4

Natal 1964–70

‘This sunshine-faced, fair-haired, Natal opening
batsman is undoubtedly one of the most promising
youngsters I have ever played against.’

Graeme Pollock

AFTER the Lord Mayor’s Show…comes the dust cart. The very idea of Barry sweeping the stands after a big match is not one that readily springs to mind but as an expression of anti-climax, it does evocatively sum up Barry’s mood as he returned to school following his adventures in England. What was there to look forward to? Further academic study was not high up on his agenda. Cricket was all that Barry lived for but were the opportunities offered by Durban High School sufficiently challenging? He had already been in the First XI for four years. On his return, he was awarded his full colours blazer, which pleased him, but it was no less than he deserved. What else? He could learn a musical instrument. Or join the choir. Or audition for the school play. Or sit down at a chessboard. I’m guessing that anyone who knows Barry would snort with laughter at the very idea. ‘All I was doing,’ he admitted, ‘was marking time, waiting for the cricket season.’

By now the routine was becoming familiar, Offord Week, followed by Nuffield Week, with Barry as captain of the Natal side and Mike Procter as his second-incommand. A score of 55 in the first match against Transvaal gave every hint that normal service was being resumed. The cricket gods had other ideas, however. His next three innings were: three, one and none. Not the sort of form that would guarantee anyone, even Barry, a place in the full national schools side. But the selectors stuck with him and he was confirmed as captain for the match against the full North-Eastern Transvaal provincial side. Still the gods toyed with him; he made only one. Some semblance of fluency returned with a fifty against a Western Province Invitation XI but he felt he had been taken down a peg or two – probably a salutary experience, he later felt. And that was that, as far as schools cricket was concerned. Now it was time for the grown-up stuff.

What ambitions did you have at this time? ‘To get into the Natal side and then have a tilt at the Test team.’ No, I meant as far as a career was concerned. Presumably, the possibility of playing for a living simply didn’t exist at that time. He agreed, explaining that there was no such thing as a professional framework in the game in his country. All the Test players, Barlow, Bland, Lindsay, Goddard, Bacher, the Pollock brothers et al, had to find employment that was sympathetic to their cricket commitments. One or two of the household names might be lucky enough to be engaged in some nominal, commercial or promotional activity for a large company but the rest had to scrabble around as best they could. Including you, I guess? He smiled. ‘Well, I didn’t leave school with an impressive batch of qualifications, so my options were limited.’ He pointed out that he was caught between two stools as far as getting a job was concerned. On one hand, the sponsorship of cricketers by the big multi-nationals was drying up, particularly the tobacco companies – the anti-smoking lobby was just beginning to stir. And on the other, full professionalism was a long way over the horizon.

So what did you do? ‘A cricket loving chap by the name of Sean Ellis-Cole, who worked in insurance, gave me a job, a tea boy, really. But he was good to me and gave me plenty of time off to practise and play.’ And the pay? He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘R70 a month. Peanuts. Especially when my dad deducted R35 for board and lodging.’ That last sentence was accompanied by a grimace. ‘It took me ten months to save up to buy a car,’ he exclaimed in indignation. Good grief. Barry Richards without wheels – the very thought. ‘A 1950 Vauxhall it was. Cost me R50. Sold it a while later for R70, so I reckon I did a bit of good business there.’ I had to stifle a laugh. Getting the best deal for his cars was an ongoing saga when he was at Hampshire and a source of amusement to his team-mates.

Thinking of Hampshire prompted my next question. Was there even the merest hint at this time that you might be able to ply your trade in England? Emphatically not, it would seem. ‘The qualification period to play for an English county was four years. That is four years [of] continuous residency, which would have meant missing the cricket season in South Africa, and I would never have even contemplated that.’ Indeed not. His ultimate goal was to get into the Test side. Once you joined an English county as a professional, you waved goodbye to any chance of playing for your country. Usually, it was financial necessity that persuaded these exiles to play for a county and set up home in England, where the game was fully professional. I am reminded of Hampshire’s Roy Marshall, one of the most destructive opening batsmen in the 1960s, who abandoned his native Barbados to settle in England at the price of his Test career, a mere four caps for West Indies. That sacrifice Barry was unprepared to make. And what’s more, I just cannot imagine your surviving an English winter, let alone four. ‘Absolutely. Your summers are cold enough for me.’

So he was caught in a vicious circle. He needed to get into the Natal side to put himself in the public eye. Then, if successful – it’s funny but Barry never seemed to doubt that he would be successful – he might catch the selectors’ eyes for the full South African side. And then he might secure some sort of sponsorship or sympathetic employment to keep the wolves from the door. The trouble was that the Natal side was a strong one in an era when provincial cricket was highly competitive and richly supplied. Natal’s pre-eminence in this period is reminiscent of another great team of a decade earlier. In the 1950s, Surrey won the County Championship seven times on the trot. In the 1960s, Natal, also packed with internationals, went one better and won the Currie Cup eight times consecutively. There was no youth policy, however. Veterans such as Jackie McGlew, Roy McLean, Trevor Goddard, and Pat Trimborn were unlikely to give up their places in the side willingly and they were canny enough – and good enough – to avoid any talk of being dropped. ‘The thing was,’ said Barry, ‘they weren’t doing anything wrong that put them under pressure. They were doing just enough to stay in the side.’ Not exactly a closed shop but opportunities to break that stranglehold were few and far between. All he could do was to make his case for selection by sheer weight of runs in club cricket.

It is worth pointing out here that club cricket in South Africa at this time bore little or no resemblance to club cricket in England. I am not saying that there are not good players in the English club game but the picture conjured up in most people’s mind of bucolic surroundings, arthritic fielding, rustic batting, enthusiastic but innocuous bowling, jam sandwiches and chocolate cake for tea, with the country vicar and the local squire looking on appreciatively, pint mugs in hand, would have been anathema to South African club players. They took their cricket seriously. And the standard was very good. Let me give you an illustration. Selection for an English club, such as it takes place at all, is often in the bar on a Friday night, telephone in hand, with desperate calls being made to secure the 11 players. Selection for the weekend’s teams in a South African club would be made by a small group of gimlet-eyed and knowledgeable captains on a Thursday evening in front of the whole complement of players pouring sweat in the nets. A no-show at practice meant a Saturday in your shorts. Setting foot in the adult game was not a doddle for the young Barry Richards. Well, not for a little while anyway.

As night follows day, so did former cricketers of Durban High School transfer seamlessly to the Old Boys cricket club. But ‘seamless’ and Barry Richards do not always fit seamlessly, if you see what I mean. He joined Tech. Tech? I didn’t know you went to technical college. ‘I did not,’ he explained patiently. ‘Tech Cricket Club.’ In so doing, Barry had defied custom and practice and it caused a bit of a rumpus. So why did you do it? He waggled his head as if once again weighing up the pros and cons of his decision. ‘Well, Trevor Goddard played for them. But I think the main reason was that Alan Butler was there.’ Alan Butler was the coach hired by his father all those years ago who drilled into the boy the virtues of a classically orthodox technique, one that would stand the test of time and a searching examination by the world’s best bowlers. ‘I was put under enormous pressure from DHS Old Boys, not least from my cricket master, Les Theobald. I did eventually go back there but I enjoyed my time at Tech.’

You said that you used to pester Alan Butler for a net until he must have been heartily sick of the sight of you. Now you were older, did you net just as assiduously? ‘First in there, most Tuesdays and Thursdays.’ The truth is had he not been the first in there, the likelihood was that he wouldn’t have got a regular session, early or later. ‘There were only two nets and everyone wanted a bat. With the light going quickly, there often wasn’t time to fit everyone in. It’s not like those long summer evenings in the UK. It gets dark in Durban at six.’ Hello. Was that a compliment on the English climate from my South African friend? The reason that he was able to beat the crowd to the nets at the start time of 4.30pm was the kindness of his employer, Sean Ellis-Cole, who allowed him to shoot off from work early to beat the rush hour. What were the nets like to bat in? ‘As you can imagine, there only being two of them, they got pretty worn. And the guys didn’t let up. They wanted to impress as much as anyone.’ And I bet they bowled from 18 yards. Quick bowlers don’t seem to worry about no-balling in the nets, do they? Ruefully, he agreed. But I’m sure he coped well enough. He would no doubt have coped if they bowled from 12 yards.

He now warmed to his theme about nets. Facilities for practice in the first-class game are now streets ahead of what were on offer in the 1960s. The improvement in all-weather, synthetic surfaces has transformed net sessions and makes me wish… However, it is only fair to say that at some counties, at any rate, the grass nets were properly prepared and provided worthwhile batting practice. Not so at Kingsmead, the home of Natal cricket, Barry told me. ‘They only had one net! And it faced into the sun!’ He shook his head with incredulity. ‘That’s one thing I fixed when I came back to run the place later in my career.’

How was your social life? ‘Pretty good!’ he grinned. I was not intent on prying into what he got up to out of hours; I was merely enquiring what sort of entertainment and recreational opportunities there were for a young man in Durban at that time. A fatuous question, the more I thought about it. It really didn’t take much of a leap of the imagination to presume what a single male in his late teens found to occupy himself in South Africa’s second city, with its sub-tropical climate and beaches to die for. Especially as he now had wheels. I reminded him, as if there were any need, that there was a swimming pool adjoining the cricket pitch and on sunny days…I knew this because Grayson Heath, his former Geography teacher at school, the same Grayson Heath to whom Barry had already made plain his fondness for swimming pools, was the captain of the club’s First XI and had one or two stories to tell me. Incongruously enough, swimming pools were at their heart. ‘One or two stories!’ said Barry. ‘Knowing Grayson, there will be more than one or two. There won’t be enough space in the book.’ That was true. But they are amusing and in trying to distil some of their essence, I hope I do them justice. ‘Ah, Grayson,’ smiled Barry, not unkindly. ‘He was such a cricket nut that he would still be playing in his wheelchair.’

Heath was the captain of the side and there is one game he particularly remembers. In the opposition that day was Pat Trimborn, the Springbok opening bowler, supported by a bevy of more than useful seamers. Their batting however was comparatively weak. So Heath’s tactics were to win the toss and bat on an admittedly greenish pitch and hope his batters would score more runs on it than theirs. It was not an unrealistic hope. He had in his side the emerging genius and the talk of the town, Barry Richards, to say nothing of some experienced and capable batsmen around him. On a hot Durban day, Barry opened with Dennis Gamsy, a Natal regular and just the man to put into action the captain’s ringing instruction to ‘see off the new ball and carefully provide a decent platform to build the rest of the innings’. The best laid plans of mice and men. ‘We lost our first wicket with the score on 50,’ said Heath. ‘Barry was caught at cover by the fielder who was essentially shielding his face from a cover drive that had the ball still climbing like a missile, knocking him over backwards. Barry had scored 45 of that total of 50. The new batsman had scarcely faced a couple of balls and Barry was already in the swimming pool. Dennis Gamsy’s stunningly beautiful girlfriend, admired by Barry and the rest of us, was among the girls in the pool.’ Barry was outraged by the slur. ‘Gillian!’ he cried. ‘She’s his wife.’ Be that as it may, it did not go unnoticed that Gamsy got out soon after.

It is a curious fact that nobody – at least nobody to whom I have spoken – ever betrayed the slightest irritation or frustration at the extravagance and occasional carelessness of Barry’s strokeplay. Not at this stage of his career, at least. I have to admit that there were occasions in the Hampshire dressing room years later when a scarcely audible sigh of vexation would emanate from some people’s mouths as Barry got himself out in the 70s when a hundred and more were there for the taking. Another hour of this, was the unspoken admonishment, and we would have this lot by the throat. But the rebuke was rarely, if ever, verbalised when he came back into the dressing room and started to unbuckle his pads. The riposte from him would have been instant and cutting, something along the lines of, let’s see if you can do any better when you get out there. But I don’t think it was fear of Barry’s tongue that stopped any direct criticism. There were some strong characters in that Hampshire dressing room and a timid concern for team-mates’ finer feelings was not a hallmark of the professional game. I suspect all of us knew that we couldn’t have done any better and in any case, a 70 from Barry Richards was a gift from the gods and we jolly well ought to appreciate it while we could. And later perhaps, when the heat of battle had died and participants started to reflect in retirement on their careers, they would have slowly come to an understanding of why Barry began to get bored and disillusioned when the challenges dried up.

In the meantime, the challenge was to play what was in front of him and hope that the Natal selectors would soon stir from their slumbers. He certainly did his best to ginger up the club scene in Durban. Listen to this from a boyhood admirer of Barry’s, later a friend. ‘I was 12 years of age,’ Neil Minnaar said. ‘Barry came in at number three and made 184. What made it such a standout knock was that it took him only about two hours 20 minutes. And he was only recently out of school. I was there that Saturday afternoon. It was like watching someone from another planet.’ Or this, once again from Grayson Heath, ‘Dennis Gamsy, a Springbok wicketkeeperbatsman, insisted on opening for us for three reasons. One, so that he could marvel at Barry’s batting from only 22 yards away. Two, he could encourage/cajole Barry to play in the “V” because league cricket was hardly a challenge to him. And three, there was the lure of the swimming pool when he got out, with a bevy of beautiful girls escaping the Durban summer heat.’

That bevy of girls presumably included the future Mrs Gamsy. Heath explained that one ruse Gamsy employed to try and keep Barry’s mind on the job in hand was play a game called ‘nominations’. As the non-striker, he would nominate the stroke that Barry had to play the next ball. For a while, he would nominate safe shots, usually in the ‘V’. When Barry’s interest started to wane, he would introduce more risky shots, the cut, hook, lofted drive and so on. One day, when Barry was 50-odd not out, Dennis went a step further. ‘Neil Govan, a tearaway fast bowler who had represented Natal B, was bowling and Dennis nominated the hook. As Govan walked past Dennis on his way back to his mark, Dennis whispered to him, “If you want to get him out, bowl a yorker.”’ Yes, you’ve guessed it. As Barry was halfway through his hook shot, Govan’s yorker was hitting the base of the middle stump. ‘He walked off muttering about being sold a dummy but his pace quickened as he neared the boundary and the beckoning sounds of the swimming pool area reached his ears.’

Gamsy has his own story to recount. On the second day of a club match, the Sunday afternoon, DHS Old Boys needed quick runs after tea to allow them the chance to declare and bowl the opposition out before stumps at 6pm. An unlikely scenario but they decided to give it a go. ‘Barry and I opened to an 8-1 field, only one on the leg side with the bowlers instructed to bowl wide of the off stump. This was just the type of challenge that switched Barry on. After 35 minutes of running threes and sometimes fours, with Barry somehow sweeping, niggling and cajoling balls from outside off stump down to fine leg, an exhausted Richards got out when we were on 108. I had scored seven and he had scored 101!’ The improbable win was not achieved but Gamsy had the privilege, he said, ‘of witnessing from 22 yards away a genius at work’.

One further anecdote from Heath concerned a match played on a typical greentop at Kingsmead; fast, bouncy and distinctly capricious. The opposition, including five Natal players, were skittled for 129. Not much of a target it might seem but everyone knew that it was going to be difficult, given the state of the pitch. And so it proved. At number six, Heath walked in to bat with the score at 12/4. ‘The stage was set,’ he recounted, ‘and Barry was in his element. The bowlers were seemingly able to make the ball talk but Barry was magnificent. Initially, he was uncharacteristically circumspect as he dealt with the challenge…I watched in awe, always ready of course to run his regular single off the last ball of the over, as he slowly negated, then began to dominate, the attack with a masterclass of batting brilliance.’

When the score had reached 90-odd, Barry clearly believed the match was as good as over as a contest and started to indulge himself with a few extravagant shots. But no captain ever really believes it is over until it actually is over and Heath went down the wicket to lecture Barry on this very point. ‘He didn’t say anything,’ remembered Heath, ‘but the perplexed look on his face said it all. He was caught on the extra cover boundary for 76 but by then we were only 20 runs short.’ The only pity, according to Barry’s former Geography teacher, was that ‘there was only the proverbial man and his dog to bear witness to a vintage Richards innings’. Now, where have I heard that before?

What number were you batting? It seems you weren’t a regular opener at this stage. ‘Number three was my slot. That was where traditionally your best batsman played.’ He went on to say that it was a little later, in 1966, he was encouraged to go in first. After all, the argument went, the score was invariably 10/1, so what was the difference? He might just as well go in first. Initially, he resisted the suggestion. He had been brought up in an era when the conventional wisdom was that the openers would grind it out to see off the shine on the ball and the strokemakers would come in later and make hay. ‘Grinding out’ was not in his vocabulary. Reluctantly, he assented to the plan and gave it a go. How did you get on? ‘I got four hundreds in six innings,’ he laughed, ‘and that was that.’ But he never compromised on his style of play, that was to attack whenever possible.

The club scene was the focal point of your life, I guess. ‘Now, Murt, you know I was never a great clubber.’ Actually, this was true. He enjoyed a night out as much as anybody but pubbing and clubbing was not really his cup of tea. I meant of course the cricket club. ‘The cricket was of a pretty high standard,’ he persisted in assuring me. ‘All the best players played. If they weren’t playing for Natal, they would turn out for their clubs at weekends. It was expected.’ And at the close of play, everybody would repair to the bar and incidents would be replayed and stories would be told. He is of the firm belief that this competitive climate, playing with and against the best in the province, was essential experience for young players such as himself. ‘There were no drink-drive laws then, so we would all have a few beers and then perhaps go out for a meal together.’ He sounded almost wistful. ‘Not like that now. All the kids are plugged into their earphones and no one talks to each other anymore.’

Being the impatient soul that he is, Barry was, by this stage, keenly anxious to test his mettle against better players. Well, the best, if the truth be known; South African cricket was as powerful as it had ever been, with people like Goddard, Barlow, Bland, the two Pollocks and Waite in the Test side and a new generation of young guns, including Barry, restlessly pacing about in the wings. ‘Natal was the powerhouse in the Currie Cup,’ he reminded me, ‘and they did not exactly pursue an enlightened youth policy.’ In other words, his way was barred by players not nearly as good as he was, even then. Barry doesn’t do false modesty. He has always had a fiercely candid and honest opinion of a player’s ability and he sees no reason not to put himself under the same intense spotlight. And if it means that he felt he was good enough, you can be sure he was good enough. Perhaps this searing frankness was what troubled his critics among the bureaucrats, officials and committee members in the English game when he first arrived on these shores as an overseas player. South Africans tell it as it is; Englishmen, by and large, do not. Barry knew he was good – damned good – and he believed he should be commensurately rewarded, and was not afraid to say so.

You believed, therefore, that you were waiting for dead men’s shoes? He didn’t answer directly but gave one of his ironic whistles. ‘Varnals! He batted all day – you couldn’t shift him.’ He was referring to his debut for Natal. The call had come – at last – to play against Transvaal on 24 October 1964. He was 19 years of age. I did say he was impatient. A quick look at the scorecard of the match sheds light on what he meant. B.A. Richards was batting at number seven! The number three, the aforementioned Derek Varnals, had batted all day for his undefeated 102. You can bet your bottom dollar that had Barry batted for the same length of time, he would have scored more than 102. But in fact, he did not bat at all. McGlew declared with the score on 348/4. Barry may well have strapped on his pads but that was as far as it got. ‘For the rest of the time, I spoke only when spoken to,’ he said.

The aloofness of senior players towards the younger members of the team may seem surprising but those were very different times. Grayson Heath says this about the importance of hierarchy in the Natal dressing room in the early 1960s, ‘My first match for Natal was against Western Province at Newlands. I was a 21-year-old and when I dared to venture an opinion in the changing room, I was greeted with a collective glare by the senior players, including Jack McGlew, Roy McLean, Neil Adcock and Trevor Goddard. I was instructed in no uncertain terms to “get some f****** service in”. The message was clear – I was there to be seen and not heard.’ Quaintly, he referred to this period as ‘The Age of Aristocracy’.

You do not have to know Barry Richards well to hazard a guess that The Age of Aristocracy would not sit well with him. Things were to change, however, in a whirlwind manner that would bewilder more than those traditionalists in the Natal dressing room. Listen to Heath’s description of the same scene several years later. ‘The team had changed, with only Trevor Goddard of the illustrious group of Test players I mentioned earlier still there. The baton had been passed to an exciting new breed that included Barry Richards, Mike Procter, Lee Irvine, Hylton Ackerman and Vince van der Bijl. Compared to the changing room of the McGlew era, it was more like a crèche with this bunch of outrageously talented cricketers heading for stardom, dominating the banter and the discussion.’ In a space of half a dozen years or so, the world had completely changed.

But not yet. For the time being, Barry held his breath to cool his porridge. The opportunity to test himself against international players was not long in coming. MCC were touring South Africa in the winter of 1964/65 and one of their warm-up matches before the Test series was against the South African Colts XI, for which Barry had been selected. Ted Dexter, who was the captain of the tourists that day – Mike Smith had been rested – lost the toss and the Colts opted to bat first. It was not long before a nervous Barry Richards was taking guard. He soon settled down, playing just as he would in a club game. Throughout his career he never believed that he should play himself in just for the sake of it. He played each ball, first or last, on its merits. Not quite on this occasion, it has to be said. Having reached a wholly satisfactory 63, he swept once too often at Fred Titmus and was LBW. He wouldn’t have been the first, nor was he to be the last, to have been deceived by the off-spinner’s ability to make the ball curve in the air before pitching and spinning.

A fortnight later, Barry was facing the tourists again, this time for Natal. He rather missed the boat but not the fielder when he holed out for 15 off Tom Cartwright in the first innings but played pretty well, he believed, in a second innings score of 29. It doesn’t sound much but as ever with these things, you have to take into account the context in which it was played. It was a humid day, the ball swung prodigious distances and the Currie Cup champions were skittled out for 102. There were occasions in his innings that he missed the ball by a foot, so extravagant was the movement. He eventually fell LBW to another England off-spinner, David Allen. More of David Allen shortly.

Barry failed to establish himself in the Natal side that season, which was not surprising really, given the limited opportunities he was afforded. Despite his mediocre record, the jungle drums had been beating up and down the country with news of this precociously talented youngster from Durban. Accordingly, the national selectors took a punt on him and invited him to play in a Test trial, North versus South. The team to tour England in the summer of 1965 was being assembled and though the majority picked themselves, there were one or two places undecided. Which side did you play for? ‘Eh?’ North or South? ‘The South, of course. The press, as usual, were jumping upon a possible story here – unknown youngster tipped for stardom included in touring party. Ridiculous. I hadn’t even scored a fifty for Natal.’ In the event, he did not exactly let himself down. Nor did he make a strong case for his inclusion. He hardly could have, batting at number seven, making 13 not out in the first innings and having the unsatisfying initials, DNB, against his name in the second. And that was as far as the selectors’ gamble went. He was not selected for the tour. He knew he wasn’t ready.

If he was denied his chance to make an early impression on English cricket, he did have one more opportunity to impress some Englishmen before MCC concluded their tour of the country, even if it was in a way that he could not possibly have imagined. The series was on a knife-edge. England, by virtue of their solitary victory in the first Test in Durban, were going into the final match in Cape Town needing only a draw to secure the series. As preparation for the showdown, they were scheduled to play against an Invitation XI. An invitation to size up some of our best young players, the generous South African Board might just as well have said, an act of altruism that would be unthinkable these days.

Both England’s off-spinners, Fred Titmus and David Allen, were having an enjoyable and successful tour, and not only because they included the wicket of Barry Richards among their haul of scalps. Allen got him twice. ‘I had heard about this young lad,’ Allen told me. ‘My great friend, Jackie McGlew, rated him very highly, so I was more than interested when he was picked to play against us. It was the last over before lunch. On the third ball, Barry ran down the wicket and was stumped by two yards, for none. We followed him off the field as he trooped disconsolately back to the dressing room.’

Normally, you would expect an experienced county player such as Allen, steeped in the ways and practices of the professional game, to click his tongue in disapproval at such a rash piece of misjudgement by a young batsman. In England, you were encouraged to ‘play for lunch’. But Allen saw it differently. ‘It takes a lot of courage to do that,’ he said. ‘It was as if he was saying, nobody’s going to dominate me. I don’t care what time it is or what state the match is in, I’m going to get on top here. I admired that.’

The South African selectors clearly did not think the same because, as I have said, Barry was not picked for the side to go to England; they saw no room in the side for a cocky, headstrong teenager who rather fancied himself. They would be forced to change their minds in due course but for the time being, Barry had no option but to contemplate another winter working in an office. David Allen, however, was thinking out of the box. He got in touch with the Gloucestershire committee back home, no easy task in the days before the revolution in instant communication and suggested that they might like to consider taking on this promising young player and offering him a contract to play in England the forthcoming summer. ‘Dear old Gloucester,’ he sighed. ‘They never did make up their minds – on anything. Eventually, I heard back from them that I could proceed. I ran the idea past Jackie McGlew and he readily agreed that Barry was worth the gamble. And then he said that there was another young player whom I would not have heard of yet but that he was as good, if not potentially better, than Barry. His name was Mike Procter.’ And the rest is history, as they say. ‘Well, not quite. We still had the problem of the rules and regulations governing overseas players in the English game. How were we going to get over that?’

Rather like referring an umpire’s decision to the interminable DRS, he left that to the officials and made his own appeal to the two South African prodigies. They needed little persuading. The experience would be invaluable and they didn’t worry too much about their immediate futures as cricketing backpackers; all they wanted to do was play. And this time, unlike in 1963, they were no longer schoolboys. Bristol? It was a seaport, like Durban, wasn’t it? Perhaps the surfing would be good.

If anybody is foolhardy enough to set foot in the cold waters of the Bristol Channel in search of a wave, a wetsuit would be the least that he would require to ward off hypothermia. A wetsuit might have come in useful for Barry when he took his first shower at Gloucestershire’s county ground in Bristol. The club were so hard up that they turned off the heating when there wasn’t a first team game. He remembers those showers with horror. ‘Jeez! It was absolute agony. On a cold April day after a long session in the nets!’ But the natural buoyancy and cheerful good spirits of the young saw them through these minor inconveniences. No, Bristol was nothing like Durban and their wages were meagre but the Second XI players were friendly and welcoming and the pair of them soon immersed themselves in the daily routine of a county cricketer. Practice was no chore for them; they practically lived in the nets. It is a sad irony, one that Barry readily accepts, that this boyish, unwavering love of the game contrasted so starkly with the dreary chore that it was to become ten years later. Pity the poor 12th man in the Hampshire dressing room during the 1975 season, or any other thereafter, who had forgotten to fill up the bath with hot water for Barry after a hard day in the field (and no, it wasn’t me). In the summer of 1965, his destiny as one of the greatest batsmen of his era was in front of him; by 1975, he sensed that his future was probably behind him.

Having been instrumental in bringing Richards and Procter over to the West Country, David Allen took it upon himself to look out for them as best he could. ‘I had a sort of paternal concern for them both,’ he said. ‘Although they were very young, everybody could see the latent talent there.’ Barry revelled in the challenge of adapting to alien conditions, unseasonably cold and damp weather, seam bowling, green tracks – uncovered in those days, do not forget – and everything else that the life of a professional cricketer can throw at you. ‘We both revelled in it,’ he corrected me. ‘Prockie was nuts about the game too.’ He then went on to provide me with an interesting statistic. ‘Funnily enough, I finished above Prockie in the Second XI bowling averages and he finished above me in the batting averages.’ Supporters of Hampshire always saw Barry as an opening bat. Those who knew that he could bowl off-spinners, and quite tidily too, were always mystified why he let his bowling lapse. He could have been a genuine all-rounder. ‘Too much like hard work,’ he grins.

Hard work was not a problem for him that season. ‘They were typical South Africans,’ remarked Allen. ‘They played hard on the pitch and they played hard off it too.’ Barry claims a fading memory but Allen has firm recollections of their extra-curricular activities. ‘The parties we had!’ He was shaking his head almost in disbelief. ‘I remember driving them home once with the two of them clinging on to the bonnet. Er, don’t print that, will you.’ Of course not, I lied.

But to return to the real reason Richards and Procter were there. John Mortimore, the other of Gloucestershire’s fabled off-spinning duo, was the club captain at the time. He remembers them all right. ‘Of course, we didn’t see a lot of them because we were away playing for the First XI. And they were not qualified to play. But what we did see, in the nets and the like, it was obvious to everyone how good they were. We were able to pick them for the tourists’ match though, because it wasn’t a championship game.’ The tourists were, as we know, South Africa. They knew who the tyros were and the tyros certainly knew them. ‘It was a huge mistake to play Barry and Prockie in that match, you know,’ said Mortimore. Why on earth do you say that? I thought they acquitted themselves well. ‘That’s just the point – they did! And thereby showed the South Africans that they had two future stars waiting impatiently for their chance.’ I still don’t quite – ‘It put paid to any hope we had of signing them on. They wouldn’t countenance qualifying by residence by staying in England. Not when Test cricket for their country was beckoning them.’ Barry agreed. ‘To spend a whole winter in the UK, with only cold showers! No way, buddy. Besides we both wanted to get back to play in the Currie Cup.’

Gloucestershire against the South Africans in July 1965 was a bit of a damp squib. In fact, rain washed out days two and three but there was time enough on the first day for Procter and Richards to show their own countrymen what they were missing and what they would assuredly get in the next year or two. In short order, Gloucestershire were reeling at 62/4 and the two friends found themselves together at the wicket, in a crisis and facing bowlers of international class on the rampage and smelling blood. But it was the wrong South Africans who went on the rampage. In the next hour and a half, they put on 116 runs in a thrilling exhibition of strokeplay that had the Gloucestershire supporters nudging each other and whispering the names of Hammond and Graveney in each other’s ear. ‘And they weren’t given those runs,’ Allen assured me. Generously, Barry reckoned Procter batted even better than he did. ‘My God, he could hit it,’ Allen said, the admiration still clear in his voice near on 50 years later. ‘You ask me to compare the two as batsmen? Prockie would blast you out of the attack. Barry would clinically dissect you. He could bat with a walking stick.’

Back to the Second XI went the two boys, largely unaware of the avalanche of mail from members and supporters breaking over the club office, begging the committee to sign the pair of them. Both Allen and Mortimore, and others, knew it was a non-starter, even in spite of some generous terms on offer. Summer in Durban and an aching desire to make a strong case for themselves to be included in the Test side by performing well in the Currie Cup was more of a lure than any breaking surf in the Bristol Channel. The only wave of any note in those waters is the Severn Bore, well named, Barry said, as it only reaches a height of six feet, a mere tiddler compared to what was to be had offshore on Durban’s beaches.

‘But the story doesn’t end there,’ said Allen. In 1968, the rules in England governing the signing of overseas players were changed. Each county was allowed to sign two players; one could play immediately and the other would have to serve only one year’s qualification. Immediately there was a stampede to get hold of the world’s best players and the world’s best players were only too happy to oblige, there being no organised professional cricket outside England and England being the only country (more or less) that played the game in the northern hemisphere during everybody else’s winter. ‘We tried to get the rules changed,’ said Mortimore. ‘We wanted to sign them both.’ Allen was in complete agreement. ‘Think what a batting line-up we could have had with those two and Graveney as well, if only the committee had handled Tom a bit better.’ But a choice had to be made. Neither could be expected to spend another season languishing in the Second XI, not in 1968, when they had emphatically announced themselves on the world stage. ‘In the end, we went for Prockie,’ said Allen, ‘solely because he was a fast bowler and we’d never had one, not someone of genuine pace. We felt it was about time we let off a few fireworks that had been coming our way for all those years.’ Yet again, Mortimore was of the same opinion as his team-mate. ‘We’d have settled for either. But we needed a fast bowler/batsman more than we needed an opener. And who can say we chose badly?’ No one, not even Barry himself. Gloucestershire enjoyed a golden era of unfamiliar success and became known as ‘Proctershire’.

Nonetheless, David Allen still had paternal concerns for Barry and his future in English cricket. He got in touch with his good friend, Jim Parks at Sussex, who had been, incidentally, the wicketkeeper who had stumped Barry off Allen for that nought against MCC. Parks nearly bit his hand off; Richards would be an ideal signing, he believed. But committees are the same the world over. They dilly and they dally and never seem to make a decision. By the time they did make a move, it was too late. Barry was already a Hampshire player. ‘And it was all over a few bob!’ Allen said incredulously. And this set off a train of thought in my mind. Would Barry have been happier and more socially content living in lively, not to say, hedonistic, London-by-the-Sea than in the busiest container port on the South Coast? As an answer, he directed me to the example of Imran Khan, who chose Sussex over Worcestershire. ‘Worcester?’ Imran is alleged to have said. ‘What is there to do in Worcester?’ Be that as it may, I and countless others were happy that the decision was taken out of Barry’s hands and that he graced Northlands Road in Southampton more than he did Hove.

‘You know we nearly didn’t get Barry?’ Richard Gilliat, our captain at Hampshire, said to me. ‘Initially, we had agreed terms with Clive Lloyd. But we were gazumped by Lancashire who could offer more money than us. So he went to the Red Rose and Barry came to the White Rose.’ Yorkshire are not the only county to sport a white rose as its emblem. ‘And I think we got the better deal, don’t you?’ said Gilliat. I could do nothing but nod in hearty agreement. What a tangled web we weave! Let us go back to that duck: Richards st Parks b Allen 0. Has there ever been a more fateful duck in the game? Bradman bowled Hollies second ball in his final Test innings? I struggle to think of others.

Back home, Barry was relieved to discover that the showers in Durban were still hot. He was also relieved to be promoted in the Natal batting order to number three. He thought that was his best position. After all, your best player traditionally bats in that position and it did his confidence no end of good that others clearly thought so too. He played well enough in a season when Natal made a late surge to win once again the Currie Cup. His maiden first-class century still eluded him however but he was pleased with the fluency of his batting in scores of 68, 51 not out, 77, 67 and 61, interspersed with one or two failures. Good enough to get in the Test team? Who knows? There was no country touring that year (only England, New Zealand and Australia were prepared to come – for obvious reasons – and Test series were few and far between) so the question was academic.

But that was your ambition, wasn’t it? ‘Absolutely. One of the reasons I had turned down the chance to play professionally in England.’ Tell me, now we’re talking of professionalism and money, were you ever paid by Natal? ‘Nah!’ There is something about the expression of rebuttal uttered in a South African accent; it seems to stress even more strongly the repudiation in the word. Except that, curiously and paradoxically, it is frequently followed immediately by ‘yah’. No, yes. I’m told it is an oddity that comes from Afrikaans. And I was expecting the qualification here too. After all, the English game at this time was riddled with ‘shamateurism’, players masquerading as amateurs but frequently being in receipt of more money than their professional counterparts, all done by various subtle and ever more devious means. ‘No, the game in South Africa was 100 per cent amateur,’ he averred, ‘and run by amateurs too!’ It is a shame that the etymological origin of that word (a derivative from Latin, via French, meaning ‘to love’ or ‘lover’) has been corrupted over the years to signify someone who is a bumbling and incompetent administrator rather than one with a simple but deep love of the game.

However, I was in no doubt what Barry meant. ‘I lived in a deeply conservative country with deeply conservative values. It was deemed an honour to play for your province.’ No backhanders? No money in your boot? He shook his head. ‘Many of the guys had to take unpaid leave to play. That is, if their employers were willing to let them off.’ This would explain why some of their best players retired in their prime. At least it meant that, by and large, the arteries were not clogged up with timeservers and young blood could easily flow, which tended not to happen in the English game. ‘So, if we were playing on Boxing Day, which we frequently did, all the guys had to practise on Christmas Day.’ Not great for the married members of the team with young children. Another reason it was a young man’s game in that country.

What was the routine like for a provincial game? Not a lot different to county cricket, it seemed. A day or two of practice then the match. How were you informed you were playing? ‘Someone came up to you during nets and told you.’ What about travel? The distances are vast. Did you always fly? ‘Always by plane. We were at the back and the blazers were at the front. They were like schoolmasters. We were the kids and we had to do what we were told.’ For a strong-willed and independently minded soul like Barry, that must have been torture.

In the meantime, a third visit to England was planned. I thought you couldn’t stand the weather and the cold showers. ‘Cold showers! Just what I needed when we stopped off in Amsterdam on the way over!’ I wasn’t going to delve too deeply – after all, what a grown man does once he has quit the field of play is entirely his own business – but his old friend, Lee Irvine, was more inclined to fill in the gaps. ‘It was a Wilfred Isaacs tour to Holland and England. I bet you didn’t know they played cricket in Holland,’ he challenged me. Indeed I did. Cricket is popular in Holland and the Dutch are an associate member of the ICC. Some good players who come from that part of the world. ‘Absolutely. Barry, Prockie and me, we were invited to go, all expenses paid. But we had an exceptionally strong side, with Adcock, McGlew, Tayfield, McLean, Goddard as senior players meant to look after us.’ On or off the pitch? ‘If it was meant to be off the pitch, they didn’t do a very good job. Amsterdam is an amazing place. It certainly opened our eyes.’ Barry was of the same mind. ‘We came back more mature characters.’ I’m sure they did.

This newfound maturity found its full expression in the 1966/67 Currie Cup season. ‘It was the year when I announced myself on the world stage,’ Barry said, and no greater current Test player than Graeme Pollock agreed, so much so that he was moved to write, ‘This sunshine-faced, fair-haired, Natal opening batsman is undoubtedly one of the most promising youngsters I have ever played against.’ Barry’s avowed intent was to make a stack of runs for Natal and in so doing, making an irrefutable case to the selectors to pick him for the series against the visiting Australians. ‘It was when I moved up from number three to open,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t bat like an opener. Well, not like an opener was supposed to bat in those days.’ Word soon spread that the young prodigy had finally come of age. But still that maiden first-class century eluded him. ‘Aaagh! 96 against EP at Kingsmead. So near but so far. I kept on running myself out!’ Eventually, the monkey was removed from his back when he scored 107 for a South African XI (not the Test side) against…Australia.

Richie Benaud, no longer playing and now a reporter, described it thus, ‘Eleven Australian cricketers saw a new Test star born yesterday when 21-year-old Barry Richards carved a scintillating 107 off them.’ For good measure, Barry took 38 and 75 off the same opponents a few days later, this time for Natal. And he didn’t finish there. He scored 88 and 65 for a South African XI against Australia, again, just before the fifth and final Test in Cape Town. That season, he averaged 50.24. Only Hylton Ackerman, Graeme Pollock and Denis Lindsay of the Test team finished above him. What of the series itself? South Africa won 3-1 (it could so easily have been 4-1) in crushing style. That was in spite of a fallible top order. Wisden reported, ‘Invariably, the Springboks made a disastrous start only for the wreck to be salvaged by the lower half of the order.’ So, you made all those runs against the Aussies. The South African side had a fallible top order. You were an opening bat. Why were you not in the team? ‘I kicked a flowerpot,’ he answered simply.

Ah yes, the Flowerpot Incident. ‘It all kicked off in East London,’ said Barry’s team-mate, Lee Irvine, with unconscious aptness. ‘It was Hylton Ackerman’s home town and we were trying to get into a disco. But Barry was refused entrance.’ It was not many years later when Barry was allowed in, free of charge, at any disco, in England or his home country. But not yet. ‘I wasn’t wearing a tie,’ Barry said, shaking his head as we might today if anyone insisted on formal dress for dinner. I know Barry hates ties. It was the devil’s own job to tie one round his neck at formal functions when he was at Hampshire. But like his hair, which he had started to wear fashionably long, it was a symbol of his individuality at a time when conventions were being challenged and overturned all over the place. Even in conservative South Africa.

So, what happened? ‘I kicked a flowerpot into the swimming pool.’ I tried not to laugh. Did it hurt? He didn’t answer but he went on to tell me that it certainly hurt his chances of playing against the Aussies that summer. ‘The trouble was,’ said Irvine, ‘it was all over the papers.’ Barry reckons he was lucky not to get arrested, so irate was the doorman, but to have his name splashed on the front, rather than the back, of the dailies, must have been galling for one so shy of public scrutiny. I thought you said you’d matured. ‘But I repeat, it was a very old-fashioned and traditional place. You wore ties. You had short hair. You did as you were told. It was an honour to play for your province and you were at the mercy of men who were 30, 40 years older than you who ran the game. Anyone who didn’t conform was a rebel.’ I have a theory, which I shall develop later. Barry was born in the wrong era. If he had been of the following generation, no one would have turned a hair at his open neck collar or his thick, wavy, long blond hair or the fact that he was paid for playing cricket. And what’s more, Nelson Mandela would be president, apartheid would have been swept away and the return to Test cricket for South Africa would have allowed him to display his genius on the world stage. And I would be 20 again. Ah well.

Nothing was said but neither was he picked. What selector had it in for you? ‘Arthur Coy,’ he replied unhesitatingly. ‘Dunno why he was anti-me. But he was ultra-conservative and obviously felt I needed to be taught a lesson. Besides, he wanted Ali in the side.’ Ali Bacher was later captain of the South African side, and a good one too, but a better batsman than Barry? Was there no one on the selection panel who went into bat for you? ‘Each selector from each province was meant to put in a word for his players, if he thought they were good enough.’ And you weren’t considered good enough? ‘Derek Dowling was the Natal representative. A nice enough man but he was weak and was easily overruled.’ There was a pause. ‘I should have played, you know.’

Kicking over a flowerpot is hardly the same as kicking over the traces. Why make such a fuss? Surely a stern word or two, an apology and some sort of recompense, such as buying a new flowerpot, should have sufficed. ‘The flowerpot did not go in the swimming pool, as was reported,’ said Barry, anxious to put the record straight. ‘Only some dirt. Prockie was there too,’ he added, a touch vexed, ‘but he wasn’t punished. Not that I blame him. I kicked the damn thing.’ Procter, incidentally, was picked for the Springbok side, making his debut before Barry. He made little impression with the bat but his bowling made people sit up and take note. He took 15 wickets in the three Tests he played; only Goddard, with 26, took more. Barry would not have been human had he not felt, deep in his bones, a twinge of jealousy. How long would he have to wait to get his chance?

Now, what about this reputation he had unwillingly gained for himself? Barry felt aggrieved that he had been punished without anyone actually coming to him and telling him why he wasn’t being picked. Was it for cricket reasons or was it because of that conversion kick into the pool? I sought the opinion of one or two others. ‘Would he have been picked anyway?’ mused Lee Irvine, who, as his friend, would have had no axe to grind. ‘After all, it was a very strong Springbok side, they’d just demolished Australia, why change a winning side and, besides, he wasn’t the only youngster scoring runs and desperate to get in that side.’ I assume he was including himself in that number.

John Traicos, later a team-mate of Barry’s in the Test side, was at Natal University when all this was going on. The university cricket coach was none other than Trevor Goddard. Goddard said to anyone with ears to listen that he regarded Barry as the most talented young batsman in the country. Jackie McGlew, a fellow Natal player, also spoke highly of him. He thought Barry had an exceptional talent as a schoolboy – as he had pointed out to the Charterhouse captain, Richard Gilliat, on the 1963 Schools Tour – and he believed that Barry was even better now. But…and there is always a ‘but’. According to Traicos, ‘Trevor Goddard seemed to be of the view that Barry at that time was a bit of a rebel, perhaps immature, who kept on throwing away his chances.’ The overall view in Durban, and elsewhere, however, was that ‘Barry had tremendous talent and should have played Test cricket earlier than he did, in other words against the 1966/67 Australians.’

There was nothing for it other than to score a stack of runs for Natal and make sure that he did seize his opportunity when England came on tour for the 1968/69 season. But one innings, played 5,000 miles away in England at the Oval in August 1968, put paid to all that and changed the face of international cricket for the next 30 years. Were you aware of the political storm brewing? ‘I suppose so,’ he answered unconvincingly. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t too interested in politics. All I wanted to do was play cricket.’ Perhaps, this is understandable, cocooned as he was in a comfortable and tightly controlled world run by whites for whites. In England, the controversial subject of apartheid was beginning to take on the impetus of a moral crusade as well as proving to be a political hot potato for the governments. And by governments in the plural, I mean the one at St John’s Wood as well as the one in Downing Street.

Anybody in the Test and County Cricket Board, the newly established governing body in England, who had half a brain – and subsequent events revealed that they were pretty thin on the ground – must have looked out of the committee room at Lord’s and noticed the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. The thorny problem had been pricking them ever since Basil D’Oliveira made his debut for his adopted country in June 1966, two years previously, against the West Indies, as coincidence would have it. D’Oliveira, you see, was South African, born in Cape Town of Portuguese and Indian parents. As such, in his home country, under the laws of apartheid he was classified as ‘Coloured’ and therefore was barred from playing cricket either with or against whites. In order to further his career, following encouragement from notable figures in the English game such as John Arlott and Tom Graveney, who recognised his enormous talent, he emigrated to England, took out a British passport, scored heavily for his adopted county, Worcestershire, and was consequently selected for the Test team. So far, so good; a touching and inspirational story.

But a quick glance by the committee men at Lord’s at the future tours programme for MCC would have disclosed the potential stumbling block. In the winter of 1968/69, MCC were scheduled to tour South Africa. Barry was not the only South African, player and enthusiast, licking his lips at the prospect of a visit from the Englishmen. But the strict interpretation of the laws set down by the Nationalist government in Pretoria would mean that D’Oliveira would not be welcome in his home country, even if he was a member of another country’s touring team. Impasse. What to do?

Following a poor tour of the West Indies in 1968/69, D’Oliveira was dropped from the England team and the gin bottle at Lord’s reached for with a huge sigh of relief. The South African tour was saved. If a week is a long time in politics, the same could be said about cricket. Regaining his form, D’Oliveira was recalled to the England team for the fifth and final Test of the summer against the Australians at the Oval. The pressure as D’Oliveira strode out to bat, with that familiar straight-backed and squared-shoulders walk of his, on that late August afternoon, was enormous. At 113/3, England were in trouble. Basil was playing for his team, his place in the team and a berth in the touring party that was shortly to set out for his home country. The stakes could not have been higher. Tom Graveney, his friend, mentor and team-mate at Worcestershire, watched in admiration from the other end as D’Oliveira played one of the most remarkable innings in Test cricket. ‘He was majestic,’ Tom told me. ‘He had such powerful arms and struck the ball so cleanly that the ball just rocketed to the boundary. Basil always played better under pressure, you know – he was so excited about returning home and playing in front of his own people.’

By the time D’Oliveira had returned to the pavilion to a hero’s welcome, having scored 158, you could say that the cat was well and truly in there, among the pigeons. That Test match, an enthralling contest from first to last, is probably best remembered for its final ball; all 11 Englishmen, the two Australian batsmen and the bowler’s umpire are in shot of that famous photo as Underwood appeals for LBW against Inverarity and the umpire has his finger raised. In just 27 balls, Underwood had taken four wickets to secure England an unlikely victory with only six minutes left to play.

If that was dramatic, it was nothing compared with the events that unfolded afterwards. Graveney takes up the story, ‘We were playing Sussex at Worcester and at six o’clock we all gathered round the radio in the dressing room to listen to the announcement of the touring party to South Africa. The room fell silent as we listened to the names being read out. Basil’s name wasn’t on it. I was stunned. For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop as the incredible news sunk in.’ Then the air turned blue. It was Graveney swearing. ‘I never thought they’d do this to you, Bas,’ he said as his friend, in front of his team-mates, broke down and cried. D’Oliveira admitted later that he felt as if his world had caved in. ‘The stomach had been kicked out of me,’ he said.

Naturally enough, all hell broke loose, in the bars, in the newspapers, on the television, in the House of Commons even. Nobody believed the chairman of selectors when he tried to reassure the country that the decision had been taken ‘on purely cricketing grounds’. Graveney scoffs at this. ‘To score 158 and then get dropped! Nonsense. It was political.’ The murky waters were further muddied when Barry Knight, one of the original touring party, dropped out through injury and bowing to public clamour, D’Oliveira was installed in his place. Now the political spotlight was turned glaringly on the South African government. This was just the opportunity that the prime minister of South Africa, John Vorster, had been waiting for. Angrily, he denounced the reinstatement of D’Oliveira into the MCC side. ‘We are not prepared to receive a team thrust upon us by people whose interests are not in the game but to gain political advantages,’ he thundered. ‘The MCC team is not the team of the MCC but of the anti-apartheid party.’

At that point, all sensible observers in the UK knew that the tour was doomed. Accordingly, all contact between Lord’s and the South African Cricket Board was sundered which inexorably led to South Africa’s expulsion and isolation from all sporting contact with the rest of the world for the next 30 years or so. The D’Oliveira Affair, as it has become known, had a massive impact on political events way beyond the boundary, as it were, and it would not be fanciful to suggest that in the long run it must have indirectly contributed to the release of Nelson Mandela and his being sworn in as president in a truly democratic and peaceful election.

As all this was unfolding, Barry was in England, engaged in his debut season as Hampshire’s new overseas signing and must have regarded developing events with mixed feelings. ‘At the time, I thought it was no more than a temporary setback,’ he said. ‘I was only 22. Time was on my side. The political ramifications were lost on me. All I wanted to do was play cricket and I couldn’t understand why sport and politics should be mixed.’

This was undoubtedly a naive point of view. But I find it difficult to be too critical here. I am only two or three years younger than Barry and at the time that these events were unfolding, I was in my first term at university. As with all cricket lovers in this country, I had been closely following the developing saga of the D’Oliveira Affair with a mixture of anger and dismay. Why had a political row prevented the opportunity of my seeing in the flesh the Pollocks, the Barlows, the Blands and the rest of this supremely talented side that I had heard so much about? Barry Richards, by the way, was unknown to me and the wider cricket community at that time. It seemed iniquitous and disproportionate. And what was all this fuss about Nelson Mandela? His name was unknown to me too. The first I had ever heard of him was when a fringe pressure group of fellow students attempted to get a motion passed that our common room should be renamed the Nelson Mandela JCR. What nonsense! What on earth had an obscure political activist in a faraway country got to do with a common room at a hall of residence at an English university? The motion was not carried, it has to be said.

You see, I too was naive. And so were a lot of other people who just could not get their heads round the fact that sport and politics had now become indissolubly intertwined. Time was to change our minds. Who can say now that sporting isolation of South Africa was not a good thing? We might have been piqued at being denied watching the South African team play. But there were millions of their disenfranchised countrymen who were more than piqued that they were forbidden, by law, from joining them in that team. Now that really was iniquitous and disproportionate.

For Barry and the others, it was back to provincial cricket and the Currie Cup. And all thoughts were bent up to the forthcoming tour by the Australians. The cancellation of the MCC tour was but a blip in their careers, they felt sure. Or at least Barry did. There may well have been some who smelled trouble and were not at all sanguine about the future but Barry was convinced, or had allowed himself to be convinced, that his career still had time to flower. He was only 22 after all. At that age, you feel that all things are possible. Did you enjoy playing for Natal? ‘Loved it. We had a good side and we were successful. With only six matches a season and with Test matches few and far between, all the best players played and it was all pretty intense.’ How would you compare at that time the standard of the Currie Cup with the County Championship in England? ‘A notch or two higher, I thought. After all, there were only six provinces, whereas there were 17 counties. And just look at the players we had in the Natal side, let alone any of the others.’ I made noises of assent. That had been my opinion too. ‘I tell you what, Murt,’ he said, warmly, ‘without a shadow of a doubt, any of those provincial teams would have knocked the stuffing out of the Zimbabwe and Bangladesh sides of today.’

To evaluate his assertion, I followed a little detour of my own here and looked up the scorecard of a recent Test match between these two countries. I think you will find it interesting reading.

Zimbabwe: Marumba, Sibanda, Masakadza, Taylor, Waller, Chigumbura, Mutumbami, Cremer, Meth, Masakadza, Jarvis.

Bangladesh: Jahural Islam, Shakriar, Nafees, Mohammad Ashraful, Mahmudullah, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Nasir Hossain, Sohag Gazi, Enamul Haque jnr, Rubel Hossain, Robial Islam.

Have you heard of any of them? But there they all are, in the Test match records.

‘Exactly,’ said Barry, shaking his head sadly. I tried to reassure him that many cricket lovers would tend to agree with him. ‘But they are the knowledgeable ones who understand the game. But what of the ordinary fan who looks at the records and doesn’t realise that all those easy hundreds against moderate opposition help to inflate averages and make ‘great’ players out of those who are not?’

I said nothing and let his anger burn itself out, which it soon did. Bitterness at his lost years and proscribed chances of joining the ‘greats’ rarely surfaced in all our discussions and conversations but he would have had to possess the forbearance of a saint for his frustration not to flare up on the odd occasion. And he would not be alone in thinking that an asterisk ought to appear alongside any Test runs and wickets achieved against those teams.

Politically naive he may have been but the same could not be said of Barry’s exploits on the cricket field. Even now, at a distance of 40-odd years, people still whistle in disbelief when they tell their stories and recount their memories. Grayson Heath was still playing for Natal and he remembers with absolute clarity a match against Western Province. This engine room of the domestic game was uncharacteristically languishing in the B section of the Currie Cup and that is a bit like Manchester United playing in the Championship. A match had been arranged, designated first-class, with Natal, in order to impress upon the authorities that it was high time they were returned to the top tier, where they felt they belonged. The match was played in Cape Town so it should not have come as a surprise to the visitors that the pitch at Newlands was tailor made for the Western Province spinners and likely to negate the Natal pace attack of Procter, Goddard, Trimborn and van der Bijl. According to Heath, there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen on it. And it was a baking hot day.

WP won the toss and ‘gleefully batted first’, he said. First ball, Procter came steaming in off his full run to deliver one of his thunderbolts. ‘It was short of a length, there was a puff of dust and Gamsy, the wicketkeeper, caught it on the second bounce!’ The Natal side’s reaction was ‘one of stunned disbelief’. For all that, they bowled WP out for 164. But then it was Natal’s turn to bat on what cricketers popularly call a ‘bunsen burner’, though how much cricketers from other countries are familiar with Cockney rhyming slang – burner/turner – is open to debate. While others struggled, Barry gave a masterclass in how to play the turning ball. Heath called it ‘an effortlessly efficient example of batting – the genius was in his element’. The upshot of his heroics was that Natal scored 215 and when WP themselves were bowled out for 175 in their second innings, the visitors had only to score 125 to secure victory.

‘Only’ is used loosely here; it was now the third day, the pitch if anything was more treacherous and a total of 125 was anything but a formality. And surely Richards could not do it all again. ‘Well, he did,’ said Heath. ‘Even when we reached 100 without loss, had Barry gone then, we could still have lost. But we need not have worried such was his mastery of the conditions. We won by ten wickets, Goddard 43 not out and Richards undefeated on 81. This innings saw one world-class batsman near the end of his career – Goddard – being completely overshadowed by Barry at the beginning of his.’

There is another story of Barry’s audacity at the crease, corroborated by two players on the field at the time. Robin Jackman, of Surrey, England and, at the time, Rhodesia, acts as our first raconteur. ‘At our team meeting the night before, we were discussing how to deal with Barry Richards. Our captain, Andre Bruyns, unveiled his master plan. According to him, Barry hooked with his eyes closed.’ I enquired of the said captain why he believed this to be so. ‘I had seen a picture of Barry playing the hook shot,’ confirmed Bruyns, ‘and it looked as if his eyes were closed. So we plotted his downfall accordingly. You see,’ he added, ‘when he was focussed, it was almost impossible to get him out, for Barry had no weaknesses.’ Their opening bowler, the fastest in the leagues the selectors could unearth, was instructed to test him with a few bouncers early on, with, not two, but three men back on the catch, a tactic which Bruyns ruefully likened to the bodyline, or leg side, theory of Larwood in days gone by. ’A big mistake,’ Bruyns admitted, ‘because Barry saw it as an insulting challenge and the focus showed in his eyes and the stance seemed more determined.’

The rapid short balls were duly delivered. ‘Before Kingsmead was redeveloped,’ said Jackman, ‘there used to be a clock on the grass bank more or less at fine leg. Well, Barry, eyes closed or not, hit the ball out of the middle of the bat and it sailed right over the clock for six!’ It did not end there. After four balls, the score was 20, including another six, after which Barry ‘nonchalantly strolled a single to take the strike’, an annoying habit that his batting partners came to know only too well.

Another plan to unsettle the great man, not wholly dissimilar to Rhodesia’s, was hatched by Transvaal. Word had gone round that Barry had a weakness; if the ball was sharpish and aimed at his midriff, it would tuck him up in the course of trying to play it and he would lob a catch to leg slip or leg gully. The trap was duly laid. Four men were posted in readiness – two out on the boundary, a leg slip and another lurking close in, just forward of square. Mackay-Coghill was the bowler and it was felt that he would be especially effective in carrying out this tactic because he bowled quick left-arm and could therefore angle the ball at the batsman more awkwardly. Lee Irvine, Barry’s team-mate in the Natal side, details the outcome of this devilish plan, ‘Barry took guard a foot outside leg stump. If Mackay-Coghill bowled it at the stumps, Barry hit him through the covers for four. If he bowled it at him, he hit over square leg for six! He scored 120-odd that day, if my memory serves me. You see, Barry could never resist a challenge.’ The only way to get him out, Irvine was convinced, was to make him bored.

Vintcent van der Bijl agrees. ‘Barry hated defensive fields. So, in a sense, if you could cut off the boundary and give him one, he might get bored standing at the non-striker’s end.’ To counteract negative leg-side bowling, he would step outside leg and hit the ball on the off, a strategy that we at Hampshire would see for ourselves, particularly when the leg side was packed in limited overs games. Other players have since copied this of course but Barry was the first to try it and it was a measure of the genius of the man that he worked out how to do it, thus breaking the rules of orthodoxy, and then put it into practice. Mind you, this only underlines another truism of any artistic or creative activity: you can only break the rule, the norm, the established practice, once you have perfected how to do it properly first. Picasso could draw conventionally and accurately before he started to experiment with cubism. Barry could play through the on side in the orthodox style perfectly well until negative field placing compelled him to re-write the rulebook.

Here is another example of his flair and skill. ‘I ran up to bowl to him on one occasion,’ said van der Bijl, ‘and delivered the perfect ball, which swung away late. Barry shaped to hit it away square on the off side. The ball then cut back sharply. Barry instantly adjusted his stroke and hit it to leg. Oh, and at the same time, he said, “Well bowled!”’ The brazen cheek. The composed insouciance. The sheer genius of the man.

Andre Bruyns remembers another match, against Rhodesia, early in 1972. This time he was playing for Natal and opened the batting with Barry. Procter opened the bowling for Rhodesia and gave both batsmen a thorough going-over in a hostile spell, which they managed to negotiate safely. ‘I got out before lunch,’ said Bruyns, ‘by which time Barry had about 80 not out. As he resumed his innings after lunch, I casually remarked that I had never seen a batsman bat for a whole day. He gave me a quizzical look but said nothing. He was not out at tea and as he went out for the last session, he turned to me and said, “Fill the plunge bath – see you later.” At the close, he was 200 odd not out.’ Bruyns did not seriously suggest that his casual remark had been the sole reason for Barry knuckling down for the day. He was generous enough to point out that the real motivating factor was the challenge posed by his old friend, Mike Procter. Bruyns was not the only contemporary of Barry’s who noticed that throughout his career, Barry was usually ‘at his best against the best’.

Rhodesia features in another Currie Cup story, though Barry would be the first to admit that on this occasion, unfolding events did not reflect so well on his reputation. On the third day, the match was petering out into a tame and inconsequential draw. Grayson Heath remembers what happened. ‘Ray Gripper opened the innings for Rhodesia and had been in prolific form but it was widely acknowledged that many of his runs had been scored in meaningless second innings knocks when the pressure was off, which was precisely what he was doing on this occasion, having failed in the first innings.’ Now, if I know Barry, this would have irked him no end – for two reasons. The first is that he would see such a situation as this in a completely different light to Gripper. If the match had become meaningless then so had his innings; I doubt he would have scored many runs or hung around for very long himself. And, in any case, he would have been bored by this stage and would have been thinking of plunge baths…or even swimming pools.

But there was a third reason, according to Heath, which added some extra spice to the pointed exchanges that were going on between the two opposing opening batsmen. ‘Gripper would have been in contention for the same opening berth in the Test team that Barry was to fill.’ Feelings got a bit heated; something was bound to give. Gripper continued to feast himself on some half-hearted bowling with Barry becoming increasingly hot under the collar. Heath recalled what happened next. ‘Barry urged our captain, Barry Versveld, to give him a bowl, claiming he knew how to get him out. Eventually Versveld relented and gave him the ball. Halfway through his first over, with Gripper at the non-striker’s end, Barry ran up to bowl but held on to the ball in his delivery stride and with Gripper barely a foot or two out of his crease as he backed up, Barry whipped off the bails and appealed for a run out.’ Oh dear. That is not the done thing. The umpire of course has no option but to give the batsman out, though the captain can withdraw the appeal if he is so minded and wants to save a lot of aggravation, if not a full blown, angry confrontation.

It was significant that Natal’s captain made no such concession but Barry cut a lonely figure as his team-mates shuffled away from him slightly embarrassed as the crowd erupted. Barry, somewhat shamefaced, put it down to youthful impetuosity and an unerring ability to upset the diplomatic apple cart, a trait that was to bedevil his early years. Mind you, at the end of the over, he did sidle up to his captain and say, ‘Told you I knew how to get him out!’

I am not at all sure what it was about Rhodesia but that team seems to feature large in the many stories of Barry in the Currie Cup. I am indebted to Vintcent van der Bijl for this one. It was in the 1972/73 season. During an imperious innings of 197, Barry decided to have a bit of fun at the expense of one bowler whom he did not rate very highly. ‘His name was Ricky Kaschula,’ said van der Bijl. ‘Barry sauntered down the wicket and said to his batting partner, ‘I think I’ll just hit him round the clock.’ And this is precisely what he did – over mid-off, extra cover, cover, third man, then over to the other side, long leg, deep square leg, over mid-on. Incredible!’ Indeed. How do you get the ball down to fine leg if it’s a wide half-volley outside the off stump, I would like to know. With Barry, there was always a way.

Many of the stories about Barry have to do with his extraordinary talent with the bat and the more unorthodox ways that he chose to demonstrate it, especially on those occasions when he was bored, a not infrequent occurrence as we know. John Traicos had this one to share about an inter-city match between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. There was a fast bowler, brought in from the country – Hugh Saulez – who had been built up by Pat Trimborn, himself no slouch, and others as being quick enough to trouble even the great Richards. ‘Barry carefully watched the first few balls from Saulez, who was really no more than medium-paced,’ said Traicos, ‘and then proceeded to play him with the edge of his bat, even cover driving him for four. Barry slaughtered the Maritzburg attack, getting a hundred in no time at all to wrap up the match.’ And there were those of us at Hampshire who bowled to him in the nets and thought that we were the only bowlers whom he saw fit to entertain like this.

It is not often that anyone has the last word with our hero, who has a sharp tongue at times and is ever prepared to risk upsetting anyone whose bubble needs bursting. A typical example would be when Barry, to everybody’s huge surprise, dropped a catch off the first ball of the innings. Van der Bijl is hazy in his mind what match it was but he remembers Barry rounding on his friend, Tich Smith, the wicketkeeper, and saying, ‘I told you that you were standing too close!’ However, van der Bijl can recall one occasion when even Barry was left speechless. ‘There was a chap called Shaka Albers, a farmer who was desperate to play for Natal. The closest he got was when he was made 12th man for the match in Salisbury against Rhodesia. Barry instructed the 12th man not to forget to run the bath for him at the close of play because he intended to bat all day. Jackman had him dropped in the first over. After which, he helped himself to the inevitable hundred. At lunch, he called to Shaka to get him some fruit salad, without all the juice. When the fruit salad duly arrived, it was swimming in juice. “I said no juice,” remonstrated Barry. Shaka took the bowl, poured the juice on to the floor and thrust if back at Barry. “Eat it!” he commanded. Barry was left open-mouthed.’

In point of fact, Barry was quite shy, especially early on in his life. Though he enjoyed the challenge of pitting his prodigious skills against the best in the world and relished the atmosphere of a big match and a large crowd, he actually disliked fame and all the unwelcome attention that it brought. He felt that the cricket fan could lay claim to his undivided attention and desire to entertain while he was out there, on the stage, so to speak. But once he had mounted the pavilion steps and entered the sanctuary of the dressing room, that was it as far as public scrutiny should go. And as for bothering him in private or when he was out, socialising with his friends, he could be quite brusque. He really didn’t see that it was of anybody’s interest or business.

That is why he had such trouble with autograph-hunters. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to collect scribbled signatures on a scruffy piece of paper or in a grubby, well-thumbed notebook. In England, during the first-class season, he came to understand that signing autographs was a long established custom, a ritual that everybody felt obliged to tolerate. You were a professional and it was part of your job. So he did it. But it still felt like his valuable time off duty was being infiltrated.

Even he found this incident amusing, however. I think it was at Lord’s of all places. We had been waylaid by autograph hunters as we made our way across the car park after the close of play. I had got used to people idly crossing over to me to ask for my autograph, even though they hadn’t a clue who I was. They were merely waiting for the queue for Barry to subside. After a while, I noticed a particularly scruffy urchin – I could hardly miss him – who had been up before me, on more than one occasion. ‘I’ve just done you,’ I pointed out. ‘I know,’ he replied, ‘but I’m collecting you to swap. Ten Andy Murtaghs are worth one Barry Richards.’ On reflection, I reckoned he had read the market just about right.

To continue the theme, Dennis Gamsy has his own story to tell. It was at this stage in his Natal career when fame was beginning to bump annoyingly against Barry’s shoulder when he was out and about town in Durban. ‘After a match,’ Gamsy said, ‘my wife Gillian and I, with Barry, decided to go to the Beach Hotel on Durban’s beachfront. Two of Durban’s great entertainers, Gary and Spider, were on stage.’ I presumed Gamsy was not making this up and that there really was a singing duo by that name. Spider, it would appear, was an avid cricket fan and worshipped the very ground that Barry trod. ‘As we entered the room,’ Gamsy continued, ‘it was clear that Spider realised that Barry had arrived. In those days, Barry was very self-conscious of his fame and was always under the impression, probably correctly, that everybody was watching him. He was, to say the least, unable then to handle the situation… Barry was angling to sit at a table near the back of the room but spotting a vacant table much closer to the front, it was there that I headed. Barry sat down reluctantly, head bowed. Spider then began his welcome. “Guys, I am absolutely delighted to welcome the newcomers to our audience this evening, among them one of the greatest batsmen you will ever wish to see. Ladies and gentlemen…” An interminable pause took place during which Barry was twisting and muttering in his seat. “Let’s give a big welcome to…DENNIS GAMSY!” Even Barry had to laugh. Me, I took it seriously.’

What is it about fame, I ruminated, that makes ordinarily sensible people lose all inhibitions and lay claim shamelessly to someone else’s privacy? I witnessed the phenomenon with brutal clarity at times when out with Barry socially in England and I could see how much it irked him. But it was rapidly becoming, at this stage of his career, a fact of life. After all, it was now that ‘I announced myself on the grand stage’ – his own words. He meant as a cricketer but it could also be taken as a ‘personality’. He was on the brink of stardom and if the prospect of international competition excited him, he might just have allowed himself a twinge of regret at the accompanying loss of privacy. From now on, he would be led to the table at the front; there would be no hiding place at the back.

But before we head for the bright lights of the West End, let us pause a moment and consider what his home environment meant to him. I rely here on the testimony of one of his closest friends, Dave Anderson. ‘We played together for the DHS Old Boys team in the league,’ said Anderson, ‘and it is here that I feel he was at his most comfortable. He did not have to come down to nets every Tuesday and Thursday evening but he did, and it was here that he could socialise with his old school mates and guys from all age groups…. He got to know and mixed with all the club members and participated in all the club functions.’

When his Natal commitments permitted, Barry used to play for the club, ‘choosing to be with his mates’. Anderson particularly remembers one day at net practice. ‘He went into bat and said that he would run fielding practice from there, asking all the guys from all the teams to stand in the middle.’ He then instructed the bowlers to bowl where they liked, and Anderson was keen to point out that these were reputable bowlers, not cannon fodder, most of whom were provincial players. Barry then proceeded to hit catches off the bowling to nominated fielders, never getting their names wrong. ‘And the fact that he knew all their names tells you all you need to know about Barry,’ Anderson assured me.

‘He speaks to this day about the funny times we had there. He still giggles when we remember a guy called Sollo, who was a Third XI player, being sent on as our 12th man and taking this amazing catch.’

However, I cannot resist leaving you with this final comment of Anderson’s about Barry before Test cricket beckoned, ‘Depending on the weather and who was tanning at the club pool dictated how many runs he got that day!’