Clive Rice may have been excluded from Test cricket by South Africa’s sporting isolation, but he was still one of the world’s leading all-rounders in the late Seventies and Eighties. In 1981, he was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
Clive Rice’s achievements with Nottinghamshire in 1980 proved just a warm-up for 1981, when he led the county to a first Championship since 1929.
It takes a very special person to absorb the trauma of being sacked by a club and then return to lead them to their most successful season for more than 50 years. But then Clive Edward Butler Rice, born in Johannesburg on July 23, 1949, is someone special.
The 31-year-old South African arrived at Trent Bridge in 1975 – after Nottinghamshire, then under the management of Jack Bond, had switched their attentions from his fellow-countryman, Eddie Barlow – and it was three years later that they decided his aggressive and positive pursuit of success was deserving of the captaincy.
His involvement, however, with World Series Cricket, at a time when Nottinghamshire were open critics of Kerry Packer’s wheelings and dealings, led to the Trent Bridge hierarchy stripping him both of the leadership and his place on the staff before he had had the opportunity to assert himself. Following threats of protracted legal battles, between club and player, a compromise of a kind was reached with Rice maintaining his position on the books while returning the captaincy to Mike Smedley.
Although troubled by an assortment of injuries, he has given the Nottinghamshire attack the kind of hostility and penetration it has not had for years. At times his partnership with the New Zealander, Richard Hadlee, has all but rekindled memories of the halcyon days of Larwood and Voce. In the last three seasons they have represented, when fit together (which has been too seldom), one of the most formidable opening attacks in county cricket.
Rice is also held in high esteem in South Africa, where he returns annually in search of sun and cricketing success. In 1980 he helped Transvaal win both the Currie Cup and Datsun Shield for the second successive year, his 43-wicket haul taking him to the top of the national averages. However, the Transvaal side being so rich in talent, batting opportunities have been fewer than he would have liked. He had not, in fact, scored a first-class century in South Africa until the winter of 1979/80 when he made two, in successive matches, against Western Province and Natal. But any honours he achieves in South Africa detract in no way from his ambition to take Nottinghamshire to the top of the tree.
