New Zealand cricket icon Bob Blair, who lost his fiancee in the Tangiwai tragedy, dies on 94th birthday

Wednesday, 24 June 2026

One of the most heroic and tragic figures in New Zealand sport has passed away.

Former Wellington fast bowler Bob Blair died on Tuesday in England, on the day he turned 94.

Blair - born in Petone - was on tour with the New Zealand men’s cricket side in South Africa in 1953 when 151 people on the overnight express train from Wellington to Auckland lost their lives in the country’s worst rail disaster on Christmas Eve.

Among the fatalities was Nerissa Love, Blair’s fiancée.

The news reached Blair in the early hours of the second morning of the second test against South Africa at Ellis Park.

He stayed at the hotel grieving as his NZ team-mates were tormented by South African fast bowler Neil Adcock when the test resumed on Boxing Day.

NZ’s star batter Bert Sutcliffe was hit above the ear by an Adcock bouncer to the fourth ball he faced and collapsed to the ground, before eventually leaving the crease and being taken to hospital.

He was soon joined there by Lawrie Miller, who was struck over the heart by a delivery and coughed up blood.

Incoming batters had to mark their guard on a crease stained by blood.

Staggeringly, Sutcliffe later returned to bat with his head swathed in bandages. He took to the home team’s bowling, but when NZ lost their ninth wicket and he began to walk off to a rapturous ovation, he and the crowd were stunned to see Blair walk out to bat.

When Sutcliffe asked, “what are you doing here, Bob?” he replied, “I just want to help.”

Sutcliffe and Blair put on 33 for the last wicket, including a world record of 25 runs off one Hugh Tayfield over, with Blair contributing a six before being stumped.

Late cricket writer Dick Brittenden said it was a story that every Kiwi child should learn at their mother’s knee.

The remainder of the tour - NZ played two more tests and didn’t depart until almost mid-February - was particularly hard on Blair, aged just 21.

There was no overseas air passage available for him to get back home, and a sea voyage took 28 days – far too long for him to return for his fiancée’s funeral.

The letters Nerissa had written and posted to him daily from New Zealand continued to arrive throughout the tour.

'It hurt at the time, it hurt a lot,' Blair told The Post when visiting NZ from his Cheshire home in 2013.

'We went to the grave two days ago. I went last time I was out here (2010). It was difficult for my wife. She is my second wife. She knows all about it. She's lived through all these years. We've been married 27 years.

'I have a thought every Christmas. It is 60 years this year. It always comes up, it will never go away. It is something you have to live with.'

There has been a play, a book and movie about the tragedy.

Blair played 19 tests for NZ, taking 43 wickets at an average of 35.23, with his last test in 1964. He took a whopping 537 first-class wickets at 18.54, with his career-best being 9-72 against Auckland.

When asked how he responded as a cricketer to Love’s death, Blair replied “it made me'.

'When I got the ball in my hand I wanted to hurt people. I had been hurt. I wanted to deck people, that is why I bowled so short.

“It gave me fire.'

Blair later coached in Queensland, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Northern Ireland and England. He captained Lancashire under-50s in a county competition, taking 7-12 in a semifinal, and played his last game aged 67.

In 2024, the Tangiwai Shield was unveiled as the trophy to be contested between the Black Caps and South Africa in a test series.

Then-NZ Cricket chief executive Scott Weenink said the Shield was a fitting acknowledgement of what he considered one of the great stories of Kiwi sporting courage.

Blair was the last surviving player from that New Zealand team.

From the archives

In 1999, the late Press sports writer Dick Brittenden wrote about his memories of that day, admitting he was still haunted by the events of Boxing Day 1953 at Ellis Park, Johannesburg.

It was the day a bloodied and bandaged Bert Sutcliffe, struck repeatedly by the South African pace attack, replied on behalf of several other battered team-mates by returning from hospital to hit seven glorious sixes in an unbeaten 80.

It was the day Bob Blair, grieving the death of his 19-year-old fiancee in the Tangiwai railway disaster on Christmas Eve, selflessly dashed from the hotel to help his team-mates in their hour of need.

Sutcliffe, the dismissed No. 10 batsman, Guy Overton, and the South African players were leaving the field when Blair made his unexpected entrance.

'I still get upset . . . just a bit,' Brittenden said in 1999.

'I remember the notable South African cricket writer Louis Duffus sitting there, absolutely in tears. It was a fearful experience.'

There have been few, if any, more dramatic days in New Zealand sporting history. Brittenden's report, reproduced here, is a classic piece of journalism:

Sympathy for Blair in his sorrow, and admiration for his courage in carrying on, were natural, but somehow the whole crowd - normally more matter-of-fact than most - became as one at this poignant moment, a moment the New Zealanders and others will recall with vivid clarity all their lives.

He walked out into the sunshine, finding it pathetically difficult to put on his gloves, and the huge crowd stood for him, silent, as he went. Looking down on the scene from the glass windows of the pavilion, the New Zealanders wept openly and without shame; the South Africans were in little better state, and Sutcliffe, walking out to meet his partner, was just as obviously distressed.

Before he faced his first ball Blair passed his glove across his eyes in the heartwringing gesture of any small boy, anywhere, in trouble, but defiant. His was a courage unexcelled in a match which made heavy demands on the New Zealanders. To take physical knocks and come back for more is admirable, but to carry on after one's world has fallen about one's ears surely requires an effort quite out of the ordinary.

Then came the most thrilling batting of the series. Sutcliffe swung Tayfield high and dry for six; two balls later another effortless on-drive went for six, and two balls later again he hit another one into a half-demented crowd. Then he took a single to retain the strike, but Blair finished off the over with a tremendous hit far into the seething, cheering spectators at mid-wicket - 25 from Tayfield in an over.

'A few more were added, and then Blair was stumped and the crowd, giving the batsmen a tremendous reception, might have been thought, from the warmth of their applause, to have been cheering a last-minute Springbok win in a rugby test.

So the batsmen came back, and there was a last unforgettable gesture. Sutcliffe had hit seven sixes, six off Tayfield, he had made 80 not out in an hour and a half. With Blair he had scored 33 for the last wicket in 10 minutes, he had saved a follow-on, and he was quite entitled to regard the tumult of cheering as a tribute to his skill and daring.

But he stood aside at the gate, allowing Blair to pass in first. They went, arms about each other, into the darkness of the tunnel, but behind them they left a light and an inspiration which several thousand lectures on how to play the forward defensive stroke could never kindle.