Dick Brittenden

Brittenden was born at Rakaia on 22 August 1919, and was educated at Christchurch Boys' High School from 1933 to 1937.[1] In October 1940 he married Joy Mantell, and the couple went on to have five children.[2][1] His grandson, Nick Perry, is a journalist with the Associated Press.[3]

During World War II, Brittenden served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in Britain and the Bahamas.[4][5] He joined the Christchurch Press in 1938 and became its sports editor in 1955, staying in that position until he retired in 1984.[6]

He reported on New Zealand's tour of South Africa in 1953-54, and wrote his first book about the tour, Silver Fern on the Veld (1954). Great Days in New Zealand Cricket followed in 1958: 26 chapters, each one describing a significant match in New Zealand cricket history. Fittingly, the longest chapter is the last one, on New Zealand's first, and at that stage only, Test victory, in Auckland in 1956.[7]

In 1961 he wrote New Zealand Cricketers, 50 chapters, each one on a prominent New Zealand player, past or present. An extra chapter at the beginning is about Lord Cobham, New Zealand's cricket-playing Governor-General, who had just played his last first-class game at the age of 51,[8] while a postscript is dedicated to "the below average cricketer", the dedicated but ungifted club player: "Without him, the game would not survive, because it would be meaningless."[9] Having attended first-class cricket matches in New Zealand since 1928,[10] Brittenden had watched and in most cases known personally all 50 subjects, except for the Wellington batsman Syd Hiddleston, "and I have found many cricketers of mature years eager and willing to talk about him".[11] Reviewing the book in the Christchurch Press, Iain Gallaway wrote of Brittenden:

He has described with his customary apt use of metaphors and similes each one's peculiar gifts, attributes and failings (the chapter devoted to S. N. McGregor is a particularly brilliant illustration of this) analysing in a manner which confirms his profound knowledge of the game, and describing in a manner which I have always felt likens him so much to that most gifted English journalist, Denzil Batchelor.[12]

Brittenden covered the tour to England, India and Pakistan in 1965 (Red Leather, Silver Fern) and the West Indies tour to New Zealand in 1968-69 and subsequent New Zealand tour to England, India and Pakistan in 1969-70 (Scoreboard '69).

In 1977 Brittenden wrote The Finest Years: Twenty Years of New Zealand Cricket, covering 17 significant Test Matches beginning with the victory at Auckland in 1956 and ending with the victory over India in Wellington in 1976; 22 profiles of leading players of the period follow. Of New Zealand Test cricket he writes, "It will always be a matter of ups and downs, with such a relatively small cricket population. The fact that there are ups is sufficient encouragement."[13]

More books followed: 100 Years of Cricket: A History of the Canterbury Cricket Association, 1877-1977 (1977); Hadlee (with Richard Hadlee) (1981); A Cricket Century: The First 100 Years of the Lancaster Park Cricket Club Inc. (1981); Test Series '82: The Australian Cricket Tour of New Zealand (with Don Cameron and chapters by Greg Chappell and Geoff Howarth) (1982); Big Names in New Zealand Cricket: Fifty Profiles (1983); The New Zealand Cricketers' Who's Who (with Richard Hadlee and Francis Payne) (1985); England Skittled: New Zealand v. England, Wellington, 10–15 February 1978 (2000).[14]

Brittenden also wrote Give 'em the Axe: The First Hundred Years of the Christchurch Football Club (1963), and ghost-wrote Bert Sutcliffe's memoirs, Between Overs (1963).[15] He was managing editor of the New Zealand Cricketer from its inception in 1967 to 1973, and also edited its successor, the Cricket Player.[6]

In the 1985 Queen's Birthday Honours, Brittenden was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to sporting journalism.[16] The press box at Lancaster Park in Christchurch is named after him.

Brittenden died in Christchurch on 10 June 2002.[17]