LONDON NEW ZEALAND CRICKET CLUB
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Trevor Campbell Cup for the North Island v South Island Match

If anybody could lay claim to the title Founding Father of LNZCC, it is Trevor Campbell.  He was Public Relations Officer at the NZ High Commission.  Campbell arrived in England in 1948, having previously established NZ’s first full-time adult education post at Canterbury University.  In his role at New Zealand House, he nudged, cajoled and nurdled a group of like-minded men (they were all men) until they agreed with his idea; establishing a wandering cricket club for travelling New Zealanders ‘…one that would get them away at weekends from the bombsite wreckage of so much of London…’  It was Campbell, encouraged by his neighbour John Ferguson (also a Kiwi,) who contacted Errol Holmes, ex-Captain of an MCC side to Australia and New Zealand.  Holmes was a committee member at Surrey CC and MCC, and in his latter role, went to Lords to consult on the idea.  During that meeting, Holmes asked then Secretary of the MCC, Colonel Rait Kerr if there were any hurdles.  Kerr’s immortal reply? ‘If it’s New Zealand, there are no snags.  

Very shortly after that meeting, Campbell summoned a gathering of ‘leading New Zealanders’ by sending invitation cards from the NZ High Commission to more than 200 NZers based in the UK.  They met for the first time on December 14th 1951, one of the worst pea-souper fog nights ever recorded in London.  In attendance – Sir Arthur Simms; Sir Arthur Donnelly; Harold Gilligan (Captain of the England team that played New Zealand’s first ever test;) LEL Donne; Walter Hadlee; Roger Blunt; Alan Mitchell.  More than 70 people attended the meeting that formed LNZCC.  At the meeting, Holmes was appointed President, Campbell Honorary Secretary and invitations to stand as Vice-President were sent to then New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Sidney Holland and to High Commissioner Sir Frederick Doidge.  The first two men elected VP were Lord Newall (Cyril Newall, ex Governor-General of NZ and Marshall of the Royal Air Force during WW2) and Lord Freyberg VC (as General Bernard Freyberg, Commander of the NZ Expeditionary Force in WW2; earlier in his career he was awarded the Victoria Cross in the Battle of the Somme in 1916; later he was Governor- General of NZ).