The best cricketer not to play a Test?
In an obituary in the Telegraph, Scyld Berry gives a detailed description of the playing days of Clive Rice
ESPNcricinfo staff
28-Jul-2015
Scyld Berry, writing in the Telegraph, pays tribute to Clive Rice in a moving obituary. The former South Africa captain died aged 66 in Cape Town after suffering from a brain tumour. Considered one of the greatest cricketers of his generation, Rice led South Africa in their first three ODIs after isolation and Nottinghamshire to the County Championship.
His career fell exactly into the period when apartheid South Africa was banned from the international scene. It is no exaggeration to say that Rice could have been bracketed with the four great all-rounders of the 1980s - Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan and Kapil Dev - if politics had allowed.
Growing up and playing for Transvaal, he started in the hardest school in South Africa. Rice would take the new ball, bowl rapid outswing with a searing bouncer, and fitted into "the mean machine" as Transvaal's pace attack was called.