The past, they say, is another country. South Africa in 1970 really was another country, a pre-democratic country lost in the mighty bluster of High Apartheid.
It was so much another country that it was in another century, which makes the 1970 series against Australia look a little like a museum piece today.
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The past, they say, is another country. South Africa in 1970 really was another country, a pre-democratic country lost in the mighty bluster of High Apartheid.
It was so much another country that it was in another century, which makes the 1970 series against Australia look a little like a museum piece today.
Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon.
Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation.
Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack.
Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.
On New Year’s Eve 1969, Bill Lawry’s Australian cricketers flew directly from – of all places – Bombay to Johannesburg. They had just completed a 10 week tour of Ceylon and India and might have expected a week or two of rest back home in Australia before the start of a four-Test series against a pumped South Africa.
Their board had other ideas. They flew Lawry and his team south.
The Australians had played four matches in Ceylon, only one of which was deemed first-class, but ten in India, with Test matches in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Kanpur and Madras, where they played the fifth Test.
Going into the fifth Test in Madras, Australia led the series 2-1, having won the first Test at the Brabourne in Bombay and the fourth at Eden Gardens in Calcutta, while the Indians won the third Test by seven wickets at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi.
In Madras, today’s Chennai, Lawry won the toss and batted. Despite Doug Walters’ 102, Australia were bowled out for 258, raising India’s hopes of a series-levelling victory. Such optimism was short-lived. India could only manage 163 in reply. Before long, though, hope blossomed again.
Despite sacrificing 95 runs on the first innings, India managed to reduce Australia to 24 for six in their second innings when wicket-keeper Brian Taber was out caught Eknath Solkar bowled Erapalli Prasanna for a duck.
It had been a long tour for Lawry’s men. Accommodation was not of the luxury five-star variety, and breakfast – according to off-spinner, Ashley Mallett – sometimes consisted of mashed banana on toast and a shot of whisky. A walk in India in the late 1960s was no walk in the park.
And now it had boiled down to this. After scrapping so hard on a hard and arduous tour, they only led by 119 in their final innings of the series with their best batsmen already back in the hut. The only recognised batsman left was Ian Redpath, the fifth man in.
When Redpath was ninth out for a cussed, three-hour 63 with the total on 140, Australia were by no means out of trouble, but their lead was nudging 250. With the help of Laurie Mayne, “Garth” McKenzie, Alan Connolly and Mallett himself, they crawled to 153 all out.
India had bowled 34 maidens in their 80.5 overs; batting last, they would need to score 249 to square the series.
The series had started with great expectation at the beginning of November. At all the Test grounds, demand for seats exceeded supply. The Aussies had beaten the West Indians of Garry Sobers, Basil Butcher, Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith 3-1 in Australia the season before. Indian cricket fans reckoned their men might make a fist of things against the holders of the Ashes and what very possibly was the best Test team in the world.
India’s reply in search of 249 in the fifth Test began disastrously. They were quickly in trouble at two for 12. Their best batsman in the series had been Gundappa Viswanath, who had scored 137 on debut in the second innings of the second Test in Kanpur, and now he joined Ajit Wadekar.
The two took stock. Watchfully they prodded their way to India’s fifty. At the end of the third day’s play, India were 82 for two, with Wadekar not out on 36 and Viswanath not out on 31.
Resuming on the Sunday morning, the not out batsmen overnight brought up India’s hundred. With the total on 114, Wadekar was caught by Keith Stackpole off the fast-bowler Mayne. Farouk Engineer was caught-and-bowled McKenzie for three five runs later and suddenly the procession had begun.
Viswanath could do nothing to stop it. He was sixth out for 59 with the total on 142 as the Indians dive-bombed from their overnight 82 for two to 171 all out, losing the Madras Test by 77 runs and losing the series 3-1.
The Australians were only too happy to leave India behind. The travel had been a grind. The food was alien. The conditions in which they were sometimes asked to doss down stunned them. Skipper Lawry had been accused while on tour of assaulting an Indian press photographer.
The Indian crowds were often ill-behaved and unruly. There had been stone-throwing in Bangalore, a riot in Bombay and a pitch-invasion in Calcutta. At times the Australians needed police protection because a splinter group of protesters were incensed by Australia’s role in the Vietnam War.
After a ten-week-long grind through India, they were exhausted when they arrived in South Africa but, if they could look past the constant reminders of apartheid, they were sure to breathe easier.
That didn’t happen. From the time Eddie Barlow scored his marathon six-hour century after Bacher won the toss and chose to bat in the first Test at Newlands at the end of January 1970, the Australians were never allowed the luxury of settling. After South Africa posted a slow 382 on the broad back of Barlow’s 127, Australia were in all kinds of trouble.
One for five became two for five, which became three for 38; three for 38 became four for 39, which stabilised slightly – almost establishing itself as something decent – to creep to five for 58. Had it not been for Doug Walters’ 73 and 19 down the order to Mallett, the Australians wouldn’t have posted 164, a deficit of 218.
Thanks in the main to Aussie fast-bowler Connolly, who took five for 47 in 26 overs, with 10 maidens, the South Africans never broke lose in their second dig. Graeme Pollock got a square 50 and Mike Procter grabbed 48 (both were Connolly’s victims) as the Springboks, as they were still called, cobbled together a slow 232 in 96 arduous overs. Combined with their first innings lead of 218, this meant Australia needed 451 to win, a huge task.
Despite an opening stand of 75 and a second-wicket stand of 55, no-one in the Australian upper-order scored quite enough. Wickets fell quicker than they should have and slowly, like a cliff face falling into the sea, the Australian chase subsided.
Peter Pollock bowled eighteen overs for nineteen runs with no wickets and, in a neat little touch that seems fictional rather than factual, occasional bowler, Barry Richards, took the second-last wicket to fall in bowling Johnny Gleeson for ten with his dobblers.
Chief destroyer for the South Africans was Procter – the all-rounder legendary radio commentator, Charles Fortune, referred to as “Michael John” – who took four for 47. This included trapping Lawry, with 83 the highest Australian scorer, leg before, as the home side won the Newlands Test by 170 runs.
The Australian cricket tour of the Republic was played against the backdrop of the “Stop the Seventy Tour” of Great Britain and Ireland by the rugby-playing Springboks. The Springboks arrived in Britain at roughly the same time as the Australians arrived in India.
By the time the Indian tour was over and Lawry’s cricketers were in South Africa, the rugby tour of Britain was nearing an end. On the 24th of January, a Saturday and the third day of the Test at Newlands, the Springboks played Wales in a dull 6-all draw at Cardiff Arms Park.
The Wales draw was their last assignment on an acrimonious and certainty-shattering tour that Springbok eighth-man, Tommy Bedford, characterised thus our bus hijacked before the Test against England at Twickenham.
“And then in Dublin, we were confronted by demonstrators lying in the street to stop us getting to Lansdowne Road.”
The anti-apartheid protester, Peter Hain, a South African studying mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London, wrote letters to all the Australian cricketers. He hoped to open their eyes to the iniquities of apartheid and tried to persuade them not to visit South Africa.
None of them obliged. They wanted to beat South Africa, who had beaten them 3-1 in a Test series in South Africa in 1966/7, as much as the South Africans wanted to beat them.
Hain was more successful organising the disruption of the rugby tour than he was the cricket tour, but the tides of world opinion were changing and Hain knew it.
Soon South Africa’s cricketers would be left to play amongst themselves – Western Province versus Transvaal at Newlands – while the rest of the cricketing world would play in World Cups and bi-lateral series.
South Africa’s cricketers were no fools. They knew the end was nigh. Isolation would soon bite – the world was turning away from the bad smell in the south. What was happening in rugby, with barbed wire and hi-jacked buses, would happen to them. There was no reason to believe it wouldn’t.
They were scheduled to play away series’ against both England and Australia in the coming years and it was moot as to whether they’d ever get to Lord’s or the SCG. They needed to make sure they wouldn’t be forgotten. The home series against Australia in 1969/70 was their last waltz. And they were on the floor in their dancing shoes right now.
The first Test was the curious outlier in relation to the rest of the series, a fact frequently occluded or simply glossed over in many accounts of the tour. The cricket was hard and almost excruciatingly watchful. South Africa batted well past lunch on the second day for their 382.
They faced 167.1 overs from five Aussie bowlers, who between them bowled 54 maidens. None of them went for more than 2.5 runs per over.
The 2.46 runs per over scored in the Australians’ first innings was the most fluent scoring of the first Test. It was hardly party, party, party; disco, disco, disco.
In retrospect, this seems understandable. The South Africans were concerned going into Newlands about the so-called Aussie “mystery spinner”, Johnny Gleeson, whose appearances Lawry kept to a minimum in the warm-up games.
They were wary of Ian Chappell, who had dealt so well with the Indian spinners but was also known to be a fearsome hooker and puller. They were also concerned about opening bowler, McKenzie. He, though, didn’t take a wicket at Newlands, and was only to take one all tour, a situation that led many to believe he had contracted hepatitis while in India.
All of these things, combined with South Africa’s 170-run victory, conspired to boost their confidence ahead of the second Test at Kingsmead. Again, Ali Bacher won the toss and chose to bat. Richards, on his home ground, was 94 not out at lunch, and went to his hundred in the first over after the interval.
In the hour after it, he and Graeme Pollock put on 103 scintillating runs, before Richards was out for 140, an innings many hoped would last forever. Pollock continued to make merry.
At close of play he was not out on 160, the South African total on 386 for five. Pollock added a further 114 runs on the second day to make 274, at that stage the highest Test score ever recorded by a South African batsman. South Africa declared on 622 for nine and by close had Aussie reeling on 48 for four.
By the end of the third days play Australia had been bowled out cheaply in the first innings. Bacher had enforced the follow-on and Australia were making a fist of it at 100 for two in their second. The next day was a Sunday, the day of rest, and although Australia was showing fight, the end was nigh. Or was it?
After lunch on the Monday, the Test entered the doldrums. From no quarter did wind or breeze stir. South Africa had lost the ability to take wickets, while Australia weren’t scoring runs in sufficient quantities to win her the Test.
Barlow never one for stalemates, sent his skipper, Bacher, a telegram. It said: “Please Doc, give me a bowl – Bunter.” Bacher assessed things. Barlow’s figures at that stage were nought for 50, but did Bacher have anything to lose?
With a wry grin he chucked Barlow the ball. Barlow promptly ripped through the Aussie lower middle-order with three wickets in eleven balls. He accounted for Eric Freeman, Taber and McKenzie. When they were out, the Test was effectively over. By the end of the innings Barlow had taken three for 63 in 31 overs with ten maidens.
His contribution was not as elegant as Richards’; it was not as majestically powerful as Pollock’s but it was as bumptious as only Barlow knew how. The son of hard-working parents who sometimes did a shift in the tuck-shop at Pretoria Boys’ High, Barlow was the ultimate shape-shifter.
He could grind out hundreds. He could take wickets with his cascading self-belief. In football terms, Barlow was the Springboks midfield dynamo. Bacher was the captain. One of his teammates, Lee Irvine, said he was a remarkable leader of men.
“Ali brought us together for that series against Australia in 1969/70 and he did so masterfully,” says Irvine. “There were some tough buggers in our cricket at the time – Tiger Lance and Denis Lindsay were hard-living party-animals, Peter Pollock wasn’t an easy customer – and Peter van der Merwe [the captain before Bacher] had his work cut out during the previous home series against Aussie. Ali took over from Peter and he engendered this mind-boggling spirit. He brought us all together – his captaincy was incredible.”
But Barlow was galvanic. He galvanised the team. Five of his six Test centuries were scored against Australia, one of them a double. Others were brighter, better, more brilliant, but “Bunter” Barlow badgered the team forward by force of personality alone.
In the third Test at the Wanderers South Africa held only a 79-run first innings lead. Enter Barlow, with a slow second-innings 110 reminiscent of his hundred at Newlands.
With scores by Graeme Pollock and Irvine, the Barlow hundred was the bedrock upon which the Springboks built their 408. Chasing 486 to win, the Aussies could only muster 178, South Africa winning the Test by 307 runs to take an unbeatable 3-0 lead in the series.
The South Africans duly won the fourth Test at St George’s by an even bigger margin. It was time to drink and swagger. The Aussies were spent. They were homesick and exhausted. They dropped 14 catches in South Africa, a sign, so Lawry thought, of exhaustion.
And a rift had opened in Lawry’s team. A fifth Test was suggested. Some of his men wanted none of it, the most vociferous of them being Ian Chappell.
The situation was compounded by the South Africans offering to top-up the fifth-Test match fee offered by the Aussie board. The gambit was considered – and rejected – Chappell believing that if the Aussies caved-in on playing a fifth Test they would have no leg to stand on in the future.
As it was, they felt shoddily treated by their board, who didn’t allow them to come home briefly after the tour of India. They went home without a fifth Test being played, disgruntled, tired and relieved.
A strange and beautiful magic has attached itself to the tour. Everything that happened to the last Springboks seems perfect, so perfect that it appears pre-ordained, as if some pure cosmic cricket logic were at work.
Bacher won every toss and batted every time. Although scoring was sometimes slow, the batting hardly faltered, while the bowling blew like a whirlwind through Australian ranks.
Where to begin? Mike Procter’s 26 wickets, Graeme Pollock’s 517 runs at an average of 73.85, Richards’ 508 runs – these were the only four Tests he would play, while Procter played in seven all told – at an average of 72.57?
These are the statistics, what of the import of victory. How was it to be judged? In beating Australia 4-0, might the South Africans lay claim to being the best in the world.
Hadn’t the Australians just beaten India away? Hadn’t they beaten the Windies at home the previous summer? Hadn’t they just retained the Ashes? If they weren’t top dogs, they were pretty close.
Perhaps, though, the glow is nothing more than backward projection: we cast it because we know that isolation was around the corner, and perfection makes isolation and all it means easier to bear.
I don’t agree. The series is luminescent in and of itself. Yet we need to be careful. It might only be luminescent for some? Let’s not forget this was an all-white South African team. Seating at the stadiums was racially segregated and many who sat in racially-defined enclaves at the grounds shouted for the opposition.
Mallett has written about being disgusted by the petty apartheid he encountered on tour. Here was a country at odds with itself. It was easy to see. The cricket was a panacea. And a way to protect oneself from what many rightfully sensed was impending trauma. The Soweto Riots were only six short years away, and that truly was the beginning of the end.
….
The past, they say, is another country. South Africa in 1970 really was another country, a pre-democratic country lost in the mighty bluster of High Apartheid. It was so much another country that it was in another century, which makes the 1970 series against Australia look a little like a museum piece today.
Trevor Goddard, Lindsay and Barlow are all dead. Bacher, Richards, both Pollocks and Procter (to name the big five) are still with us, but they’re getting on and some of them aren’t very well. When they die, the series will seem even further away.
Maybe it will be upgraded to a darker, more obscure room in the museum, where thee cards illustrating the exhibits are more difficult to read? Slowly it will begin to seem as the series that never happened, although the fact that nothing happened after it for 21 years will act as a counter-weight.
In 1991, South Africa played three ODIs in India. Less than six months after that the national side played in her first World Cup in Australasia. It’s been a remarkable 30-plus years but consider this.
In a way, isolation beckons once again. South Africa is a second-rate Test power. We don’t have the financial muscle to be taken seriously and our board has been so beset by trauma, blood-letting and upheaval in recent years that we aren’t taken seriously there either.
This isolation is all the more galling because we’ve isolated ourselves. We’ve failed for years to get a T20 tournament up-and-running and have now finally done so with the SA20 – at the third try. We’ve failed to check the rise of shockers like Thabang Moroe, the once chief executive of Cricket South Africa and, for the most part, we’ve treated our players poorly.
Last week we achieved the rare feat of a two-day Test match at Newlands, because CSA and the Western Province Cricket Association couldn’t between them prepare the pitch for the second Test against India correctly. A couple of days later, ICC match referee, Chris Broad deemed the pitch “unsatisfactory” in his pitch report.
Next month a team with a 37 seven year-old uncapped leg-spinner and a 23 year-old uncapped captain will do duty in New Zealand, while the SA20 hoopla with South Africa’s best players in it barrels towards a conclusion. Why did this happen? It seems it was allowed to happen because the administrators double-booked. And couldn’t read their diaries correctly.
New Zealand, although further away from the world centres of cricket power, and worst off in terms of time zones from the lucrative Indian market, have not isolated themselves. They have remained competitive. In 2019 they lost the World Cup final on a technicality.
Their player stocks are smaller than ours and so is their economy, yet South Africa is isolated almost like before. It’s a strange and sobering state of affairs, now isn’t it?