Sutcliffe biography within two years

Bert Sutcliffe's remarkable cricket career is to be remembered in a biography being prepared by Dunedin author Rod Nye.

Sutcliffe had been working with Nye in the months before his death on Friday in South Auckland and in their last phone conversation, about a month before Sutcliffe's death, Sutcliffe impressed on Nye that he should take his time over the book and not rush it.

Nye wrote the autobiography of Sutcliffe's fellow 1949 left-hander Martin Donnelly, which filled a much needed gap in New Zealand's cricket literature and which has been rounded in recent years by autobiographies of Walter Hadlee, Merv Wallace and John Reid.

Nye has been ill himself recently but expects to have his book on Sutcliffe finished within two years.

"I don't want to rush it, I want to do it properly," Nye said from Dunedin today.

"While it would have been nice to have had a book out now, Bert's reputation and memories of him will still make a future book of interest to readers," he said.

Nye had some extensive interviews with Sutcliffe in Auckland and there has been a family contact as Bert's son Gary always stays with the Nyes when visiting Dunedin.

"Bert's brother Mervyn has written me letters with some wonderful material as well.

"There's a lot material I'll be coming up with that hasn't been seen in print before," he said.

The Sutcliffe connection has made the researching of the book a true labour of love for Nye who recalled he and his brother watching Sutcliffe bat at Carisbrook as youths.

"And we would go into his shop at Sutcliffe and Cederwall just to look at him. We'd never buy anything. He was a good bloke about that," Nye said.

The earlier days of Sutcliffe's career were included in two earlier books about him, the Bert Sutcliffe Book for Boys and his autobiography Between Overs which was published before his return to international cricket in 1964/65.