New Zealand cricket team in England in 1927

The New Zealand cricket team toured England in the 1927 season. The team contained many of the players who would later play Test cricket for New Zealand, but the tour did not include any Test matches and the 1927 English cricket season was the last, apart from the Second World War years and the cancelled South African tour of 1970, in which there was no Test cricket in England.

In 1926, the Imperial Cricket Conference, forerunner of the International Cricket Council, allowed for the first time delegates from India, New Zealand and the West Indies to attend. The three were invited to organise themselves into cricket boards that could, in future, select representative teams to take part in Test matches, which had hitherto been restricted to sides from England, Australia and South Africa.

A non-Test playing visit from a side from New Zealand had already been arranged for the 1927 season, paid for by a private finance deal involving the sale of £1 shares, and it was agreed that this tour should go ahead without Test matches before a decision was taken on whether New Zealand was ready for Test cricket. In the event, the 1927 side did well enough to get an official (though scarcely full-strength) MCC tour agreed for 1929–30, in which the first New Zealand Tests were played. And future New Zealand tours of England, from 1931 onwards, were full Test match tours.

The team was captained by Tom Lowry, who had played first-class cricket in England for Somerset and Cambridge University. In all, 17 players were used, but three of them only played once, and 10 cricketers played in 20 or more of the 26 first-class matches.

The 14 players who made up the regular side were:

The three who played just one game each were:

James was originally selected as second wicketkeeper, but made such a strong impression that he played in almost every match; only in some minor matches did Lowry deputise for James as wicketkeeper. Of the 14 regulars, only Bernau, Cunningham, Dacre and Oliver did not go on to play Test cricket; of the irregulars, Blundell came closest to Test cricket, representing New Zealand against MCC on an unofficial tour in 1935–36.

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