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| Graeme Pollock |
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| Barry Richards |
The South African
Graeme Pollock was also a top-class left-handed stroke-player like Sobers, but
that is where the comparison ended. In almost every other way Pollock was
different. Tall, strongly built and seemingly laboured, he was not athletic,
unlike Sobers, and it showed in his running between wickets, and fielding,
where he was at best a safe catcher. Stooping low into his stance, with legs
spread apart, the power in his shots came from timing, quite the anti-thesis of
Sobers who had a big backlift and played his shots with a flourish.
Pollock was also
considered primarily an off-side player, like another big man Wally Hammond,
but could get the ball away on the on-side, particularly with his short-arm
pull shots. His 3 lb bat, very heavy for those times, was like a club as he
drove and cut in awesome fashion. Inzamam-ul-Haq was perhaps, in some ways, a
mirror image of Graeme Pollock for their laidback style, but that was an
illusion because they spotted the ball early and had plenty of time to play
their strokes. That explained their unhurried movements. The Pakistani batsman
though was more aesthetic, with footwork quite nimble for a burly physique, and
apt to hit straighter.
Prodigiously
talented, one of Pollock’s finest innings was at Nottingham in 1965. With the
ball seaming around, South Africa were reduced to 80 for five. He put on 98
with skipper Peter van der Merwe, whose contribution was 10. Pollock slammed
the English bowlers for 21 boundaries all over Trent Bridge, clocking up 125
runs off 145 balls.
His finest hour came
at Durban in 1970. In the company of Barry Richards, he flayed the Australian
attack. Pollock went on record the highest Test score for South Africa, a
tremendous 274 that demoralised the opposition. At 26 years he was at the
height of his powers when, soon after, South Africa were banished from Test
cricket for their policy of apartheid. It was a cruel blow, for Pollock had
aggregated 2256 runs in only 23 Tests for an average of 60.97, the best-ever barring
Bradman, among those who have played at least 20 innings.
Barry Richards
suffered an even worse fate. That was the only Test series he got to play. In
those four games he scored 508 runs, averaging 72.57, with two hundreds. His
highest of 140 was in that scintillating stand with Graeme Pollock at Durban
when they blasted 103 runs in an hour after lunch on the first day. Richards
reached his century in the first over after lunch off just 116 deliveries.
Several observers have rated him among the best batsmen ever. Brian Johnston
watched him at close quarters, not only in that 1969-70 home series against
Australia, but for long years in county cricket for Hampshire, where his
opening partner was a West Indian named Gordon Greenidge.
Johnston wrote in It’s Been a Piece of Cake: “He had, and
played, every stroke off the front foot and the back. With a high backlift he
played beautifully straight, and used his feet far more than the others I have
mentioned (Sobers, Hutton, May, Cowdrey, Greg Chappell and Viv Richards), with
the exception of Bradman, Hammond and Compton. He would even dance down the
wicket to the fast bowlers. Barry’s technique was backed by his supreme
confidence in his own ability, and an insolent contempt for all bowlers.”
The little master
himself, Sunil Gavaskar, made a telling observation in The Times of India in 1995: “Barry Richards was the first batsman I
saw playing the lofted shot over extra-cover. This was in the Sunday League in
England in 1971. Till he demonstrated how to do it, batsmen tended to hit the
ball over the infield on the leg-side if they wanted quick runs. The inside-out
shot over extra-cover is more difficult, for one has to really get to the pitch
of the ball to be able to hit it away from the fielders. Since there used to be
no fielders posted on the extra-cover boundary, it was easy to pick up
boundaries there and soon this shot was being copied by other batsmen
effectively and is now a normal shot in all kinds of cricket.” That is a stamp
of genius.
In his very first
season for Hampshire in 1968, Richards topped their run chart with 2395 runs.
The next highest for the county was by Barry Reed with a tally of 990. He
scored heavily each year in county cricket, though he had moderate success for
the Rest of the World, who replaced the banned South African team, for the 1970
tour of England. Richards went Down Under to play in the Sheffield Shield, and
he was sensational. In 1970-71, he hit up 356 for South Australia against
Western Australia, 325 of which were scored on the first day of the match. In
1977 he signed up for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. Even though he was
past his prime, Richards performed exceedingly well, confronted as he was with
quality opposition once again.
It is, therefore, not
altogether a surprise that Bradman chose him to partner Arthur Morris in his
All Time XI. For a man of Richards’ calibre it became increasingly difficult to
motivate himself to continue playing the inferior trundlers at the first-class
level. He walked away from it all, frustrated at being kept out of Test
cricket.
Graeme Pollock and
Barry Richards were part of a brilliant South African team that continued the
process begun by the supremely talented West Indies teams led by Frank Worrell
and Gary Sobers, and finally and emphatically did away with the supremacy of
England and Australia for the first time in the 90-year history of Test
cricket. Under Peter van der Merwe and Ali Bacher, South Africa defeated
England 1-0 in 1965 in an away series, and then trounced Australia twice at
home, 3-1 in a five-Test series in 1966-67, and a 4-0 whitewash in 1969-70.
Coming off a
comfortable 3-1 triumph in India, Bill Lawry’s Australian side was handed a
mauling of frightening proportions by the South Africans. The margins of defeat
were 170 runs, innings and 127 runs, 307 runs, and 323 runs. It was
humiliating, to put in kindly, and a far cry from the heady days of Bradman.
South Africa could now justifiably claim to being the no. 1 Test team in the
world, even as their apartheid regime resulted in prevention of face-offs with
the ‘coloured’ nations.
The nucleus of the
1965-70 South African teams comprised the allrounders, former skipper Trevor
Goddard and Eddie Barlow, arguably the greatest-ever cover fielder Colin Bland,
wicketkeeper-batsman Dennis Lindsay, pace duo of Graeme’s elder brother Peter
Pollock and the wrong-footed in-swinger Mike Procter, who was also a tremendous
batsman, and two star run-getters Graeme Pollock and Barry Richards. It is such
a pity that their Test careers had to be halted abruptly in their prime.
(Author Indra Vikram Singh can be contacted
on email singh_iv@hotmail.com).
Don’s
Century
Published
in India by Sporting Links
ISBN
978-81-901668-5-0
Fully
illustrated
Paperback
French Fold 11 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
188 pages
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