Paul Erskine Whitelaw, born on 10 February 1910 and died at Auckland on 28 August 1988, 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 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 right-handed opening batsman with a fine array of strokes, Whitelaw played first-class cricket

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 for Auckland with some success from 1928 to 1947, averaging 37 runs per innings. Yet he made only two Test match

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...

 appearances, both matches on the short tour of New Zealand by the 1932-33 MCC

Marylebone Cricket Club

Marylebone Cricket Club is a cricket club in London founded in 1787. Its influence and longevity now witness it as a private members' club dedicated to the development of cricket. It owns, and is based at, Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, London NW8. MCC was formerly the governing body of...

 side that followed the Bodyline

Bodyline

Bodyline, also known as fast leg theory bowling, was a cricketing tactic devised by the English cricket team for their 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia, specifically to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's Don Bradman...

 tour of Australia. Both matches were dominated by the batting of Walter Hammond, who scored 563 runs in two innings, being dismissed just once. Whitelaw made 64 runs from four innings, two of them not out. But though he represented New Zealand in unofficial matches against the MCC team led by Errol Holmes

Errol Holmes

Errol Reginald Thorold Holmes, born at Calcutta on 21 August 1905 and died in London on 16 August 1960, was a cricketer who played for Oxford University, Surrey and England....

 in 1935-36, he never played Test cricket again.

In 1936-37, playing for Auckland against Otago at Dunedin

Dunedin

Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...

, Whitelaw and Bill Carson set a world record that stood for almost 40 years by adding 445 for the third wicket. The partnership remains the fourth highest in the world for that wicket. Whitelaw's 195 in this match was his highest first-class score.