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[Blwe_torch]

`PROCKY' the finest import of all

Wisden CricInfo staff

January 1, 1981

THE presence of overseas players is frequently offered as a prime cause for the ills of English cricket. It seems often to be forgotten that overseas players were introduced into the sport in numbers in the late-1960s to attempt to revive a county game close to, in danger of, death.

Now that the breed is to become scarcer, the object being that every county will soon have 10 players eligible to play for England, the thinking might well be revised again. There can be little argument that the development of a number of English players has been stifled because overseas players have been in possession of key batting and bowling positions but the answer to one problem invariably spawns other problems and cricket cannot have it all ways. English cricket might arguably be healthier without the Richardses and the Robertses...but it will be a duller place without them.


Mike Procter, who, since 1968, has scored over 14,000 runs and taken over 800 wickets for Gloucestershire

Yorkshire have rightly earned respect for adhering to their stern principles of qualification. If you were born at the wrong end of Todmorden then you must find a county other than Yorkshire to play for. But that county, large, powerful and influential and with no overseas players to retard its development, has had little success in the era of the overseas player. What might they not have done if Mike Procter had been one of their number?

Here surely was the finest import of them all, a player whose loyalty, honestly, determination to give always of his best, and an enviable all-round talent, enriched Gloucestershire cricket in three decades. Now that suspect right knee, the subject of major surgery in 1975, has caused him to hobble out of English cricket and into the demanding but less concentrated Currie Cup cricket with Natal.

Procter could well become the object of as much nostalgia as an old Humphrey Bogart movie. Now that he has gone, you wish, when you had the opportunity, that you had taken the trouble to watch him more often; and to have studied him more closely. He was of the county of Grace, Jessop and Hammond and there is no sense of irreverence in mentioning his name in the same sentence.

One of the fascinating things about Procter was the startling contrasts that he brought to his cricket. The unorthodox in cricket is appealing, and Procter"s bowling, in those days when he used to come hurtling to the wicket from 35 yards, was all the more compelling because of its singularity. The short, urgent strides... the appearance of bowling off the wrong foot... chest as square-on as if he were breasting a tape... that whirring right arm, catapulting over like some friendish medieval weapon of destruction.

There are teats and figures to show that his batting was a similar mixture of energy and force. At Taunton only last year he struck six successive sixes off two overs by Dennis Breakwell, reaching 93 in 46 minutes, 84 of those runs having come in boundaries - a useful way of sparing creaking joints.

Much earlier, in 1970, for Western Province against the Australians, he hit the last five balls of an over by Ashley Mallett for six and advanced from 100 to 155 in 12 minutes.

Yet Procter the batsman was textbook orthodoxy compared with Procter the bowler... calm, unhurried, selective. Possibly Breakwell, Mallett and other bowlers might disagree, but Procter"s batting assaults never possessed the raw violence of an attack by a Jessop or a Botham. Procter"s assassinations were carried out with just the hint of compassion for his victims.

An innings which demonstrated his certainty and selectivity of stroke was a masterful unbeaten 134 at Cheltenham last year, when Middlesex went into the final day winning the match by a distance and ended it beaten and chastened by the brilliance and assurance of Procter"s strokeplay. Time was not on Procter"s side that day but there was never the hint of desperation, never the suggestion of the slog.


'That whirring right arm, catapulting over like some fiendish medieval weapon of dustruction..." Was his bowling even more impressive than his batting?

Twice since he joined Gloucestershire Procter has taken 100 wickets in a season, the last time after his knee operations of 1975. But although on occasions since 1975 he has produced many a really quick spell of bowling he no longer is in possession of that awesome sustained pace that was to startle so many unsuspecting batsmen back in 1968 when he first arrived here.

Alan Hill, the Derbyshire batsman, tells a story of his former captain, Brian Bolus, for whom crisis was a faithful traveller. Before Hill and his opening partner were due to go out to face Procter at the start of a match Bolus tried to give them some words of encouragement: 'Now lads, I don"t want you to think that Procter is fast," he intoned. But even before he had finished the sentence a note of panic had entered his voice and almost hysterically he blurted out next. 'He is fast ... but I don"t want you to think he is."

The Australians discovered just how fast when he and Peter Pollock repeatedly shot away the top of their batting in that crushing 4-0 win over them in South Africa in 1970. Those four Tests were the last of Procter"s seven appearances for South Africa, a brief enough international career which yet yielded 41 wickets, a rate of striking to impress Ian Botham or Andy Roberts.

It is a source of deep personal regret, as it must be to so many talented South African cricketers, that he has been denied the Test stage for so long. But he is philosophic about it now and grateful for the few Tests that he did play. That sense of gratitude deepens when he thinks of a brilliant player such as Clive Rice who never has played, and quite possibly never will play, in a Test match.

Paul Fitzpatrick writes on cricket for The Guardian

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