[1] He was born at Dunedin in 1989 and educated at Otago Boys' High School in the city.
[3] He was the leading run-scorer in the 2017–18 Plunket Shield season for Otago, with 577 runs in ten matches.
[7] In June 2020, he was offered a contract by Otago ahead of the 2020–21 domestic cricket season.
[8][9] As well as Otago he played County Cricket in the UK for Essex in 2013, Derbyshire in 2015 and 2016, Worcestershire in 2019 and 2020, Glamorgan in 2021 and Leicestershire in 2022.
He had previously been hit while batting by Jofra Archer in 2019 and by Lockie Ferguson during the 2019–20 New Zealand domestic one-day final and in 2015 by Scott Kuggeleijn, a ball that resulted in Rutherford taking three months off cricket to recover.