Another slant on a famous NZ cricket story

What Are You Doing Out Here – Heroism and Distress at a Cricket Test by Norman Harris, Last Side Publishing, 2010.

In days when cricket was not the subject of wall-to-wall television coverage, the written word was the means by which the on-field events in games were transferred to those not lucky enough to be in attendance.

That was especially the case at Ellis Park in Johannesburg over the Christmas break in 1953. New Zealand were touring and playing South Africa in the second Test of a series in which New Zealand would be well beaten – they had never won a Test match by this stage.

And they weren't destined to win on this occasion either, but as Paul Irwin, the cricket writer for South Africa's Sunday Times said, the New Zealanders did win a red badge of courage.

This was the infamous test played against the backdrop of the worst rail disaster suffered in New Zealand's history at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve of that year. On the train, and one of the victims, was the fiancée of one of New Zealand's players, fast-medium bowler Bob Blair.

The story of that fateful Boxing Day which because of the time difference and body recovery at the scene of the tragedy meant that Blair didn't learn the sad news until early in the morning has been forever enshrined in New Zealand journalism, not just sports journalism, in tour correspondent R.T. 'Dick' Brittenden's book, Silver Fern on the Veldt, still one of the finest pieces of writing in New Zealand sport.

Certainly Brittenden covered the events for the immediacy of his daily writing requirements, but with the perspective of time, and there was plenty of that when the team headed home across the Indian Ocean by boat, he wrote so memorably of the dramatics that unfolded as New Zealand succumbed to the pace bowling of South African Neil Adcock.

Bowling in conditions that suited his fast pace and ability to lift the ball off a good length, Adcock had New Zealand reeling that morning. Players were hit, coughing up blood while ace batsman Bert Sutcliffe suffered a blow to his head which saw him taken to hospital for x-rays only to return to the fray, head bandaged and taking to the South Africans to avoid the follow-on. 

Then, when it appeared the New Zealand innings was complete, out of the grandstand emerged Blair, who distraught with grief back at the team hotel thought the one thing that might help him forget the change that had overtaken his life's plans, would be to go to the ground to be with his teammates. 

It was never intended he would resume playing, but in the side's dire need he decided to bat hence Sutcliffe's utterance of the title of the book, What are you doing out here?

The crowd, at the great old rugby ground which was in use while the famous Wanderers ground, the traditional home of Transvaal cricket, was being revamped, were on their feet in recognition of the great emotion of the event playing out in front of them, saw Sutcliffe and Blair take 25 runs from off-spinner Hugh Tayfield's over, a world Test record, before the innings was ended.

The story was revisited in 2010 when New Zealand sports writer Norman Harris, better known for his athletics writing in the 1960s and who had moved to Britain subsequently, penned his book. He added significantly to the story, especially in adding the geological background to the washout of the railway bridge at Tangiwai, the result of a lahar breaking high on the adjacent mountain, Mt Ruapehu.

Harris has also found how Nerissa Love, Blair's fiancée was only on the train because her friend and neighbour Janet Trevelyan had convinced her to take the place of another friend who was unable to make the trip. He placed them in the third carriage from the front of the train, and when the accident occurred six carriages and the engine plummeted into the flooded Whangaehu River.

Then the pieces are put together in a fashion that time never allowed for Brittenden. The story, woven around the tragedy and the Test match, is another raw telling of what happened which is not lessened as a result of the passage of time.

By placing paragraphs at the end of his book on those involved in the Test match, Harris has placed the story in perspective and produced another version well worth reading.