by Arunabha Sengupta
Roy McLean was an excellent batsman, one of the pillars of the South African side of the 1950s. Additionally, he was an able and entertaining writer, who penned two fantastic and detailed tour books.
McLean’s Pitch and Toss is an engrossing account of the extraordinary 1956-57 series between South Africa and the visiting Englishmen. That feverishly exciting showdown that saw the Springboks ride the heroics of Hugh Tayfield and come back from 0-2 down to square the series 2-2. Even as protests and riots raged through the country.
It was a special series for Trevor Bailey. During the fourth Test he captured his 100th wicket, and during the fifth he completed 2000 runs.
That placed him in an elite club.
Describing the fourth Test of the series, McLean wrote that soon Bailey would be standing alongside Keith Miller and Wilfred Rhodes in this regard.
And he mused: “Just imagine the difference in spectator value between a Keith Miller and a Trevor Bailey either as bowler or batsman.” He had never seen Rhodes of course, but he added, “Yorkshire’s Wilfred Rhodes, who started as No. 11 batsman for England and ended by opening, was much before my time, but I’m quite sure he could, despite the county of his birth, never have been as dour as Bailey.”
All very true. No one could be quite as dour as the Barnacle himself.
However, there was something else.
At that particular point in time, Vinoo Mankad had 2084 runs and 158 wickets in Tests. But he was not White enough to feature in McLean’s musings.
For the South Africans Mankad simply did not exist.
In his day, Vinoo Mankad was the greatest all-rounder of the world alongside Keith Miller. And he remains one of the very best ever. He ended with 2109 runs and 162 wickets in Test cricket.
Of course, the South Africans saw none of that. Perhaps they did not even hear of him. McLean almost certainly did not. Or perhaps if he had written about Mankad he would have come under the watch-list of secret police.
It just underlines how unfortunate the policy of apartheid was, even for the privileged.