Blue Caps Among the Black

GH on a forgotten tour

Bardsley and Macartney in the middle, as they were much of the tour

The cricket ‘tour’ is an institution in steep decline, even when it involves Test cricket: if the International Cricket Council gets its way, players will be padded up by the time they get off the plane, and hardly have time for a shower afterwards. In former days, however, a cricket visit was a major undertaking. Friends of Et Al Pat Rodgers and Peter Lloyd have published a picturesque memento of a long-forgotten 1924 visit to our nearest cricket neighbour by a team from New South Wales led by Charlie Macartney, then in his gubernatorial pomp.

It’s quite possible that no tour so humble has ever received such lavish treatment: the detailed reportage with full-colour illustration on high-quality stock with marbled edges of Blue Caps to New Zealand sets a standard for others to aspire to. It sits heavy in the hand, a paperback SS Jumbo.

It would be another fifty years before Australia visited New Zealand for an actual Test series, but the colonies, states and private individuals had established a pattern of trips after the first English expedition, by George Parr’s team, off the back of their 1863-64 journey to the antipodes. It’s seldom recalled that Dave Gregory’s pioneering Australians transited through New Zealand en route to destiny in the British Isles.