractions by exploding deafening crackers. Bert, surprised by one such cracker, was caught out at 73 runs, and was comforted by someone saying "you weren't really out". The book records how the team travelled on this tour with no doctor, and were all struck down by one illness or another, Sutcliffe returning home two stone lighter, and seriously unwell.

Those were amateur days, of course, which is doubtless the reason he delivered our tubs! Trained as a teacher specialising in sport, he became a coach for the Otago cricket Association, supplementing that with part-time teaching in winter, and driving commercial vans and trucks. From 1955 he took on a partnership in a sports goods shop in Princes Street, and when the business failed in 1960, he was, according to the book, "next to penniless". Dunedin and the cricketing fraternity arranged a testimonial one-day match at Carisbrook, followed by a special function, and presentation of a cheque for ₤1,300 raised from the match. When the Sutcliffes arrived in Hamilton to start their new life it was effectively all the money they possessed.

When I read of the publication of Boock's book, and the mention of those old cricketing names, I was touched with nostalgia for that time - when we listened in to cricket on the radio (the YC stations gave up their classical music programmes for ball-by-ball commentaries), or occasionally attended matches at Carisbrook, to sit on the grass like a picnic, and when I consumed Neville Cardus's writings about English cricket.

Today I usually sit in another room when there's sport on the telly. I wonder about football players being bought and sold. I pity our Rugby "greats" being used in advertisements, as part of their contracts. And I marvel at the vast sums of money some sports people can make. And recently there's been trouble in the cricketing world over match-fixing or "spot-fixing". Sometimes it just doesn't seem like sport at all.

So many things are different today... Some things may even be better ...

And what are we going to do with Carisbrook?

-- Joan Robertson

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish Bulletin, September 26, 2010.