Don Neely - a unique cricketing life
Donald Owen (Don) Neely, OBE, MNZO, b 21 December 1935, d 16 June 2022. Ed, Rongotai College (Sec). Played for Kilbirnie Cricket Club, Wellington 1964-1968, Auckland 1968-71. Thirty-four first-class games, 1301 runs, one century, 28.91 avge. NZ selector 1979-93. New Zealand Cricket president 2006-09. Life member Cricket Wellington and New Zealand Cricket. Co-author of Men in White and The Summer Game (the illustrated history of New Zealand cricket).
Cricket provided a rich and memorable background to Don 'D O' Neely's life from the days starting out in the game as a youth on a village green in Miramar where time was spent playing cricket and softball with members of the well-known Wellington sports family, the Wards, until his time serving as president of New Zealand Cricket.
A lifetime in the game filled the years between with all manner of experiences in playing the game, captaining Wellington to a Plunket Shield win, and selecting a New Zealand team that so nearly pulled off a World Cup title in 1992.
It was as a part of his role in a selection panel with former Test bowler Frank Cameron, Test captain Mark Burgess and former captain Graham Dowling, that he found himself on the periphery of the first great era of success for New Zealand sides.
Each of the selectors at the time was part of the playing bridge, from the days of austere amateurism and a few first-class games a year, to a more complete programme of two rounds of first-class games and a round or two of one-day matches, that ushered in a more professional era.
Various others joined the selection group, notably other former players in Gren Alabaster, John Guy, Bob Cunis, Bruce Taylor and finally Ross Dykes and Warren Lees.
In his first season, New Zealand achieved their famous one-wicket win over the champion West Indies side at Carisbrook. Neely used to relate how clever tactics by the selectors, and the local knowledge of Cameron, resulted in subterfuge that pressured the West Indies into a panicked change of selection.
Cameron felt there might be some turn in the pitch so-called for off-spinner John Bracewell to be added to the side selected as a stand-by. And on the morning of the game, when the covers were removed, a ridge was detected on what could have been a dangerous line for New Zealand's batsmen facing the West Indian fast bowlers.
Cameron asked the pitch be moved slightly sideways to take the ridge out of play.
The results were the West Indies included off-spinner Derek Parry in their side. Deliveries from him were last seen being gathered out of gardens in properties bordering the ground on Burns Street after Lance Cairns took the long handle to him. His runs proved crucial in the final outcome as New Zealand's tailenders Stephen Boock and Gary Troup somehow contrived to steal the show from the visitors.
At the other end of his career, as New Zealand prepared to jointly host the World Cup in the summer of 1991-92, Neely was part of a planning group that introduced a preparation like no other undertaken by the cricket side with all manner of assessments being done on players to have them ready to compete at their best.
It was a time when a spirit of adventure was applied to the game, notably Dipak Patel's opening the bowling in some games, and Mark Greatbatch and Rod Latham stunning sides with their top-of-the-order assaults which changed the way one-day cricket was played.
Throughout it all, Neely, with his trusty long-range lens, could be seen taking photographs that would eventually appear in the Cricket Annuals that provided such a great record of the era. It was his way of concentrating, not only on the better shots but, on how players coped in certain circumstances.
It was interesting that his both selecting and writing about players and events was not impeded by the game's administrators. Would that happen nowadays?
Neely had long written about the game, starting out with the monthly magazine Sports Digest and then moving into editing the Cricket Annual before producing what would be his pièce de résistance, the celebrated Men in White, the history of New Zealand cricket, along with Francis Payne and Richard King.
Other books would follow, among them The Summer Game, a marvellous pictorial history of the New Zealand game compiled with the skill of wife Paddianne. Its crowning feature was the previously unpublished details of the remarkable life of the first man, and for so long the only man until Ajaz Patel came along, to take 10 wickets in an innings, A.E. Moss.
It was inevitable that he would play such a key role in the ongoing success of the National Cricket Museum at the Basin Reserve. His life had been devoted to the game, and no one could be better served to oversee its continuing viability.
'D O' Neely's was a complete cricketing life.