by Arunabha Sengupta
Peter Heine was a terrifying fast bowler. Nicknamed, not very charitably, ‘The Bloody Dutchman’ by the English cricketers, he formed a fearsome pair with Neil Adcock.
Black hair straggling over his eyes and a great red streak across the front of his shirt, where he polishes the ball with palpable viciousness, he cut a ferocious figure. According to some Englishmen, he bowled as much at the batsman as at the wicket. Sometimes, he allegedly told batsmen, “I want to hit you.”
58 wickets in 14 Tests at 25.08. With Adcock he bowled in 13 of them, and they together captured 102 wickets at 22.08 in those Tests. South Africa’s first great new ball pair.
However, his brag was different. With the bat averaged 9.95 in Tests, significantly more than Adcock’s 5.40. He was proud of that. He even claimed that he was made to bat lower than he deserved because he was an Afrikaner.
When South Africa toured England in the summer of 1955, Heine’s brag was not that he had made the vaunted English batting hop, but that he was the only batsman not to get a duck on tour.
So, when during the Old Trafford Test South Africa chased 145 in 135 minutes, and Adcock suggested that he could go in if quick runs were required, Heine chuckled. He was so superior with the bat, after all.
But two hours later they were seven down with a few to go. Hugh Tayfield, batting No 9, had gone in and was swinging with his eyes closed, and Tony Lock was appealing incessantly. It was no longer a laughing matter. Adcock and Heine were the only ones yet to bat, and Heine was slotted to go in next.
He could not take it anymore. With Tayfield executing another futile swing, he up his bat, gloves, and cap and went down the steps, making for the players’ gate. The idea was not to waste a moment if he has to go in.
Halfway down the steps he tripped and fell, crashing in a heap to the bottom of the stairs.
Off the third ball of the following over, John Waite drove Frank Tyson through the off-side and Parkhouse, the substitute, gave chase. The batsmen had already run three and were turning for the fourth when the ball won the race to the boundary. It was over. With four minutes remaining on the clock South Africa had won. The two batsmen met each other mid-pitch in a dancing embrace.
Peter Heine was still lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, not able to summon the nerve to get up. The roar of the crowd was ominous. To his frenzied mind, it meant a wicket had fallen.
He was now reassured by the kindly hand of an elderly member of the Lancashire County Cricket Club. “It’s all right lad, you can stop praying—your team has won.”
Finally he managed to look up … Soon he was singing ‘Wat maak Oom Kalie daar?’ with the rest of the side.
Peter Heine was born on 28 June 1928.