New Zealand cricket team in England in 1931
The New Zealand cricket team toured England in the 1931 season. The tour was the first tour by a New Zealand team in which Test matches were arranged. Originally, only one Test was planned, but New Zealand acquitted themselves so well in the first match and in the game against MCC that matches against Surrey and Lancashire were hastily replaced by two further Test matches. Of the three Tests played, the first was drawn, the second was won comfortably by England and the third was ruined by rain. The tour as a whole was blighted by poor weather, and 23 of the 32 first-class matches ended as draws.
In 1926, the Imperial Cricket Conference, forerunner of the International Cricket Council, allowed for the first time delegates from India, New Zealand and the West Indies to attend. The three were invited to organise themselves into cricket boards that could, in future, select representative teams to take part in Test matches, which had hitherto been restricted to sides from England, Australia and South Africa.
A non-Test playing visit from a side from New Zealand had already been arranged for the 1927 season, and this tour went ahead without Test matches before a decision was taken on whether New Zealand was ready for Test cricket. In the event, the 1927 side did well enough to get an official (though scarcely full-strength) MCC tour agreed for 1929-30, in which New Zealand's first-ever Tests were played. And future New Zealand tours of England, from this 1931 tour onwards, were full Test match tours.
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