Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

44 up and he used to say “come on Trevor, keep it up” because apparently I had an action very similar to Trevor Goddard - and coming from the captain of South Africa that was [high praise]’), and Trevor Goddard himself, his captain at Tech and a great disciplinarian (‘he was strict on clean, white boots, white socks and everything like that, and one day when the sun had gone down I took my cap off and I put it in my pants behind my back, and all of a sudden he called me and told me to “take that bloody cap out of your back pocket”.’) Goddard’s message seemed to be, ‘if you’re not a cricketer, at least look like one’! He was also none too pleased when he and Kevin opened together, and Kevin ran him out for a duck; later, Kevin was 80 not out by tea but that didn’t prevent him feeling his captain’s wrath: ‘Kevin, when you call, you run. I’m not interested in whether you get run out, but you don’t run me out’ - and after such a dressing-down Kevin admitted that ‘he wanted to find the smallest hole to creep into’. And of course, there was Barry Richards. ‘An excellent player and a very nice guy. I got him out once or twice but one game I’ll never forget. I used to bowl medium pace and throw the odd leg-spinner in. Goddard always said to me to bowl the leg-spinner and let them see it, they don’t know how much it’s going to turn, and you know it’s only got to turn that much and you’ve got the guy beat. So one day I did that to Barry and he said, “Hurrah, out comes the leg spinner”. He could read you quick as anything.’ In such company, it is not surprising that Kevin’s cricket developed apace. Had he still been in Kimberley, a place in the Griqualand West side might have been his for the taking; but Natal was a different matter. They had two teams in the Currie Cup tournament, and competition for places in the teams was fierce. Indeed, at a lower level it was that sort of competition that had caused Kevin to change from a spinner to a medium-pacer, a decision taken in his early days at Tech when the side had a wealth of spinners, among them off-spinner Norman Crookes and slow left-armer Les Payn. Realising that his chances would be improved if he upped his pace, Kevin started to bowl seamers; and a medium-pacer he remained. Although his batting was far from negligible, it is his bowling performances for Tech that feature in Kevin’s scrapbook. Here a seven for 12 against Maritzburg (including one batsman out stumped; his pace was never more than medium, though he generally opened the bowling), there a seven for 30 against Pinetown, or a six for 25 against Wanderers. Pretty good figures in a side with very strong bowling resources, and it is small wonder that he found himself selected in various matches Number 11 Batting more peacefully at Kingsmead.