On Friday night at Eden Park, amid the colour and noise of the BLACKCAPS third KFC T20I against South Africa, a quiet ceremony will take place that connects the present to a moment more than a century old.
New Zealand Cricket will present a replacement Test cap to the family of William Brook-Smith — a man who played his one and only international game for New Zealand in the spring of 1914, but whose original playing cap had sadly disintegrated in the century since.
The cap will be received by Brook-Smith's grandson Mark Shepherd, his wife Sue, and their daughter Kate — the living link to a player most New Zealanders have never heard of, but whose story, it turns out, sits at the heart of cricket history.
The game that Brook-Smith played in began on 27 March 1914, almost exactly 112 years before Friday's double-header between the BLACKCAPS, WHITE FERNS and the South Africa men’s and women’s sides.
It was New Zealand versus an Australian side assembled, captained and played in by Arthur Sims — a former Canterbury and New Zealand batsman who had become a wealthy and well-connected businessman.
Sims had put together a formidably strong touring party, and the match at Eden Park was the first international cricket ever played at the ground.
It would also turn out to be the last international cricket played anywhere before the First World War brought the game to a halt.
New Zealand had the worst of it on the field. Australia made 610-6 declared, with four centurions, and eventually won by an innings. But Brook-Smith, an Auckland batsman of genuine quality, came to the crease with his side in trouble at 71-5 and made 46, sharing a 97-run partnership with his Auckland team-mate Ned Sale, who made a fine 109.
Among the Australians that day was Victor Trumper. Before Don Bradman came along, Trumper was regarded — without serious argument — as Australia's greatest batsman.
Those who saw both play sometimes went further, rating Trumper the superior on the sheer aesthetic quality of his batting, even as Bradman's record as an accumulator of runs remained unmatched.
Trumper was adored. He was also one of the key figures in the early development of rugby league in Australia, and when he died an estimated 20,000 mourners lined the route of his funeral to Waverley Cemetery in Sydney.
The game at Eden Park turned out to be Trumper's last. His health declined rapidly in 1914, and he died of kidney disease in Sydney in June 1915, aged just 37. He made 81 in what none of those present could have known would be his final appearance.
The cap that William Brook-Smith wore that day survived more than a century, but time took its toll, and the cap deteriorated to the point where it could no longer be preserved.
New Zealand Cricket has produced a replacement — a gesture of recognition for a man who played just once for international for his country, but who did so in extraordinary company, on an extraordinary occasion.
The threads that run through this one match are remarkable.
Trumper's dismissal in that final innings — lbw — was taken by Nessie Snedden, playing his very first international game for New Zealand. Snedden would go on to captain his country. He is the grandfather of former New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden. And Nessie Snedden's father, Alexander, was one of the men who purchased the land once known as Cabbage Tree Swamp — the land on which Eden Park now stands.
So on Friday night, at the ground built on land that the Snedden family helped acquire, the grandson of a man who batted in Victor Trumper's last game will receive his grandfather's cap.
The game of cricket has a long memory.
Brook-Smith himself lived until 1952. He married Louisa Walters in 1916 and they had two children, Evan Brook and Margery Brook. Margery married Peter Villiers Shepherd in 1948, and their son Mark is the grandson who will take possession of the cap on Friday.
He carries the name of a man who played one international for New Zealand, scored 46 and 18, and never played again — but who was present at the first international at Eden Park, in the last international before the Great War, on the day that the greatest batsman of his era walked to the crease for the last time.
Some caps carry more history than most.
