DJ Cameron, who has passed away in Auckland aged 83, was one of New Zealand’s finest, and most enduring cricket writers – having brought the game to life for generations of avid readers from the 1950s to present day.
Ranked alongside Dick Brittenden as one of our country’s two best cricket scribes, Cameron will be remembered for his eagerly-anticipated match-reports (especially in the pre-internet era); his nose for a hard news story, and his excellent story-telling ability – not infrequently involving a strong whiff of self-deprecating humour.
His tour book, Caribbean Crusade – a journal of the New Zealand team’s maiden tour of the West Indies in 1972, remains a signature work, and a valuable record of the trials and tribulations of New Zealand touring life at the start of the game’s “modern” era.
Born in Dunedin and educated at a range of Catholic schools, Cameron won a job on the New Zealand Herald in Auckland in time to help cover the 1950 Empire Games, and stayed with the paper until his retirement in 1998.
Even then, he continued to pen thought-provoking columns for the Herald on a weekly basis, and was a regular contributor to overseas periodicals and online publications such as Wisden Monthly.
Cameron bridged the old-school world of cricket and the new, internet-connected age. To chat with him was to re-live stories about 49ers such as Bert Sutcliffe, Merv Wallace and Johnny Hayes; about the 80s stars: Hadlee, Crowe, Turner and Wright – and about the more recent class of Fleming, Astle, McMillan and Vettori.
He was a conservative mind, and took New Zealand Cricket to task on a number of occasions, not least in the mid-1990s when coach Glenn Turner was pressured to stand down in order to re-accommodate the then-problematic pair of Chris Cairns and Adam Parore.
He once confided that one of the most difficult tasks of his career was putting his close friend and former All Black captain DJ Graham (at that stage the New Zealand manager) on the spot during the second Test against England in 1997, while exploring a story involving Cairns, a late night escapade, and a taxi-driver.
Cameron was an enthusiastic supporter of young writers; he always found time to assist and mentor the emerging kids on the block, and later – as a life member of the NZ Sports Journalism Association, lent his name to the Young Sports Writer of the Year Award.
Descriptive but pointed; serious but funny – and always original, his career work represents an invaluable thread in the fabric of New Zealand cricket heritage.
Cameron is survived by his wife Val, and three adult children.
