Graeme Pollock, born February 27, 1944, was one of the greatest batsmen to play the game and one of the many South Africans of his day whose careers were brutally cut short by international isolation to his country’s then apartheid policies. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the career of the man who was rated as the best left-handed batsman alongside Garry Sobers by none other than Don Bradman.
In the 1930s, Don Bradman played many a Test match against Eddie Paynter. During his post-War days he led a team that contained batsmen of the calibre of Arthur Morris and Neil Harvey.
Bradman was fascinated by Morris — especially during his final series in 1948. Young Harvey was just making his mark in Test cricket, and during the following decade, as a selector, The Don followed his career closely.
However, when it came to choosing the best left-handed batsman he had ever watched, Bradman singled out two for the supreme honour. The soaring genius of Garry Sobers, clubbed together with the broadsword of a bat wielded by Graeme Pollock.
Anyone who had watched Pollock make 274 at Durban against Bill Lawry’s Australians could vouch that Bradman’s cricketing judgement was as peerless as ever. It was an innings that made cricket lovers go dizzy with delight, their gladly beating hearts almost certain that such entertainment could never bow to any obstacle, however politically combustible.
Graeme (left) and brother Peter Pollock © Getty Images
How good was Pollock?
January 1964, Sydney. Waite and van der Merwe are bowled by McKenzie in quick succession, the score is 162 for 5. McKenzie’s spell figures read 2-2-0-2.
Young Graeme Pollock and Colin Bland then take seven off his next over. For some obscure reason the fast bowler is rested. Keith Miller calls it one of the great Test match blunders.
Graeme Pollock carries on. Cover drives and hooks reverberate across the oval.
“I have never heard a sweeter note than the one young Graeme Pollock brought to Australia with his bat,” writes Lindsay Hassett.
“Next time you decide to play like that send me a telegram,” says Bradman.
122 with 19 fours and a six.
At Adelaide, Neil Hawke dismisses Goddard and Pithey off successive balls. Pollock, beaten comprehensively off the first two, barely manages to survive.
But the next ball is creamed through the covers.
What follows is four hours and 43 minutes of ruthlessness. Pollock mixes poise and grace with pure unadulterated savagery. 341 runs are added before Pollock loses his stump to Hawke. His 175 contains 18 fours and 3 sixes. At the other end Barlow pushes on to 201. But everyone, including Barlow himself, agrees Pollock’s innings is classier. “I was simply the jackal picking at the corpse, after the lion has eaten his fill,” Barlow observes.
When the English arrive in 1964-65, Titmus dismisses him for 5 and 0 in the first Test. The English press pounce on the small sample. Spin is supposedly Pollock’s Achilles heel.
Pollock unleashes 55 at Johannesburg, 73 at Cape Town, 65* at Johannesburg again and ends the series with 137 and 77* at Port Elizabeth, scoring at will against the Achilles Heel and everything else the attack can throw at him.
And then the Trent Bridge Test of 1965.
On a grey and grassless pitch, with the sun out, the visitors are happy to win the toss and bat. But by the time the score pushes along to 40, four men are out. Cartwright makes the ball do all sorts of things. At 80 Bacher loses his stump to Snow.
Peter Pollock cannot bear to watch his brother defy the bowlers in these circumstances. Every ball is filled to the brim with tension. He locks himself up in the backroom as van der Merwe joins Graeme.
What follows is a masterclass of counterattack. Pollock, according to his brother Peter, “[takes] the English attack in his teeth and shakes it like a dog would do with a rag doll.” As he starts scoring runs, his brother is locked away by his mates. He cannot be allowed to watch. Too much is at stake.
Graeme pierces the field with elan and class and finds gaps that mortals cannot see. 21 fours in his 125, the last 91 runs off 90 balls in 70 minutes during which van der Merwe scores 10—a knock that makes him a bona fide legend. When Peter is allowed to come back and watch, he sees his brother being caught in the slips.
Graeme scores another half century in the second innings. Peter Pollock picks up 10 wickets. The Test is won, the only result in the series. Has there been a better pair of cricketing brothers?
Back home at Newlands, Simpson and Stackpole haul Australia to 542. South Africa is 12 for 2 when Graeme enters. He is ninth out at 353 for a personal score of 209. Etched with strokes of breath-taking power and perfect timing. Fieldsmen are beaten without registering a token effort at stopping the ball. This includes an 85-run ninth wicket stand with brother Peter.
The Port Elizabeth Test of 1967 coincides with his 24th birthday. He celebrates it a magnificent 105-run gem etched with 13 boundaries and a pulled six. Richie Benaud says without reservation that the Eastern Province left-hander is a better batsman than even Garry Sobers. 1739 runs at 57.96 with six hundreds in 19 Tests.
Sadly, his next Test is played three years down the line. That’s his last series.
He sets himself up in style when the Australians arrive. On the third day of the tour match between Australia and Eastern Province, Pollock, batting on 78, faces an over from the off-spinner Ashley Mallett. The first ball is a dot. The next five take him to 102. The sequence is 4,4,4,6,6—all of them executed with the straightest of bats.
And then there is the 274 at Durban. Barry Richards hits 140 in a day that sees South Africa score 386 for 5. McKenzie bowls with a 7-2 field and Pollock threads through the off-side with brutal finesse. 50 in 58 minutes, 160 by the end of the day. Barlow does not last long. “After the Lord Mayor’s show, there was no room for me out there,” Barlow recalls later. “I was embarrassed. Those two have made a mockery of batting.”
Pollock carries on to his seventh Test hundred. At 117, the Murphy scoreboard can no longer keep up and is stuck. It remains static as Pollock hammers three successive fours, a two, and then an overthrow for five off Walters—19 off an over.
On the second day, 15,656 spectators flock to watch the action. And Pollock does not disappoint. There are men placed on the fence at cover point and extra cover. He still strokes boundaries through them.
“Unique day for the South African reporter,” writes Lichfield. “Never before have we spent an entire day with the record book remaining open alongside the typewriter.”
At 196, he is temporarily subdued. Connolly bowls a frugal spell, round the wicket with two short legs and a man at mid-wicket. After a spate of maiden overs, he overpitches. Connolly will recall later: “Soon as I realised it, I said ‘Oh Shit’. And he smashed it back past me at 2,500 kilometres an hour, and a split-second later it hit the sightscreen.”
His final score is 274, with 43 fours and a five.
In a Test career that ended at the age of 26, Pollock plundered 2256 runs in 23 Tests at an average of 60.97 with 7 hundreds.
He did play for the Rest of the World side against England in 1970. He did not have a great time with the bat, but made 114 in the final match at The Oval, adding 165 with Garry Sobers in what must have been a duet in left-handed heaven.
In 1971, the Pollock brothers, along with many other South African cricketers, took part in a protest against the apartheid policy organised by Barry Richards and Mike Procter. It was staged during a match to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the formation of the Republic of South Africa. The players of both the teams walked off after one ball before coming back to resume the match.
He also made a rollicking hundred at Adelaide for the Rest of the World against a strong Australian side at Adelaide in early 1972, putting on 146 with Zaheer Abbas in another display of synchronous strokeplay.
Pollock went on to play 16 unofficial ‘Tests’ against rebel teams from England, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Australia. In these matches, played with every ingredient of serious Tests but for official sanction and limelight, he scored 1376 runs, with five centuries, at an average of 65.52.
He continued to play First-Class cricket for Eastern Province and Transvaal, but unlike many of his countrymen, did not opt for county cricket. According to Pollock, he did not enjoy the ‘domestic grind’..
Pollock retired from cricket in 1987, at the age of 42. With his usual perfect sense of timing, he called it a day after scoring 144 against an Australian rebel team. His class was permanent, the style, technique and panache did not desert him till his final day on the field.
Graeme Pollock always maintained that it was a greater cause for which their careers had to be suspended. He acknowledged that at the very beginning of their careers, in White South Africa, “we didn’t give enough thought to the people who weren’t given opportunities. In hindsight, we certainly could have done a lot more in trying to get change in South Africa.”
Unlike some of his teammates who have graduated to being grumpy old men of world cricket, unable to make peace with their curtailed careers.
Graeme Pollock was born on 27 Feb 1944.