Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

42 Number 11 Kevin and his Mauritius-born wife Marie-Louise proved to be a very welcoming and engaging couple, easy to get on with, happy to recall and talk about the past, and clearly still very fond of each other after (at the time I first met them) getting on for 50 years of marriage. When we met, Kevin was 72, well-built but not quite the same 6ft 2in that he had been in his playing days. Time, sadly, was taking its toll, in particular of his eyes. He put his failing eyesight down to many years of playing cricket in the sun, wearing a cap but not sunglasses; the game has a lot to answer for. And a year or so after we met he was due to have a hip replacement, and he was having to walk with crutches. Not perhaps the image you hope to have of a successful former sportsman, but it comes to us all eventually. 27 Kevin and Marie-Louise were in England chiefly to visit the two of their three sons who had lived here for several years - and to share time with their grandchildren, of whom they are quite properly proud. Since then, their middle son has returned to South Africa after 15 years as a vet in Essex, specialising in the care of horses; there he joined his older brother, an attorney, while leaving behind his younger brother, who works in IT. When they came, and knowing we were to meet, they brought a scrapbook highlighting some of the main events of Kevin’s sporting career. Yes, the game at Kimberley in February 1966 was surely the highlight; but there was plenty before it, and after it, that deserves to be recorded here. Ultimately of Irish extraction (his grandparents emigrated to South Africa from County Cork), Kevin was born in Durban on 1 June 1940. But his cricketing career began, coincidentally, in Kimberley, in the (then) province of Griqualand West. He was introduced to the game when he was a student at the Christian Brothers College there, and he had some fine coaches to help his game along: among those visiting the school to coach their cricketers were various English players, wintering in South Africa - among them the likes of Ray Illingworth (‘a hard taskmaster’, said Kevin), Alan Oakman (‘very tall, very good fielder’) and Fred Titmus (‘a great coach’). At the time, Kevin was principally a slow left-arm bowler, but it was as a right-handed opening batsman that he earned selection to participate in the Nuffield Cricket Weeks of 1957 and 1958 - the high spot of South African schools’ cricket at the time. In the 1957 Week at Bulawayo, the 16-year-old Martin scored 40 for Griqualand West in their drawn game against Natal, an innings described in the South African Cricket Annual as ‘a valuable knock, although 40 in 195 minutes rather flattered Natal’s attack’. But as the Annual said, ‘schoolboys of this generation can hardly be blamed if they accept that [the sluggish progress maintained by both sides in the 1956/57 South Africa-England Test series] is the tempo at which cricket is normally played’. In his two games in the 1957 week, Kevin bowled only a single over. He was back again for the Week at East London a year later, this time batting anywhere between numbers one and six, and scoring 25 not out in a draw against Transvaal; he also had his first real success with the ball 27 I’m pleased to report that the hip replacement was a success.