Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

50 for Durban City Council - not the most popular of jobs (‘I was one of the bad guys!’), as it was his role to value properties for rating purposes, and when properties were being expropriated. His work was principally in the northern areas of Durban, including both township areas and upmarket business and residential areas. The job may have been portrayed as one for the ‘bad guys’, but that was not Kevin’s way of working: ‘On the residential side, especially after revaluation of the city, I used to get 200 appeals, and I made a point of visiting every single person and explaining the position, because [inevitably] the layman doesn’t understand how we arrived at our figures. I got some lovely letters back. I like to be honest and above board. Once you start ducking and diving, then you’re in trouble.’ In retirement, sport continues to play an important part in Kevin’s life. His eyesight means that he does not now watch live sport, but he is a keen follower of televised cricket, football and rugby in particular. In his younger days he played football to a good standard, turning out on the left wing for Durban United. Like so many others, he became an avid Manchester United supporter following the tragedy at Munich, a passion also shared by his three sons (all of them cricketers in their time). His cherished Arsenal- supporting grandson is a bit of an outsider in this respect! He retains strong views on some of the cricketing issues of the day - India’s reluctance to support the use of DRS, the checking for no-balls after a batsman has (seemingly) been dismissed, bowlers who can’t keep their front foot behind the line, throwing - but admits to having had a ‘little bit of a problem’ with running on the pitch in his playing days. ‘A couple of umpires warned me because I had Norman Crookes at the other end who used to bowl off-spinners, and they used to say I was running on the wicket for him. But it was just my natural action. I always landed in the same spot, and by the time I’d finished at one end it was a bit of a hole - they used to warn me now and again, but it’s so difficult to start changing.’ Kevin Martin proved to be a thoroughly likeable, modest and decent man. I am genuinely pleased to have been able to meet him, to share his reminiscences, and to discover the continuing importance of cricket to him throughout his life. There is one feat that he alone, of all first-class cricketers, has achieved: as suggested by that list in the Wisden Book of Cricket Records where all this started, he is the only cricketer, ever and anywhere, to have shared in a century partnership for the tenth wicket in his one and only first-class innings. But like most cricketers, his evident love of the game is not based on statistics, still less on his own statistics. But that is not to say that he is not aware that he did something very special and unusual on 17 February 1966, or that he does not still get great pleasure from remembering it. And why shouldn’t he? Number 11