England and New Zealand met at Lord’s this week 83 years ago with two gifted young batsmen in their ranks
The first Test between England and New Zealand at Lord’s, which started on this week in 1937, was interesting for several reasons, none of them apparent to Neville Cardus at the time. “The engagement will be a Test match only in name,” he wrote in his preview for the Guardian. “None of us would expect Derbyshire to give England a good match; yet Derbyshire are a better team than New Zealand. The MCC should put a limit to the occasions on which a cricketer in this country is able to pick up ‘international’ colours almost for nothing.” England, he wrote, “have everything to lose and nothing to gain in Test matches which provide a test only for one side”, and there would be few benefits for anyone involved. “If today Hutton should score a hundred the innings will count for less than a hundred in our everyday county matches,” he wrote. “And if he should score nothing at all the failure will mean nothing.”
Which is just as well, as he did score nothing. After a 30-minute duck in his first ever Test innings he improved significantly in the second, scoring one. The selectors obviously decided that Cardus had a point and stuck with him, he scored a century in the first innings of the second Test and the rest is history.
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