by Arunabha Sengupta

Nimble footed and aggressive, he allegedly drove SF Barnes up the wall. Though the great bowler summarised the story as ‘Rot’, there was no doubt that Herby Taylor was a fantastic batsman.

That tussle with Barnes was in 1913-14, when he scored 508 runs at 50.80. When England toured South Africa in 1930-31, he hit 117 at Newlands against Tate, Voce, Peebles, White and Hammond, managing 299 in the series at 49.83. He was 41 at the time. No wonder Peebles called him ‘the ideal model for all aspiring batsmen’.

He went to England three times, and ultimately batted at his best in 1929, at the age of 40. At The Oval he got 121 against Clark, Geary, Freeman and Woolley, in all the Tests 221 runs at 55.25.
Class is indeed permanent.

In between all that, he lost several years of his prime as he served in the Royal Field Artillery and the Royal Flying Corps, awarded the Military Cross during the Great War. When it ended, he was immediately opining the batting with Charlie Macartney, hitting a polished 84 for Dominions against England. He led the country on both sides of the War.

Herbie Taylor was the first genuinely classy batsman of South Africa. Alongside Aubrey Faulkner, but Faulkner did a lot more than just bat.
2,936 runs from 42 Tests at 40.77, the pillar of the weak batting side for 20 years. Neville Cardus ranked him as one of the six greatest batsmen of the post-Grace period … (but then he is Cardus and on another day he could have chosen six different ones and jotted it down under the column of Higher Truth.)

And then Taylor was one of the very few cricketers who crossed the colour line. He coached the Natal Africans as they geared up for their provincial tournaments. That was in the 1950s when ‘separate development’ had already reared its despicable head.

Herbie Taylor was born on May 5, 1889.
One of the many heroes of Apartheid: A Point to Cover