South African cricketer Mike Procter, who has died aged 77 due to complications during surgery, was one of the game’s greatest all-rounders. He rivaled the leading players of his era – from Garry Sobers at the start of his career to Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev towards the end.
The only point of difference was that Procter was able to demonstrate his prowess in just seven Test matches for South Africa, while the others combined for 500 Test appearances. Yet no one who played cricket at the time doubts that Procter belongs in such company.
In those seven Tests in 1967-70, all against the Australians, who probably considered themselves the best team in the world at the time, Procter took 41 wickets, while also alluding to the majesty of his batting; he was on the winning side six times with one draw.
Subsequently, as a result of apartheid, South Africa was banned from world cricket for more than twenty years, the first of which coincided with Procter’s peak as a cricketer. Initially he was frustrated and angry that he could no longer play at the highest level, but he came to see the bigger picture. Later in life he would say: “What is a Test career compared to the great suffering of 40 million people?”
Procter’s frustrations may have been assuaged by the fact that he was not as concerned with personal statistics. Many cricketers feel obliged to say that without really meaning it, but in Procter’s case it was the truth. He played the game with an arrogant freedom that was mesmerizing, bowling fast, batting aggressively and living to the fullest after the stumps were drawn. The figures could take care of themselves.
Yet these figures are still quite astonishing: 21,936 first-class runs at an average of 36.01, and 1,417 wickets at 19.53 each; four hat-tricks in first-class cricket and six consecutive first-class hundreds – for Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, a participant in the Currie Cup competition in South Africa – a feat he shares with CB Fry and Don Bradman. So Procter had to be content with playing non-international cricket from 1970 onwards. In southern Africa this was mainly for Natal and Rhodesia; he also excelled in his brief spells for the Rest of the World in five “Tests” against England in 1970 and in Kerry Packer’s escape from World Series Cricket in Australia in 1977-78. From 1968 he played fourteen seasons for Gloucestershire, which soon became known as “Proctershire”. On the district ground in Bristol he was regarded with the same awe as WG Grace, Gilbert Jessop and Wally Hammond.
Born in Durban, Mike was the son of Lorraine and Woodrow Procter, who had played for the Eastern Province against the English/MCC tourists in 1938–39. At Highbury Preparatory School and Hilton College, Mike was a great games player. Initially a batsman/wicketkeeper, he was persuaded to take up bowling by his coach, John Saunders. He was the vice-captain of the South African School that toured England in 1963; Barry Richards was the captain.
Two years later the pair played a season for Gloucestershire’s second XI, with Procter topping the batting averages, Richards the bowling averages, and they were allowed to appear in one first-team match against the tourists that summer. So the two teenagers from Natal held Gloucestershire’s innings together in a 116-run partnership – against South Africa.
In 1968, foreign players were allowed to grace the English game and Gloucestershire promptly signed Procter, while Richards went to Hampshire. By then Procter had become a Test cricketer and tormented the Australian batsmen on their 1967 tour; Richards would join him in the South African side in 1970 as the scale of Australia’s defeats mounted.
Procter would have earned a place in the team as a batsman, but at this stage of his career it was his bowling that had his captain excited and his opponents looking for extra protection. Then came the exile. Although Procter dabbled in domestic cricket, he relished that challenge with an enthusiasm that sometimes eluded Richards, who would eventually struggle to conceal his boredom at the prospect of yet another mundane county game.
His innate competitiveness and the buzz of the Bristol dressing room meant he never seemed to lack motivation. His storming play led Gloucestershire to two one-day trophies, and he eventually captained the county for five seasons from 1977.
He was an unorthodox pacer, charging right up to the crease before appearing to jump off on the wrong foot – although this was never the case. He was open-chested and relied on a quick arm action for his speed. He was not shy when it came to bowling bouncers and could easily intimidate the more timid batsmen on the track.
Occasionally, to their relief, he threw off-breaks, but even then he was able to gain the upper hand. I once felt that sense of relief when I faced his off-breaks for Somerset at Bristol, where he threw a bouncer two paces away. I proudly hooked the ball towards the square leg boundary before falling on my stumps, only to be dismissed as a hit wicket.
As his career progressed, his ability to swing the ball late into right-handers was often as devastating as his pace. Those four hat-tricks in first-class cricket usually involved a series of lbws against stunned opponents. Still visible on YouTube is a one-day semi-final at Southampton in 1977, when he removed the top four Hampshire batsmen in five balls (by two lbws) while bowling around the wicket.
A young Mark Nicholas was working the scoreboard that day and he remembers how the next batsman, Nigel Cowley, was also plumb on his first delivery, but umpire Tommy Spencer couldn’t bring himself to raise his finger again.
In contrast to his bowling, Procter’s batting was based on classical orthodoxy, but there were few inhibitions. He once hit Somerset’s Dennis Breakwell for six consecutive sixes (although not in the same over). Instinctively he would choose the aggressive option, which was not as common in the 1970s as it is today. Few batsmen at that time hit the ball as far or as hard.
Procter continued to be involved in cricket after his retirement, although it was always a struggle to match the excitement of playing the game. He was briefly director of cricket at Northamptonshire before being parachuted in as coach of the South African national team which suddenly returned from the wilderness in 1992.
As a match referee for the International Cricket Council (ICC), he had the misfortune of being in charge of the 2006 Oval Test, when Pakistan refused to take the field following allegations of ball tampering. More damaging to his umpiring career was his ban on Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh for alleged racist abuse of Andrew Symonds in Sydney in 2008, a decision that was eventually overturned on appeal.
He subsequently became the chairman of the selectors for South Africa, although this job lasted less than two years, after which he devoted more of his energy to the Mike Procter Foundation, a charity supporting disadvantaged and poorer children in Durban.
In 1969, he married Maryna Godwin, a tennis player who had reached the quarterfinals of the US Open the year before. She survives him, along with their children, Greg, Jessica and Tammy.
• Michael John Procter, cricketer, born September 15, 1946; died February 17, 2024