In some ways I saw my 400th wicket as a long service award (Pollock’s Test career spanned 13 years from 1995-2008 and included 108 Test matches). As the landmark approached I tried to keep my mind off it and just do my job for the team, but all the media coverage meant that you couldn’t ignore it.
It finally came against India at the Wanderers in 2006/7 when we were trying to bowl ourselves back into the match. I’ve seen the actual dismissal a few times on video otherwise I might have forgotten it! It was a decent delivery, tight on off-stump that left the batsman a touch.
It was satisfying that both my 300th and 400th Test victims were captains of their teams and high-quality batsmen. My 300th was Michael Vaughan (against England at Trent Bridge in August 2003) and my 400th was Rahul Dravid – both caught by Mark Boucher. Unfortunately, we lost both matches.
Looking back on my career, and the number of wickets I ended up with (421, still a South African record), I was helped by the fact that most of my cricket was played in South Africa where, by and large, the pitches assisted the pacemen. I certainly wouldn’t have got so many if I’d played on the Indian sub-continent.
I would like to pay tribute to Allan Donald, in particular, for helping me get a number of my wickets. His fire and brimstone at one end meant that more than a few batsmen were encouraged to play rash strokes against me. On the other hand, I suppose that building pressure, as I liked to do, helped the other bowlers to get a few scalps as well.