‘Ricey was a hard-arse and by his nature he pissed people off,” says Ray Jennings.
That assessment, by someone who spent years in the Transvaal dressing room alongside Clive Rice, though lacking elegance, sums up Rice.
Rice, who captained the South African cricket team on their historic first post-isolation tour to India in 1992, died yesterday aged 66. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumour for which he had sought treatment in India recently.
Jennings explained how Rice’s fight against his ailing health in recent years typified his former captain’s battling qualities. “We saw that fighting spirit in recent years, and that’s what I had experienced playing alongside him.
“He was an unbelievable fighter, he expected perfection and excellence – his way of doing things was to do it perfectly,” said Jennings, one of the central members of the ‘Mean Machine,’ which Rice was instrumental in building.
Rice started his career the year before South Africa’s final Test series before isolation against Australia in 1970. He was picked for the South African side due to tour Australia in 1971, but then South Africa was banned from international sport due to apartheid.
Rice was an outstanding performer for that Transvaal side and English county side Nottinghamshire. Those teams were built in his image; tough, uncompromising and ruthlessly efficient. “He was a tough and uncompromising competitor, but he was always fair,” remarked Barry Skjoldhammer, a former chairman of the Gauteng Cricket Board, who knew Rice well.
Rice may well have added his name to the great rivalry that existed among all-rounders during the 1970s and 80s, when the likes of Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee and Imran Khan dominated the sport.
However South Africa’s enforced ban from the international game, meant that was not to be. “He was very, very unlucky not be an international cricketer,” Skjoldhammer added.
Instead Rice had to measure himself at county level, which in the 70s and 80s was extremely strong and he was a valued member of the Nottinghamshire side – along with Hadlee – that won the County Championship twice (in 1981 and 1987) and achieved the ‘double’ in ‘87 when they added the domestic one-day trophy. He played 482 first class matches, scored over 26000 runs and picked up 930 wickets in his career.
The only international exposure for Rice and South African cricket came through the controversial ‘rebel’ series, with Rice captaining a South African side against the West Indies and later Australia in the 1980s.
The only legitimate international cricket for Rice came when he captained the side that toured India in November 1991, which played three One-Day Internationals. Rice had hope that following hasty arrangements for South Africa’s inclusion at the 1992 Cricket World Cup, he’d be able to sign off his career in that tournament, but he was left out of the squad, something which left him very bitter. “He got the cold shoulder from the selectors at the time and of course didn’t hide his feelings about that,” remembered Jennings.
How much of an effect that had on Rice’s outlook on South African cricket subsequently, isn’t exactly clear, but he became a fierce critic of the game’s administration – including the then United Cricket Board, who he accused of practising “apartheid in reverse”, as the organisation sought to make the national team more demographically representative – and the national team itself, especially under Graeme Smith’s captaincy.
“He wanted the best, that was his nature and it was reflected by his directness,” said Jennings. “He didn’t back off from that and it didn’t sit well with the transformation policies of South African cricket.”
Rice was an isolated figure in local cricket circles and encouraging Kevin Pietersen to go and seek his fortune in England added to his remoteness.
Besides being a hard and uncompromising competitor, many will question the value that Rice added to South African cricket in the post-isolation years. He cut a bitter figure, one that couldn’t bring himself to understand the changing requirements of the national side after sporting isolation.
Nevertheless his role can’t be ignored – the photograph of him and Mother Teresa in Kolkata shortly after the South African side landed in Kolkata in November 1991, is among the most indelible images of the ‘new South Africa.’
It is sad that he couldn’t add more value to the sport after he’d stopped playing.
*The South African team will wear black armbands in memory of Rice on the first day of the second Test against Bangladesh starting in Dhaka tomorrow. - The Star