“Sutcliffe’s display was masterly … He is by far the most outstanding cricket attraction in the Middle East”
New Zealand Free Lance
Bert Sutcliffe. An early clue lies in the name. The eldest of Wallace and Ellen Jane’s four children, Bert was born in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby in 1923 and immediately named after the great English batsman of the time, Herbert Sutcliffe. Even though his parents had immigrated to Auckland as proud, dyed-in-the-wool Lancastrians, they decided to name their first-born after a Yorkshireman. At a time when the Wars of the Roses, dating back to a fifteenth century dispute between the shires, was still one of the hottest rivalries in world sport, it said something about the couple’s sense of benevolence. These were inclusive folk; hard working, non-partisan and egalitarian: all qualities their eldest son would inherit.
Nell and Wally, however, came from contrasting backgrounds. Nell was an only child, raised at St Annes-on-Sea; Wally came from Oldham, and was one of a family of ten. He worked at a brewery in Rawtenstall, later became a cabinetmaker and served with the Army during the First World War, at one stage with the Camel Corps in the Middle East. He returned to a typical life for post-war, working-class Britons. Not much in the way of employment, even less in terms of leisure activity, and an immediately grim outlook for a young wedded couple. In 1921, strapped for options and determined to take control of their destiny, Wally, then aged 22, and Nell set sail for Auckland.
There, of course, they found things only fractionally better. Jobs were in short supply and Wally was initially frustrated in his endeavours to find work. At one stage during his search for meaningful gain he took a gig pushing an ice-cream cart. Work was often temporary, the couple occasionally having to forgo a fortnight’s pay. It was only when Wally landed a job as a motorman on the trams that they could look forward to any security of income. Nell had been taught music as a child, played the piano and was to prove in demand on the local church organ. Wally enjoyed singing and possessed (his first-born said later) a decent, baritone voice.
If there was a priority for the pair it was to offer their children a more optimistic future. Even before the Second World War reared its head, Wally and Nell were determined to find a more promising lifestyle. Wally had been a gifted athlete but any sporting aspirations he might have harboured were forced into the background by the realities of his time. He wanted more for his children, as did Nell. He wished for them the chance to seek their fortunes, to prospect the opportunities of life. It was the same sense of selflessness that Bert would eventually wear like a badge. Later in Wally’s life, when employment was more stable, he turned out for the local Returned Services’ Association (RSA) eleven, taking six wickets and scoring a century in the same match on three occasions.
Bert was six years old and attending Point Chevalier primary school when his brother Mervyn arrived. Four years later he had a sister Eileen and another four years after that, a second sister Beryl. It was during his primary school years that he was presented with his first bat, one his dad had cut down from a full-size version discarded from the RSA team’s kit. The youngster learnt the fundamentals of batting from his father and played for his Point Chevalier school team, often at Western Springs and Victoria Park. In 1933, as a 10-year-old at Eden Park, he vied with other children to return the endless stream of boundaries from the bat of England’s Wally Hammond, who was busy scoring his world-record 336 not out. Sutcliffe remembered the experience as the first time he’d felt star-struck about cricket. Fourteen years later, on Test debut, he’d take the catch to end Hammond’s international career.
By the time Bert was finishing primary school the family had bought a house in Torbay, on Auckland’s North Shore. In the days before the Auckland Harbour Bridge it was a long, convoluted trip back into the big smoke but his father scored a job driving the school bus and the ‘Shore’ lifestyle was relatively self-contained. Bert shifted three more times in quick succession before ending up at his long-term Rock Isle Road address. His father always had a thriving vegetable garden, and no small number of fruit trees. The house was on a clifftop and there was a path leading down to the beach. Inevitably, fishing would become popular. Wally even rigged up an extended fishing line to a cliff-edged pulley, and at high tide was able to surf-cast 40 metres below.
‘We had a little eight foot clinker dinghy and, being the oldest, it was my job to row it,’ recalled Sutcliffe. ‘God knows how many miles I rowed. We were out at Long Bay one time and I saw some fins in the water and thought, “sharks”. I was only eleven or twelve years old at the time. So I said to Mervyn, “Get that anchor up now”; I reckon I rowed back into shore so fast we were travelling like a power boat. The water was almost foaming up behind us but I was breaking my arms to go faster. When we finally made it in, some bloke said to us, “Gosh, you boys were lucky to see that, what a great sight it must have been.” I asked him what he meant and he said, “Those dolphins; what a beautiful sight.” That’s how much we knew at the time. And this was more than 40 years before Jaws.
‘When I look back I can’t believe how naive and green we were. I used to try outrageous stunts in the dinghy like tying a line to each of my big toes and lying back to have a snooze in the sun. It was only when I got a bit older that I realised how much of a crazy idea that was. If something like a kingy or a snapper had grabbed the line I could have lost a toe. Never mind what might have happened if I’d caught a fish on each line simultaneously. But we used to go out to fish often; it was not only a favourite pastime but a staple diet on the table. The gulf waters were teeming with fish and in those days we were encouraged to make the most of it. We didn’t have many luxuries but in other ways, in terms of food on the table and opportunity, we lived like kings.’
There were cricket books, of course, Wally made sure of that. Bert devoured anything and everything his father provided, much of it featuring his great namesake, Herbert. But he also read books authored by such luminaries as Neville Cardus, Jack Hobbs and Jack Fingleton. Something from Ian Peebles was always at hand, as was a biography of the great English all-rounder, C B Fry. Backyard cricket also became a regular occurrence, eventually growing in importance to the extent that a few years later, when Wally and Nell had helped Bert purchase a section along the street, the first move was to clear it and cut a pitch so the boys could practise more thoroughly. As proficient tennis players, Eileen and Beryl preferred their court-sport, but would often deputise as fieldswomen with telling effect. Both could throw a ball with interest.
Brother Mervyn, Bert recalled, was three years old when he suffered such a badly twisted knee that it left him with one leg shorter than the other, a setback that was to restrict his progress in the game. Mervyn, however, was still to become a decent slow-bowler and middle-order batsman, representing the Takapuna Grammar School’s first eleven and playing minor association cricket for Thames Valley. Bert said he always felt a shade guilty about his brother’s misfortune, not because he had anything to do with it, but because it threw his own trouble-free cricket into such sharp relief. At a time when Bert was excelling at just about every conceivable sport, including tennis and rugby, Mervyn was being forced to accept his limitations. Bert remembered feeling keenly protective of his younger sibling, and would often sacrifice his wicket in backyard games, just to watch and share in Mervyn’s delight.
‘Whenever Bert and I had more than a few minutes to spare it was almost inevitable that we’d pick up a specially cut-down bat, a “dead” tennis ball without any fabric cover and start one of our matches on the concrete path,’ Mervyn said. ‘This path, from the shed to below the kitchen window was only about half the length of a proper pitch and fairly rough. It also had a sudden dip on a fullish length which always provided a bit of assistance. I found that if I could land the ball on my side of the dip I could occasionally take Bert’s wicket legitimately with a deadly “shooter”. On most other occasions I’d be offered a hot return catch in order to help make the dismissal look authentic. Later on we used to head over to the vacant section, where Dad had cobbled together the remnants of an old cricket net. It looked pretty professional once all the holes were repaired. Almost certainly the first privately-owned cricket net on the North Shore.’
There are still four houses at Takapuna Grammar School (TGS) and possibly the most fortunate moment of Sutcliffe’s career was when he was drafted into the Tainui fraternity, where he came under the guidance of the housemaster and first eleven cricket coach, James ‘Baldy’ Thompson. So keen on the game was Thompson that he would round up all the non-playing Tainui boys he could find during lunchtimes, and supply them with food on the proviso that they’d sit and cheer on their team. Scorecards were maintained meticulously, graphs of house averages, aggregates and trends were charted; weather forecasts and pitch reports were collected, and opposition form discussed. There were even strategy and tactics meetings. It was ‘Baldy’, Sutcliffe said, who was always so enthusiastic about their informal game, ‘out on the off’.
‘We played it endlessly and I’m sure it helped me become a decent offside player,’ he said. ‘There’s often a lot of runs available on the offside for a left-hander facing a right-armer; but it comes with an additional risk. The ball’s slanting across the batsman and a left-hander who looks to cover drive is playing with only half a bat-width, if that. ‘Out on the off’ was a handy drill for left-handers in particular because it encouraged you to get across to the ball and to watch it like a hawk. If you were beaten outside off you were out. You couldn’t be out if the ball went down the leg-side but there’d be a roar of controversy if someone walked so far across their stumps that the ball passed behind their legs yet was still outside off. That’s what we used to do. We used to get right across the stumps and hit straight, rather than through cover. Not only did it help develop a fairly safe technique on off-stump, it often opened up the leg-side as well.’
Sutcliffe made the first century of his life in a junior house match against Arawa in the first term of his first year at secondary school. He followed up the 113 with 55 against another rival house, Tokomaru, and in the third term was selected in the TGS first eleven, at the time only the second third-former to be picked for the school’s leading team. From that moment on, the die was cast. No-one, before or since, has dominated Auckland secondary school cricket to the same extent. The left-hander’s personal scrapbook of that five-year period, initially filled with modestly-spaced newspaper clippings, would end up literally bulging at the spine, over-run by accounts of his exploits with both bat and ball. How little he knew, as he pasted in his first eleven averages for the opening season (226 runs at an average of 22.60; seven wickets at 10.60), of the task he was setting himself.
Each new season would bring fresh milestones for Sutcliffe. In the summer of 1938–39, his first full summer in the TGS first eleven, he announced his potential with a couple of breezy 40s and was then named in the Auckland Secondary Schools team to play Sir Julian Cahn’s invitation eleven at Eden Park. The invitation side included many fine players but for Sutcliffe, none more so than the great New Zealand batsman Stewie Dempster, the first New Zealander to score a Test century and a recent captain of Leicestershire. Of the bowlers, the man to gain Sutcliffe’s immediate attention was Australian tearaway Ginty Lush. To the 15-year-old’s profound relief, the fast-bowler was withdrawn from the eleven on the morning of the match. Sutcliffe managed just nine before being bowled by spinner Jack Walsh, but remembered fondly his first taste of Eden Park. A couple of weeks later he’d strike his maiden first eleven century, 149 against Seddon Memorial Technical College.
There would be a dozen centuries for his school side before he set off to Auckland Teachers’ College, including a swan-song of 268 against Mt Albert Grammar in 1942. Captain from 1939 onwards, he would lead his team to its first Auckland Secondary Schools championship title in 1939–40, in the process scoring 1070 runs at an average of 97.27. In other interschool matches during that season he’d average 121.00, at one stage scoring four consecutive centuries. That was also the summer that Sutcliffe would help dismiss Kings College for 10, claiming six wickets for four runs with his left-arm wrist-spin, before scoring 133 and taking another bag, this time seven for 24. The next season he’d average 86.30 in the schools championship and earn selection in the Auckland senior team to play Wellington at the Basin Reserve, a game that would later be cancelled. In his last school summer, five innings would produce 745 runs at 149.00. Overall, not only would he score more runs at TGS than anyone else, he’d also take a record 117 wickets.
Head prefect in his final year at school, Sutcliffe was by that stage the most recognisable figure on the campus. Regarded as a strong and mobile tennis player he also turned out for the TGS first fifteen at fullback, where he was known for his long, raking spiral punts and for his excellent goal-kicking. He was proficient at hockey, although as a left-hander often found himself penalised for dribbling infringements, and at golf, despite having to play for the first half of his life with right-handed clubs. He was also starting to pull his weight around the family home, having been taught the value of DIY-skills by his father. Carpentry, building, maintenance and repair; the Sutcliffe boys were taught to do it once and do it right, whether planting a garden or painting a roof.
‘A largish pine tree growing on the cliff-edge of our property looked likely to fall, with the possibility it would take a sizeable chunk of our section with it,’ wrote Mervyn. ‘Dad and Bert decided to fell it back onto the section in order to save the tree for firewood. I was sent to source a long, strong rope and by the time I’d returned, they’d completed some of the sawing and scarfing, and Bert started scaling the trunk with the rope tied around his waist. Once he reached the top he untied the rope and fastened it around some of the biggest boughs. I was almost beside myself with nerves by this time; he was so high up. But he returned to ground safely and after a bit more sawing and scarfing we all started pulling on the rope; heaving and relaxing until there was a loud crack and, completely against calculations, the tree disappeared over the edge, taking a hastily released rope with it. Fortunately, no-one had taken on the role as anchorman and tied the rope around their waists, so no Sutcliffes followed the tree over the cliff.’
High-school life had been an exhilarating time for Sutcliffe. Along with his success for the TGS side there was also the adventure of his first tour with the Auckland Brabin Cup side in 1939–40, when the team travelled south to Wellington and then to Lyttelton on the overnight ferry. Sutcliffe excelled in the tournament as Auckland ran away with the silverware, and was then selected in a New Zealand Colts squad to tour Australia. The escalating war in Europe put paid to any chance of the trip going ahead, although official newspaper reports of the time were never so candid. Most talked about the tour not taking place ‘due to present circumstances’ or in the ‘current situation’. Sutcliffe, who began a long history of making runs against Canterbury with a century at Hagley Park, could at least console himself over one point: he was rapidly becoming noticed.
War, though, was overwhelming all normal function. It was the following season that brought Sutcliffe’s selection in the Auckland team as a 17-year-old schoolboy, only for the match to be abandoned due to ‘the circumstances of the day’. It was also the summer Sutcliffe started playing for Parnell in Auckland senior club cricket, scoring his maiden century against Ponsonby–Balmoral. He would recall in Between Overs that, upon being congratulated for his 122 by team-mate and New Zealand’s best batsman of the time, Merv Wallace, he was then admonished for throwing the innings away. He would never forget the advice, or its good, positive intent.
He was his father’s son, there was no doubt about that: one of Sutcliffe’s chief non-sporting interests at school was military training, and he would eventually reach the rank of regimental sergeant-major while actively pursuing a scholarship at the Australian military academy, Duntroon. He might have succeeded too, but for what he believed was a clear policy of discrimination against working-class families. It wasn’t what you knew, it was who you knew. Sutcliffe’s strong sense of egalitarianism was, even by that stage, fully roused. He felt resentful at the treatment after measuring up in all disciplines. It was, he would say later, one of the reasons he loved sport so much. In cricket, a half volley was still a half volley, whether it was delivered by the son of an Eton old boy with a yacht and a peerage, or the local village chimney sweep.
It was a year later, in his last year at school and as an 18-year-old, that he was again selected for the Auckland senior side and on this occasion the match went ahead, against Wellington at Eden Park. (Bob Blair sometimes talked about his experience on the morning of his Test debut against South Africa in 1953. Train in from the Hutt Valley, tram to work at Whitcombe and Tombs, clock in at 8 am, clock out at 10 am, tram to Basin Reserve, open the bowling for New Zealand at 11 am.) Sutcliffe wasn’t required to work on the morning of his Auckland debut but his travel schedule was still fairly demanding: a 19 kilometre bus trip from Torbay to Bayswater, a 20-minute journey on the ferry across the Waitemata Harbour and then a tram ride from Queen Street to Sandringham Road. Shanks’ pony would look after the rest.
The commute took far longer than Sutcliffe’s debut innings; stumped by future New Zealand team-mate Frank Mooney for 11. There was the consolation, however, of a maiden first-class wicket when Wellington opener Harry Osborn overstretched against a top-spinner and Auckland wicket-keeper Charlie Jackman completed the dismissal. It wouldn’t be until Christmas Day 1943 that Sutcliffe would get another chance, and again it would be against Wellington, this time at the Basin Reserve. The outcome was far better for the 19-year-old, 146 against a Wellington side featuring a final representative outing for New Zealand’s first genuine fast-bowler, George Dickinson. By this stage Sutcliffe had left school and, disgusted with his treatment at Trentham during the tests for Duntroon, started his training at the local teachers’ college. He also applied for a third-year bursary at the physical education school in Dunedin.
Though the war was dominating all considerations there was still a lot going on in Sutcliffe’s life. Apart from his cricket with Parnell and a host of Auckland junior teams, he was playing rugby for Auckland Teachers’ Training College, at a good enough standard to gain selection in the Auckland Under 21 squad. And he was rapidly becoming besotted with a young woman named Norma Farrell. Norma lived close to the Frankham family in Remuera, who shared the ownership of a bach in Torbay. A niece of the family, June, was going out with (and would eventually marry) a cricketing contemporary of Sutcliffe’s, future Auckland batsman Gordon Burgess, father-to-be of New Zealand captain Mark. Burgess, knowing Sutcliffe lived just up the street in Torbay, would often invite him over for tennis and the bonhomie. Once Sutcliffe had met Norma, however, the tennis never seemed quite as important.
As soon as he turned 21, Sutcliffe was called up for service with the 15th reinforcements, bound for Egypt. In May 1945 he said his farewells to his parents and siblings, and asked Norma to marry him when he returned. She accepted. Sutcliffe never fired a shot in anger; indeed the war in Europe ended while he was still at sea, but he would play plenty of cricket. By the time he returned 13 months later, he could add to his list of playing venues, Alamein, Alexandria, Rome, Jerusalem and Chofu (Tokyo), amongst others. The New Zealand eleven played most of their games at the Alamein club ground, against Dominion counterparts and specialist units such as the Royal Air Force. It was stinking hot, the cricket was played on coconut matting and the players were invariably dressed only in shorts and sneakers. But it was of a high standard and keenly fought, and included many well-regarded first-class and Test representatives.
Sutcliffe wasted no time in making an impression, whether for the New Zealand eleven, the Digla Zone team, the 17th Area side (there was also an inter-area competition), or in the biggest match of his year overseas, the inter-command ‘Test’ between the Middle East Forces (MEF) and the Central Mediterranean Forces (CMF), played in Rome. To attend this match, he would make his first journey by air, and in less than salubrious conditions. Sutcliffe and his MEF team-mates were transported in the bomb bay of a B-24 Liberator, otherwise known as a Flying Boxcar; an aircraft, incidentally, notorious for catching fire. The flight would take eight hours, with the players sitting on wooden beams, all the time being deafened by the roar of four engines. Steerage class on the interisland ferry would feel like a luxury in comparison.
Both teams were liberally sprinkled with top flight players and just about everyone had a story to tell. The MEF side was captained by Essex wrist-spinner Peter Smith, who would play his final Test for the MCC at Christchurch in 1947, the same match in which Sutcliffe would make his debut. Smith was the player who, in 1933, arrived at the Oval on the morning of the third Test against the West Indies, only to discover that the telegram he’d received informing him of his selection had been a cruel hoax. Included in the CMF eleven was Wellington fast-bowler Tom Pritchard, widely regarded as the finest paceman never to play for New Zealand. Warwickshire batsman Tom Dollery spotted him playing in an inter-service game and persuaded him to shift to England after the war. Pritchard would carry on to take 818 first-class wickets at just 23.30, and play a prominent role in Warwickshire’s 1951 title win.
The MEF side also included Sutcliffe’s future Auckland team-mate Don Taylor, with whom he would later create a world record by scoring twin double-century opening partnerships in the same match, and wicket-keeper Bill Hayward, another from the Auckland region. The CMF combination was led by New Zealand leg-spinner Bill Merritt, who cut short his Test ambitions in order to pursue a professional career, this one with Northamptonshire. Sutcliffe’s unbeaten 88 was the feature of MEF’s first innings of 139, especially a six he struck off Somerset paceman Arthur Wellard which sailed through a window of one of the buildings surrounding the ground. The story goes that a good-natured British soldier, conspicuously in the middle of a shave, interrupted his ablutions to toss the ball back into play. But Wellard would have the last laugh, having Sutcliffe caught at the wicket for 16 in the second innings as CMF cruised to victory.
Sutcliffe, though, remained one of the leading lights throughout his year abroad. His 159 against a South African services side smashed the Alamein ground record of 150, set by South African Test batsman Dudley Nourse a year before. Soon after he blew away his own record while posting 163 at the same venue, helping the ‘Empire’ frolic to a massive win over the United Kingdom eleven. Sutcliffe kept his own records in a scrapbook while away and they speak clearly of his dominance: an average of 45.00 for Digla Zone, 51.30 at the Alamein club, 60.50 at New Zealand’s Maadi camp ground, 63.10 in ‘away’ games, 75.70 in the Cairo Area competition. His overall performance in the Middle East comprised 47 innings, 2338 runs and an average of 58.40. He was then posted to Italy, where he played the final rugby game of his career, for the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, before being among the first overseas troops sent to Japan.
The 22-year-old would remain in the east for three months before returning home in July 1946, a much more worldly young man. He remembered feeling ill at ease at much of the class distinction he’d witnessed abroad, whether in terms of local civilian relationships with occupying forces, or the dynamics between higher and lower ranked soldiers during sports competitions. It would only reinforce his distaste for privilege-based systems and the notion of social standing. Neither was he a big fan of the strong hierarchical beliefs of the day. He found it all a bit over the top. It was, perhaps, an early indication of his thoughts on captaincy, and a possible explanation for his eventual preference for being ‘just one of the boys’.
For all that, there was one development during his service years that he would never regret. He met a soldier in Japan who played the guitar, using, Sutcliffe said later, open six-string chords. Eager to master the art, he bought an old, cheap model, and the pair proceeded to change the strings around and re-tune it to accommodate Sutcliffe’s left-handedness. It was to be the start of a long love affair with playing music.
‘I used to sit on the end of the bed with this old guitar and my friend would squat on the floor with his and show me all the finger-placements,’ Sutcliffe said of his lessons. ‘I’d change my fingers over until it all started to sound right. I became okay; there were about six major chords and a minor and it was enough for me to be able to play hundreds of songs. Later, when I came home, I taught myself how to play the piano by transferring everything I knew on the guitar on to the keyboard. I’d always played the guitar in either G or C but for some reason I preferred D-flat for the piano, the black keys; I don’t know why. I’d play the chord on the guitar, listen to it and find the same notes on the piano, by ear. I’d play them all slowly, one after another, before ever attempting to play a song. I’d just play chord after chord after chord and then I’d try to fit them into songs, until it became a habit. I spent hours doing that.’
Later in life Sutcliffe could think of only one reason to explain his curious translation from string to D-flat on keyboards. It could be found in his handwriting. A beautifully consistent script, the only peculiarity was that it was written with his right hand. Sutcliffe was naturally left-sided in every way. He played cricket, golf and tennis left-handed, was left-footed as a rugby goal-kicker and when he reached for a beer at the bar it was invariably with his left hand. But he wrote with his right. The primary school he attended in Auckland had tied his left hand behind his chair in order to force him to. It was a policy that was to later cause a surge of opposition, not to mention some terrible side-effects in some pupils. Sutcliffe always believed the experience caused him to see things from a slightly different perspective. Sometimes it was like having a crossed wire, he said. On other occasions it was like having an insight.
‘Bert could play virtually any piece he’d heard often enough to memorise,’ said Mervyn. ‘Not the classical stuff, mind, but all the pop songs of his time. On tour he was always in great demand as an accompanist at team sing-alongs. So much of the time then was spent travelling and boredom must have been a real problem, but Bert was always ready to provide the music. He obviously inherited his musical ability from our mother, who was a proficient pianist from sheet music and later a church organist. Dad couldn’t play a note but he could hold one, unlike myself. One of my abiding memories is of our family gathered around the piano, Mum at the keyboard, and all of us singing the popular songs of the day. Bert simply carried on the legacy, whether at his own parties or as a guest, and like many musicians he had great endurance; he could literally play all night. He might not have read much music, but he understood it. Even if he wasn’t playing, he’d enjoy talking about it.’
Sutcliffe was relieved to be back in Auckland; relieved he’d not seen any serious action, and relieved that Norma was still waiting and had not suffered any second thoughts. They officially announced their engagement in August and Sutcliffe soon took up a position at Avondale Intermediate School, teaching general subjects as well as a component of physical education. It was an area starting to become more specialised and he was interested in pursuing the field. The bursary course he had applied for in Dunedin more than a year earlier was still available and after the New Year, in 1947, he would head south with Norma. Before that, though, there was time to play five Plunket Shield innings for Auckland and reap 339 runs at 84.75, including a double of 71 and 74 against Otago, and a farewell contribution of 111 and 62 not out against Canterbury. Of course, against Canterbury. He would soon become their nemesis.
