Few cricketers have made a bigger impact in a single season of English county cricket than Vintcent Adriaan Pieter Van Der Bijl made in 1980. He took 85 wickets at 14.72 apiece, finishing virtually top of the first-class bowling averages. He made a massive contribution to Middlesex’s victories in the Schweppes County Championship and the Gillette Cup, not only with wickets but also with controlled hitting when runs were needed.
For one glorious season, Vintcent van der Bijl was an unmissable presence in county cricket. His performances for Middlesex in 1980 earned saw him named one of Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year.
When he arrived in April, he had a long tally of broken records behind him to South Africa and, on a variety of pitches in an uneven English summer, he more than justified the reputation which had preceded him of being one of the best fast-medium bowlers in the world. Most of all he brought, as is generally agreed, a breath of fresh air with his immense enthusiasm, his love of playing cricket, and his bubbling friendship for other cricketers.
Born in Cape Town on March 19, 1948, he is a member of one of only four South African families to have had three generations of first-class cricketers. His grandfather, V.A.W. van der Bijl, played for Western Province in 1892 and a great-uncle was selected for a tour of England but had to decline.
Then in 1979 he gave up teaching and went into business. When Middlesex approached him, his employers, Wiggins Teape, generously let him off for six months, as he says, to “fulfil my personal ambition” – and also to gain business experience in Britain. For Middlesex, his arrival in April 1980 and the failure of West Indies to pick Wayne Daniel for their tour promised a Championship-winning partnership. For Vintcent van der Bijl it was a marvellous chance to take his wife, Beverley, and their two daughters, Sarah and Chloe, to England for the first time. As one of the later chapters in his playing career, he would be sampling the different and, to use an overworked word, challenging world of English first-class cricket.
He would have enjoyed it however it had worked out, and would have remembered it all his days. In the event, a lot of others, players and spectators, were to remember it too.
This article first appeared in the 2008 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. You can pre-order this year’s Almanack here.
