I was not brought up in a sporting household: I have no memory of ever seeing my parents taking part in a sporting activity, organised or individual. Anne left a brief written account of her childhood upbringing in Timaru in which she mentions playing tennis on a neighbour’s court; there is a photo from Don’s university days of him in a harrier group. Other subjects were discussed around our house.
Apart from being taken to the Te Aroha College swimming pool where I was taught to swim by New Zealand cricketer Gren Alabaster, I was never introduced to a sport in a deliberate way. However, I have kept some memories of my first haphazard sporting experiences, because they left a strong impression in my mind. There are unfortunately no photos to verify the experiences, but these early moments are registered on my mind like black and white snapshots.
| Photo #1 After tea on a warm summer evening I am wandering around the block. I am 7 years old. Shakespeare Street in Te Aroha has a wide grass verge with a row of plane trees growing down the middle about 20 metres apart. Only later will I realise that this is the length of a cricket pitch, but I do recognise the game that is underway. I stop to watch, paying serious attention: a tree trunk is being used as a wicket, there is a bat and an old tennis ball being used by the neighbourhood children. I am invited by a parent to have a turn. I pick up the bat. My recollection of the occasion ends at that point. Did I manage to hit the ball? Was I clean bowled first ball? Caught, perhaps? Maybe, just maybe, I felt for the first time that sweet sensation of ball coming off bat and beating a fielder? I don’t know, but the evening scene is imprinted on my mind – my first game of cricket. |
| Photo #2 It is my eighth birthday. My mother tells me that my birthday present is in the shed. I am none the wiser until I open the shed door and find a “two-wheeler”. I remember well the emotion: delight and excitement. Did I spend the rest of the day riding round the house, round the block, down the main street, around the town? I don’t remember: I just recall a second-hand bike with a fresh coat of spearmint green paint, a very trendy colour in 1960. It may have been a Raleigh, but I clearly recall that it had a Sturmey Archer 3-speed rear hub, which I would later come to recognise as a superb piece of British technology first produced in 1938. It would soon be made redundant, unfortunately, by the cheaper, mass-produced Japanese derailleur. And I quickly learnt that this bike had toe-stubbing pedals if you didn’t wear shoes. But it was my new licence-to-explore… |
| Photo #3 The scene is Herries Park, the local rugby ground, 1960. The land for the park donated by the local Maori and facilities funded by Sir William Herries, the local MP and a cabinet minister from 1896 to 1923. I am 8. I am playing my first game of rugby. I remember clearly running with a ball in my arms; the posts are close by in my mental photo. I have no idea how this action ends, even how this game came about, who I played for, nor against, nor what the score was. I only know we lost: I discovered that day that I was strongly competitive and hated losing. I rode home in tears… |
In 1961 my family shifted to Christchurch, where I did my intermediate and secondary schooling. Sport was (and still is) taken very seriously in Canterbury; school closed on Wednesday afternoons and everybody played sport, as well as at the weekends. However, school sport at the time was restricted to a small range of team sports.
In winter boys played rugby, soccer or hockey. Rugby was overwhelmingly the most popular game, soccer (not called football then) was played mainly by the children of immigrant families from the United Kingdom and Europe. Young women played mostly netball and hockey. Hockey was a less attractive sport than nowadays because it was played on grass surfaces that usually cut up when soft in winter.
Summer sport was mostly limited to cricket for boys and tennis for girls on artificial courts.
I played rugby up until the age of 15, mostly as a lock because of my height. I stopped at that age because I was too light for a sport in which I was becoming physically outplayed by much heavier young men. By now, however, the photos have given way to movie films; I remember specific events and a developing interest in different sports. I always took part in the school’s athletic sports: I was competitive in the high jump, while having few technical skills. I recall placing fourth in the school cross-country and third in an inter-school walking race. I found all these various sporting experiences pleasurable, but cricket was always my passion.
I played cricket throughout my school years without distinction until my final two years at school, when my height and long fingers enabled me to bowl slow off-spin with a high degree of control. My mother kept some cricket results from the Christchurch Star Sports edition in a scrapbook. The newspaper records in November 1969 that Burnside High School beat Christ’s College in section 1A, a match in which Glenny took 6 for 18 in the first innings and 4 for 48 in the second, making by my reckoning match figures of 10 for 66. For a keen historian these were auspicious figures indeed. This battle with its victorious outcome may have been the pinnacle of my cricket career!
