A full-size, willow, Wisden's Exceller De Luxe cricket bat, signed by members of the 1927 New Zealand cricket team that toured England. The following text is stamped on the back of the bat: Autographed by the New Zealand Cricket Team at Parson's Showrooms, Oxford Street, London, 13 May 1927. 

The identifiable signatures, written side-by-side on the back of the bat are: 
Left-hand side: -, WHR Cunningham, -, -, EHL Bernau, -, RC Blunt, -; 
Right-hand side: ML Page, HM McGirr, -, -, KC James, M Henderson, -, -. 

The touring team was: Cyril Allcott, Ernest (Bill) Bernau, Roger Blunt, Bill Cunningham, Ces Dacre, Stewie Dempster, Matt Henderson, Ken James, Tom Lowry, Bill Merritt, Jack Mills, Herb McGirr, Charlie Oliver, and 'Curly' Page.

In 1926, the Imperial Cricket Conference, forerunner of the International Cricket Council, allowed delegates from India, New Zealand and the West Indies to attend the conference for the first time. The three countries 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.

Anon-Test playing visit by a side from New Zealand had already been arranged for the 1927 season and it was agreed that this tour should go 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 the first New Zealand Tests were played. Future New Zealand tours of England, from 1931 onwards, were full Test match tours.

In 1927 matches were played against 16 of the 17 first-class counties, with five matches won, four lost and the remainder drawn. The touring side was particularly strong in batting, and most of their victories relied on the weight of runs produced. Six batsmen scored more than 1,000 runs in first-class matches. The tourists' averages were led by Dempster, with 1,430 runs at 44.68 runs per innings; by aggregate, Blunt did better, with 1,540 at exactly 44 runs an innings. Lowry, Mills, Page and Dacre also passed 1,000 runs in first-class games. In all matches, Dempster and Blunt scored more than 2,000 runs each. The bowling was less successful. Merritt, aged 19, took 107 first-class wickets with leg-breaks and googles, and Blunt, of similar style, took 78.

The New Zealanders played 12 other matches, mostly of two-days’ duration, winning six of them and drawing the others. These included four games in a week in Scotland and five against Minor Counties.  

John Wisden – a.k.a. ‘The Little Wonder’ – was a prominent cricketer of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1850, he took ten wickets in an innings – all bowled– in a North vs South encounter at Lord’s. It remains a record in first-class cricket. John Wisden sold sports equipment from his London shop before branching out into publishing, producing the inaugural Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack in 1864.

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