Noel Sherwin Harford, born 30 August 1930 in Winton

Winton, New Zealand

Winton is a town in Southland, New Zealand. It is located close to the east bank of the Oreti River, 30 kilometres north of Invercargill and 50 kilometres south of Lumsden. It is named after Thomas Winton, a local stockman who lived in the area in the 1850s...

 and died at Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

 on 30 March 1981, was a cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er who played for Central Districts, Auckland and New Zealand

New Zealand cricket team

The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

.

A neat right-handed batsman strong at driving and pulling but weak in defence and against spin, Harford came to prominence on the New Zealand tour to Pakistan and India in 1955-56, and made his Test

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 debut against Pakistan at Lahore

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

, scoring 93 and 64. That debut, though, proved by some distance to be Harford's most successful Test appearance.

In England in the wet summer of 1958, Harford made his maiden century against Oxford University

Oxford University Cricket Club

Oxford University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team, representing the University of Oxford. It plays its home games at the University Parks in Oxford, England...

. He made 158, his highest first-class score, and shared a partnership of 204 with his captain, John Reid

John Richard Reid

John Richard Reid was a New Zealand cricketer who captained New Zealand in 34 Tests. He was the country's first cricketing leader to achieve victory, both at home against the West Indies in 1956 and the first away win, against South Africa in 1962...

 in two hours and 10 minutes. But in eight innings in four Test matches, he scored just 41 runs and reached double figures only once, a gritty innings of 23 at Edgbaston

Edgbaston Cricket Ground

Edgbaston Cricket Ground, also known as the County Ground or Edgbaston Stadium, is a cricket ground in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, England...

 in which he had to retire for a period after being hit in the face by a bouncer from Fred Trueman

Fred Trueman

Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE was an English cricketer, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest fast bowlers in history. A bowler of genuinely fast pace who was widely known as Fiery Fred, Trueman played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club from 1949 until he retired in 1968...

.

In all, Harford played eight Test matches and scored 229 runs at an average of just over 15 runs per innings.

After his cricket career, he played basketball for New Zealand.