Graeme Pollock, the great South African batsman who too soon was denied occupation of cricket’s more illustrious creases, retired from the first-class game at the end of the 1986-87 season. In January 1961, aged 16 years and 335 days, he scored his first Currie Cup century in Johannesburg, for Eastern Province against Transvaal B. Twenty-six summers later, with a score of 63 not out and now playing for Transvaal, he was there at the finish of the match which saw his team retain the Castle Currie Cup.
Graeme Pollock was one of the greatest left-handed batsmen of all time. After his retirement, the 1988 Wisden carried this tribute by South Africa’s leading writer and commentator.
Heredity and environment each supposed that the Pollock brothers should go to the top in cricket. Their father, morning paper editor in the seaport where his family grew up, played for the Orange Free State. Their mother, an all-round games player of renown, came of a father who rose in cricket administration to a term of office as president of the South African Cricket Association. Frequently the family moved house, but always there was space for a practice wicket to be set down; for the brothers to bat and bowl through sun-drenched days. And should their contests become heated, always there to arbitrate was Mrs Pollock.
There is a similarity in the Pollock brothers’ cricket background and that of WG Grace and his brothers. In both, the genes had given a touch of cricket to the blood. Environment lent itself to endless opportunity for practice, and there was a mother who saw only virtue in making her sons proficient. The analogy may be taken further. Right from their early schooldays, matches were played both with and against adult cricketers of some class.
It is for his batting at Trent Bridge in 1965 that, in England, Graeme Pollock is best remembered; and this was the batting of a player only 21 years old. Of his hundred there, Wisden said: “He reigned supreme for 70 more minutes while he lashed the bowling for 91 out of 102. He offered no chance. The power and the artistry of his strokeplay that day was awesome. Using his height [6ft 2½in] to full advantage, he drove the English bowling, off back foot and front, through the covers, regardless of length. The ball to which other batsmen would have offered a defensive bat was simply struck to the boundary.” Ted Dexter later wrote of him: “He could hit the good-length ball, given only a modicum of room outside the off stump, actually harder than he could hit the half-volley. Now that takes some doing.”
Across the world cricket scene, that was pretty much the end for South Africa. Pollock was to play twice more against Australia in South Africa – Bobby Simpson’s side in 1966-67 and Bill Lawry’s in 1969-70 – and he was in England in 1970 for the series between England and the Rest of the World, which took the place of the cancelled tour by South Africa. A century in the fifth Test, which incorporated with Garry Sobers a fifth-wicket partnership of 165, was his one big innings. His scores for eight innings averaged 31.25 and were below those of the other Springbok batsmen, Barlow, Procter and Richards.
At home, however, Pollock was consistently a heavy scorer, and in the two series with Australia he was often brilliant. Against Simpson’s team came a double-century at Newlands. Four years later, when Lawry brought his team on from India, Pollock at Durban made 274 in the only South African innings and established a new record score by a South African in Test cricket.
Thereafter, his and South Africa’s international cricket were to be restricted to home series against breakaway visitors from England, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Australia. The innings of 144 against an Australian XI with which he bowed out of international cricket in Port Elizabeth in 1986-87 was both convincing and memorable; it seemed hard to think of him as being 43 in three to four weeks’ time.
If it is permissible to attach the word genius to the artistry of a batsman, then Graeme Pollock is such among cricketers. Like others so acknowledged, he was ever the master craftsman. Perhaps the all-important factor was that from the start, the bowling he faced was more skilled and demanding than will have come the way of many others. Only Colin Cowdrey among the cricketers I have known has moved so easily up the rungs that take cricket toddlers to a Test match debut.
Pollock never underestimated the opposition, nor hesitated to meet a challenge. When 13, he became excited, even entranced, by the skill and application of the Australian, Neil Harvey, like himself a left-handed batsman. It was Harvey’s dedication to the task of making runs, and still more runs, that determined Pollock never to yield his wicket while runs were there to be taken.
His move from Eastern Province to Transvaal in 1978-79 undoubtedly enriched and extended his playing days. So, too, did the SACU move that brought the breakaway touring teams to South Africa. Graeme Pollock, a supporter of full tours to South Africa by unofficial teams of international standard, is established in cricket administration: president of the South African Cricket Players’ Association, board member and team selector with the Transvaal Cricket Council. We shall not see his like again at the crease, but he may yet become a prominent figure in cricket’s council chambers.
