Mike Procter obituary: The Gloucestershire legend who would have become one of the great Test all-rounders

PROCTER, MICHAEL JOHN, died on February 17, aged 77. In July 1965, when the touring South Africans arrived in Bristol, they found a pair of teenagers from Durban in the Gloucestershire line-up: Barry Richards, playing his first game for the county, and Mike Procter, making his first-class debut. From 62 for four, the pair put on 116, impressing the Western Daily Press: “Both the batsmen attacked the bowling at once, and the 3,000 crowd thoroughly enjoyed the sight of two youngsters punishing Test bowlers from their own country.” The 19-year-old Richards hit 59, and Procter – a year younger – 69. For the South Africans, the partnership offered a glimpse of the future. But it had even greater significance for Gloucestershire.

Though Procter made his Test debut less than two years later, South Africa’s impending exile ended his international career after only seven games, all against Australia; his 41 wickets cost just 15 each. It meant he could apply his all-round talents to county cricket. Between 1968 and 1981, he became one of the greatest players in Gloucestershire’s history, alongside WG Grace, Gilbert Jessop and Walter Hammond. He would finish his first-class career with extraordinary numbers: 21,926 runs at 36, including 48 hundreds, and 1,417 wickets at 19, with 70 five-fors and 15 ten-wicket hauls.

From a long, electrifying run-up, Procter delivered the ball in a whirlwind of arms, and he could be as fast as anyone. As a batsman, he was orthodox and aggressive, once scoring six consecutive hundreds. That he would have become one of the great Test all-rounders seems unarguable. But he accepted that the world’s revulsion at apartheid mattered more: “What is a Test career compared to the great suffering of 40 million people?”

At 34, plagued by knee problems, he retired from county cricket, but played on for Natal, and even made three first-class appearances in 1988, aged 42. And he continued his involvement in the game as coach of South Africa after readmission. Later, as a match referee, he was embroiled in two of the most controversial Tests of the 21st century. But he found a quieter life running the Mike Procter Foundation, a charity helping underprivileged children in Durban.

Procter had been a sporting prodigy. Aged 12, he hit five centuries, including a double. At Hilton College, he was fly-half for the First XV, captain of tennis, and played hockey and squash. He started out as a wicketkeeper, then an off-spinner, but the school coach John Saunders gave him the new ball, and persuaded him to bowl fast.

In 1963, Procter first visited England as vice-captain to Richards in a South African schools side. Their potential was noted by Gloucestershire coach Graham Wiltshire, and the county’s England off-spinner David Allen was asked to make contact with their parents during MCC’s 1964/65 tour of South Africa. They were invited to spend the following summer in England, playing Second XI and club cricket, and made a favourable impression.

Gloucestershire were among the counties lobbying for an end to the ban on overseas players. When the rules changed, they hired Procter, having been outbid for Garry Sobers by Nottinghamshire. (Richards began a long association with Hampshire.) In his first season, in 1968, Procter scored 1,167 runs and took 69 wickets, despite bowling only five overs after July because of a knee injury. The highlight came against Middlesex at Bristol, where he blasted 134 in two hours. “Gilbert Jessop would have been proud of this innings on his home ground,” wrote Henry Calthorpe (a nom de plume of Henry Blofeld) in The Daily Telegraph. The power of Procter’s ball-striking brought comparisons with Hammond. David Green, a regular partner, said: “I have never seen the ball hit so consistently hard.”

Procter’s batting fell away in 1969, but his bowling progressed in compensatory leaps and bounds. Operating off a new 35-yard run-up, he took 108 wickets at 15, finished second in the averages, and was one of Wisden’s Five. “It was only after my first season with Gloucestershire that everything clicked,” he said. “Almost overnight I found I was running faster, bowling faster. The further I ran, the faster I seemed able to bowl. I need a long run because most of my pace comes from sheer momentum.”

In full flight, Procter intimidated batsmen – he took four first-class hat-tricks, two of them all lbws – and thrilled spectators. Long blond hair flying, he charged in like an Olympic sprinter, hitting the crease in a blur of activity. It was often said he bowled off the wrong foot. In fact, his release point came just before his left heel hit the ground. He delivered the ball chest-on, and had a thrusting follow-through. “By throwing himself forward, he got the ball to overspin and skid at you with big inswing,” said Geoffrey Boycott. “He also had this amazing ability to bowl very fast inswingers from around the wicket at right-handers.”

The schoolboy fly-half was now built like a front-row forward – “all neck, shoulders and chest”, said the broadcaster Peter Walker. But even Procter felt the strain of long spells. “He was so competitive he would have cortisone injections and play when he really shouldn’t have,” said Gloucestershire wicketkeeper Andy Brassington. Because of the knee trouble, he often bowled at something closer to fast-medium, though his career-best figures – 9-71 for Rhodesia against Transvaal at Bulawayo in 1972/73 – were nearly all taken with off-spin.

His exploits meant Gloucestershire became dubbed “Proctershire”. Against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane in 1971, with his team chasing 201 in 135 minutes, he crashed 111 to earn a four-wicket win. In a Benson and Hedges Cup game at Taunton the following season, his unbeaten 154 – another career-best – in a total of 252 included eight sixes and 20 fours; he then took five for 26. “Superman in action,” said Robin Marlar in The Sunday Times. Brassington recalled: “It wasn’t just youngsters like me who were in awe – the senior players were as well. We’d walk out after lunch or tea, and the crowds of kids on the outfield all wanted to be Procter. The truth was, we all did.”

In 1973, Gloucestershire won the Gillette Cup, their first major honour. In the semi-final against Worcestershire at New Road, he followed 101 with a match-winning burst of 3-31. At Lord’s, he top-scored with 94 as Gloucestershire beat Sussex by 40 runs, prompting a series of open-top bus tours around the county.

Four years later, Procter succeeded Tony Brown as captain, and led Gloucestershire to the brink of their first official Championship. They went into the last match, against Hampshire at Bristol, with a five-point lead over Middlesex and Kent, but were beaten on the final afternoon, allowing their rivals to share the title. Procter was blameless: he had scored 115 and 57, and taken 6-68 in Hampshire’s first innings.

There was, though, already a trophy in the cabinet: in the Benson and Hedges final, Gloucestershire defeated Kent by 64 runs. This time, Procter’s show-stopping performance had come in the semi-final, in front of the BBC cameras, against Hampshire at Southampton. After Gloucestershire made an underpowered 180, he produced what he considered the fastest spell of his career. With the fifth ball of his fourth over, soon after switching to round the wicket, he removed Gordon Greenidge’s middle stump. In his next, he dismissed Richards and Trevor Jesty lbw, then yorked John Rice to complete a hat-trick – his fourth wicket in five balls. Operating the scoreboard was a young Mark Nicholas, who reckoned Nigel Cowley was leg-before off the next, but umpire Tom Spencer could not bear to raise his finger again. Procter returned to dismiss Mike Taylor and Bob Stephenson, and finished with figures of 11-5-13-6.

His Test career had begun at Kingsmead, his home ground, against Australia in January 1967; a three-match series brought him 15 wickets at 17. South Africa did not play another Test for three years but, when the Australians returned, they were thrashed 4-0 by a team that might have dominated the 1970s but for isolation. He took 26 wickets at 13, and averaged 34 with the bat. “Procter has been South Africa’s most telling weapon,” wrote John Woodcock in The Times. “He is a glorious cricketer – young and strong, willing and gifted.” The final Test, at Port Elizabeth, was South Africa’s last for 22 years. A few days later, playing for Western Province, he smashed five successive sixes off Ashley Mallett, going from 100 to 155 in 12 minutes.

In 1970, he was selected for the Rest of the World to face England in a five-match series that replaced South Africa’s cancelled tour. In advance, he received two anonymous phone calls warning him he would be a target for protesters if he did not admit his mistake in representing a country that promoted apartheid. He ignored the threats. His best match of the series was at Edgbaston, where he followed up a five-for by hitting 62.

At Newlands in 1971, Procter was among the instigators of a mass walk-off after he bowled the first ball to Richards in a government-sponsored match to mark the tenth anniversary of South Africa becoming a republic. Before resuming, the players issued a statement backing a board initiative to consider non-white players for the scheduled 1971/72 tour of Australia. “We did it to try to change the whole rotten system in the country,” Procter said. “We didn’t think we were being unpatriotic. We simply felt that the principle of merit selection was vital to ensure South Africa’s sporting future.”

Procter’s eyes had been opened by life in England. “Not until I played professional cricket did I realise that the black man wasn’t inferior,” he wrote in his autobiography. In 1966, he and Richards had worked as attendants in the West Indies dressing-room during the Oval Test. “When I first came to England, I couldn’t get over the sight of white men sweeping the streets and doing other menial tasks. I’d always assumed that was the lot of the black man. Quite simply, I’d been brainwashed.” He looked back with regret: “I didn’t do enough. I allowed apartheid to go on around me.”

In South African domestic cricket, he played for Natal, Western Province, Rhodesia and Orange Free State. Procter’s six hundreds in successive innings – a feat matched only by CB Fry and Don Bradman – came for Rhodesia, mostly in the Currie Cup in 1970/71. The sequence climaxed with a career-best 254 against Western Province. In eight matches that season, he hit 956 runs at 119.

Procter was a natural recruit for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977. “It’s a great opportunity for cricketers from my country to get back into the big time,” he said. Brown, now Gloucestershire secretary, told him he might not be welcomed back. Procter later joined Tony Greig and John Snow in a restraint-of-trade claim against the ICC and TCCB, backed by Packer and heard at the High Court in London. When the players gathered in Australia, Packer suspected he had been overindulging in the hospitality: “Carrying a bit of extra weight, Proccy?” Procter replied: “You get the pads on, and I’ll show you how fit I am.” At the end of the second season, he shook hands on a contract for another three years, and left kit in Australia, expecting to return. Instead, Packer struck a deal with the Australian board. Procter was dismayed: “To this day, I don’t know why it disbanded so suddenly, and why Kerry Packer packed it in.”

He was instantly in demand when South Africa were readmitted to the ICC in 1991, coaching the team on their return – three one-day internationals in India. He also coached the side that reached the semi-final of the 1992 World Cup, and the Test tour of the West Indies that followed. He returned to England for a second season as director of cricket at Northamptonshire, overseeing victory in the NatWest Trophy, but was released from his contract to take on a full-time role with South Africa. In 1994, he coached them on a three-Test tour of England, draping the country’s new flag over the dressing-room balcony during the victory at Lord’s in the First Test. But England fought back to draw the series, and Procter was replaced by Bob Woolmer.

His six years as an ICC match referee began with New Zealand’s visit to Pakistan in the spring of 2002. On the morning of the second Test in Karachi, a suicide bomb went off outside the hotel where he was having breakfast with the umpires, killing many. Procter immediately cancelled the tour.

Two Tests saw him mired in controversy. At The Oval in 2006, Pakistan refused to return to the field after tea on the fourth day because umpire Darrell Hair had deducted five runs for ball-tampering. The match was awarded to England, with Procter unable to negotiate a truce. “When the big issue arose, the ICC official froze,” wrote Mike Atherton. Procter was thrust into the spotlight again at Sydney in 2007/08, when he banned India’s Harbhajan Singh for racially abusing Andrew Symonds. But India threatened to abandon the tour, and the ban was rescinded. Sunil Gavaskar said: “Millions of Indians want to know if it was a white man taking the white man’s word against that of a brown man.” Procter wrote: “I am South African and I understand the word racism. I have lived with it for much of my life. This was not a case of just taking the word of an Australian over an Indian. I stand by my decision.” At the end of the year, he was appointed South Africa’s convenor of selectors, but he lost the job early in 2010.

He made regular trips back to Bristol and Cheltenham, where he was still revered, often raising funds for his foundation. His Durban funeral was live-streamed at the County Ground. As Brassington put it: “He loved Gloucestershire, and Gloucestershire loved him.”

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