About Bert Sutcliffe
Bert Sutcliffe (17 November 1923 – 20 April 2001) was a New Zealand Test cricketer. Sutcliffe was a successful left-hand batsman. His batting achievements on tour in England in 1949, which included four fifties and a century in the Tests, earned him the accolade of being one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year. He captained New Zealand in four Tests in the early 1950s, losing three of them and drawing the other. None of Sutcliffe's 42 Tests resulted in a New Zealand victory. In 1949 Sutcliffe was named the inaugural New Zealand Sportsman of the Year, and in 2000 was named as New Zealand champion sportsperson of the decade for the 1940s. == Early life == Sutcliffe was born in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby to parents who had migrated from Lancashire in 1921. He was a brilliant schoolboy cricketer at Takapuna Grammar School, and spent two years at teacher training college before joining the army in 1944. He scored heavily in matches he was able to play while serving with New Zealand forces in Egypt and Italy at the end of the Second World War. He served in the cypher section of the army signals unit in Japan in 1946, where he played cricket in Chōfu.
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