Donald Owen Neely MNZM MBE (21 December 1935 – 16 June 2022) was a New Zealand cricket historian, administrator and player.

Neely was born in Wellington in 1935 and attended Rongotai College from 1947 to 1953,[2] where he played 1st XI cricket.

Neely's first-class career began ten days after his 29th birthday, on 31 December 1964, when he played for Wellington against Canterbury in Christchurch.

For the match against Canterbury, opening batsman Bruce Murray was left out of the team that had played Wellington's first game of the season.

Peter Truscott moved from number six to opener to make room in the middle order for Neely.

The round robin saw drawn matches against Central Districts and Otago, followed by losses to Canterbury and Auckland.

Wellington's sole victory was over Northern Districts in the final round of the competition and the team finished fourth on the points table.

[23] Neely played in four of those matches, missing the fixture against Central Districts, and scored only 48 runs at an average of 12.0.

[24] His last first class match took place over 15–17 January 1971, and was against Canterbury, the province he'd debuted against over six years previously.

In September 2006, Neely was appointed the president of New Zealand Cricket at NZC's Annual General Meeting in Wellington.

Neely served three one-year terms,[27] the maximum allowed by the rules of NZC, and was replaced by Denis Currie in 2009.

[31] It was named the Don Neely Scoreboard, at the insistence of its main benefactor, Ron Brierley.

He met his wife Paddianne at Masterton Intermediate School in 1960; she said that he enjoyed teaching and was good at it but the pay was "modest".