Stuart Hess documents Clive Rice’s bitterness towards South African cricket bosses and many modern players.
Johannesburg - Clive Rice’s relationship with South African cricket was shredded by the time of his death on Tuesday.
Perhaps the seeds for that bitterness towards South African cricket officialdom and even many of the modern players - most notably former captain Graeme Smith - lay in Rice not being considered for the 1992 Cricket World Cup.
Rice would have hoped and wanted to end a brief international career at that event, but was deemed surplus to the squad’s requirements by the national selectors.
Perhaps the most significant illustration of his bitterness towards South African cricket came in the shape of his encouraging Kevin Pietersen to leave these shores and ply his trade in England.
In an interview with the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2004, Rice laid into the then United Cricket Board of SA accusing the organisation of practicing “apartheid in reverse,” as the body sought to bring more black players into the national side. “Once Shaun Pollock, Jacques Kallis and Herschelle Gibbs have retired, it's Old Mother Hubbard time,” Rice said in the interview.
Even the national team’s subsequent successes weren’t viewed favourably by Rice, who called South Africa’s Test win in Australia in 2008 lucky, and spent much time criticising Smith, this country’s most successful Test captain.
There can however be no doubting Rice’s standing as South Africa’s pre-eminent player during the sports isolation years. He was a central figure in the Transvaal ‘Mean Machine’ - a side many observers felt could have matched with international sides of the time.
Rice was also instrumental in the success of the Nottinghamshire County side, helping them win the County Championship twice (in 1981 and 1987) and also achieving the double in ’87 by winning the domestic one-day title.
Rice may have come across as surly in his later years, particularly when describing the current national side, but in his playing days he was a colourful character, posing nude with a strategically placed “Jumbo” bat in one advertising campaign.
Quite how Rice will be remembered is hard to say. As a player, he was an all-rounder whose skills allied to his determination would have seen him likely match the deeds of Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee (a teammate at Nottinghamshire for many years) and Imran Khan in the heyday of cricket’s great all-rounders.
Sadly for him, he never got the opportunity to pit wits against them on the international stage. And then there was the bitterness, which overcame him as South Africa returned to the international arena.
Perhaps it was knowing - or feeling - that he too could have been one of the game’s greats and was robbed of that opportunity by apartheid that underscored his anger.
Whatever it was, it is sad that he couldn’t play a more meaningful role in South African cricket, other than to say how rubbish everything was.
* Stuart Hess is a senior sports writer for Independent Media.
Independent Media