ABSTRACT
There is a common characterisation of 1914 as the end of cricket's golden age—a period in which cricket enjoyed huge popularity and fully established itself as a national pastime replete with an Edwardian ethos that stressed energy and elegance above all else. However, New Zealand cricket is rather different. If a metallic analogy is required, 1914 might be characterised as the end of cricket's iron age—the end of a gradual transition from primitivism to the brink of cricketing civilisation. The golden age, if there was one, might be found during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when provincial cricket was transformed by an unprecedented supremacy of bat over ball and various New Zealand players and teams began to make a mark on the fields of England. Alternatively, one might find it as recently as the early 1980s, when New Zealand fashioned a team that could consistently hold its own with all international opposition.
