When he was three years old, his father, the New Zealand cricketer Ned Sale, died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Aged 17 and while still at school, he made his first century in senior Auckland cricket in November 1932.

[7] The "diminutive Aucklander" scored his century in 115 minutes of "confident and beautifully timed stroke play".

[8] Later that year, on Christmas Day, during the match against Auckland he made 97, the highest score in the match, "a masterly innings lasting 135 minutes" with "powerful off and cover drives, and brilliant hook and pull shots".

[9] After the 1939–40 season, when Auckland won the Plunket Shield and Sale was singled out in The Cricketer as a batsman of "considerable promise",[10] World War II curtailed cricket in New Zealand, and Sale played no more first-class cricket.