The New Zealand cricket team toured England in 1949. The team was the fourth official touring side from New Zealand, following those in 1927, 1931 and 1937 and was by some distance the most successful to this date. The four-match Test series with England was shared, every game ending as a draw, and of 35 first-class fixtures, 14 were won, 20 drawn and only one lost.

The side was Walter Hadlee (C), Merv Wallace (VC), Cecil Burke, Jack Cowie, Fen Cresswell, Martin Donnelly, Johnny Hayes, Frank Mooney (WK), Geoff Rabone, John Reid, Verdun Scott, Brun Smith, and Bert Sutcliffe. All but Cecil Burke and Johnny Hayes played in the Tests. The captain Walter Hadlee was one of four players – the others were Merv Wallace, Martin Donnelly and Jack Cowie – who had toured with the 1937 team.

The four Test matches were allocated only three days each. After the first two matches ended in draws, the New Zealanders were asked if they would add an extra day to each of the last two matches. After consulting with their domestic cricket board, the tourists turned the idea down, arguing that this would have disrupted their commitments to county matches.

In 32 first-class matches, the New Zealand tourists won 13 times and lost only once, when they were caught on a drying pitch at Oxford without Cowie, their player best able to exploit such conditions. The team's success was built on the weight of runs that its batsmen provided, and the bowling figures, Burtt apart, were modest.

The batsmen were the big successes of the New Zealand side and Donnelly and Sutcliffe finished fifth and eighth in the English first-class averages for the season. In first-class matches, Donnelly scored 2,287 runs at an average of 61.81 and Sutcliffe scored 2,627 runs at 59.70. Six other batsmen apart from the leading pair passed 1,000 runs for the season, and Wallace, Reid and Scott all averaged more than 40. In the Tests, Smith, who played in only two matches, headed the averages, but again the aggregates were dominated by Donnelly and Sutcliffe, each scoring more than 400 runs when no other batsman managed 200. The bowling was less successful. In a hot and dry summer, Burtt bowled almost twice as many overs as anyone else on the touring side and took 128 wickets at an average of 22.88. No other bowler managed more than the 62 of Cresswell, although ‘Wisden’ reckoned Cowie, whose 59 wickets cost 27 runs each, was the only really menacing bowler in the side. Burtt and Cowie were the only successes at Test level, and in both cases their average runs per wicket was over 30.

Some of the great names in the English teams were Freddie Brown (C), Trevor Bailey, Alec Bedser, Brian Close, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Len Hutton, and Cyril Washbrook.

Stuart Surridge & Co Ltd is one of the oldest cricket brands in the world, established in 1867 with Percy Stuart Surridge repairing old cricket bats and selling them in his town.

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