Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

49 Number 11 leg-break bowler, remember - wanted to bowl the spinners, partly because he thought they offered the best chance of success, but also because ‘we had to try and get the overs in’. To no avail, disappointingly. Kevin recalls that when given the ball he bowled in his usual attacking style, bowling at the stumps and trying to bring the batsmen forward. He also recalls that he thinks he had one catch dropped off his bowling in the match; but as it is, with no wickets and no catches in the field, his name doesn’t appear in the scorecard of either of his opponents’ innings. So Griqualand West managed to squeeze out the draw, and deny Natal B the win that would have taken them to second place in the Section B table 32 . Kevin remembers fondly that he and Neville McDonald received congratulatory telegrams from team-mates back in Durban, who were themselves just securing the victory that gave them a share of the Section A title. One other person who shared the celebrations, though she missed the match in Kimberley, was Kevin’s fiancee, Marie-Louise. A great cricket- lover herself, she was the regular scorer for their club in Durban, and sadly couldn’t spare the time to travel to see what turned out to be Kevin’s finest hour on the cricket field. And there were other matters to attend to as well, ahead of their forthcoming marriage: Kevin and Marie-Louise married in April 1966. 33 The Kimberley match was the last game of the season, and when the 1966/67 season began Kevin had hopes of further selection at provincial level. He thinks now that he was close to selection for Currie Cup matches, but never quite made it: ‘there were so many good players around’. In that season, the two Natal sides used a total of 30 players, nine of whom had not played for them in 1965/66. They included Mike Procter’s brother Anthony, who made his only first-class appearances for Natal in 1966/67. In the face of such competition, and despite continuing success at club level, Kevin never got the call to the Natal colours again. He certainly wasn’t forgotten altogether; round about 1970 (Kevin does not recall the exact date) he played for Natal against an Old Springboks eleven, in which he had the satisfaction of dismissing former colleagues Jackie McGlew and Roy McLean. One of the cuttings in his scrapbook had him playing in a similar fixture as late as 1980 (could these have been one and the same matches?). But playing cricket was necessarily having to take a slightly less prominent place in Kevin’s life as time went on, and as his family grew. By 1972 he was captaining the Tech Second eleven, rather than spearheading the attack of the first eleven. And of course, cricket was only ever an amateur pursuit, and he had to make his living in a different field. For 40 years, straight from school, Kevin worked as a property valuer, and later a senior valuer, 32 Griqualand West went on to win their next first-class match - their first game of the 1966/67 season - to bring an end to their long sequence without a victory. 33 They celebrated a very happy golden wedding anniversary with family and friends in South Africa in April 2016. Congratulations!