I’m no expert on South African cricket. However, I have been following county cricket for more than four decades and I have fond memories of the hot summer of 1981 when Nottinghamshire and Sussex battled it out for the Championship.
Clive Rice had been the Notts captain for a few years already, then with Richard Hadlee spearheading the bowling, the Trent Bridge outfit had become one of the most dangerous sides in England. That year they won the title for the first time since 1929, Rice leading from the front scoring 1,462 runs and taking 65 wickets. The county repeated the feat in 1987, also winning the Sunday League.
When he retired, he had played 283 first-class matches for Nottinghamshire, rattling up 17,000 runs and almost 500 wickets. He also boasted an impressive record in one-dayers, not only in England but also for the Transvaal where he enjoyed even more domestic success. A first-class career record of more than 26,000 runs at 40 and 930 wickets at 22 is an astonishing one, so why isn’t Clive Rice mentioned in the same breath as other all-rounders like Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Kapil Dev?
The answer, of course, lies in the wilderness years experienced by South Africa because of the country’s odious Apartheid regime of racial prejudice. As with Barry Richards, Mike Procter and Garth Le Roux, amongst others, Clive Rice was deprived of international cricket when at the peak of his powers. He was playing in the Lancashire League when Notts came a-calling when looking for a replacement for Garry Sobers in 1975 and he stayed there for many summers. He didn’t quite have the charisma of a Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Imran, Zaheer Abbas or many other overseas stars but, looking back, Rice’s contributions to the county game were as significant as any other import’s.
He was past the age of 40 when South Africa returned to the fold in 1991 and was granted the captaincy for the first ODI series against India. Those three matches were the only ones he played for his country, as he was dropped for the 1992 World Cup and that was it. His age may have been a factor but so was his outspokenness, which like another of his later protégés, a certain Kevin Pietersen, got him into trouble from time to time.
As manager of Nottinghamshire between 1999 and 2002 he brought KP and others into a failing squad and nurtured the talents of Pollock, Rhodes and others at Natal in the Nineties. Sadly he became afflicted by so many illnesses and conditions in recent years, and the end finally came after suffering from a brain tumour at the age of 66.
Clive Rice was undoubtedly one of the finest, grittiest all-rounders of my lifetime, more a seamer than batsman, but his career stats are as impressive as any other man of his era. He won’t figure in the CricInfo pages for Tests, ODI or T20 but the plaudits and praise heaped on him after his death speak volumes.
