New Zealand cricket team in England in 1965

The New Zealand cricket team toured England in the 1965 season, playing three Test matches in the first half of a damp summer. England later hosted a second three-match series against South Africa, the first time two Test series were played in a single English cricket season since the 1912 Triangular Tournament.

The New Zealand side lost all three Test matches, and lost three other first-class matches against English counties. The team's only victories came in one county match and in the first-class matches against Scotland and Ireland.

New Zealand had last toured England in 1958 and the 1965 tour had been scheduled for several seasons. However, the success and popularity of the 1963 West Indies tourists led to demands for an early return visit, so schedules were rearranged and New Zealand and South Africa "doubled up" in 1965, the first time this arrangement, now commonplace, had happened.

Since the last tour of England, there had been five Tests between the two sides in New Zealand, England winning four of them. New Zealand had yet to record a single victory over England after 31 Tests between the teams, England having won 14 matches before this series.

The New Zealand team arrived in England at the end of the most intensive period of Test cricket in the country's history. The side had played three drawn matches at home to Pakistan in January and February 1965, then travelled for India for a four-match Test series which they lost 1-0 with three drawn, and then went to Pakistan for three further Tests, two of which were lost.

The New Zealand team was in a state of transition, with older players such as John Reid and Bert Sutcliffe, who had both first come to England with the 1949 New Zealand side, nearing retirement. At the other end of the scale were several promising batsmen, including Bev Congdon and Barry Sinclair, and young seam bowlers in Richard Collinge and Bruce Taylor. These last two, and Vic Pollard, the Lancashire-born off-spinner, were only 19 at the time of the tour.

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