Members of Nottingham Cricket Lovers Society (NCLS) were served up an extra large helping of Rice at their November meeting – courtesy of biographer Tim Crow.
Tim Crow is currently working on the life story of Nottingham and South Africa legend Clive Rice and, having done lots of research in the Library and Archives at Trent Bridge, took time to tell his audience just some of the stories about ‘Ricey’.
He stressed the importance to Rice of the inter-play between his life in his Transvaal home and his adopted home in Nottingham.
“In Nottingham, Rice was a shrewd and successful captain and a cricketer for the big occasions”, he said, “but in South Africa he was a true superstar – a warrior on and off the cricket pitch.”
Although he had little connection with Nottingham before joining the playing staff at Trent Bridge, Clive’s family had strong English roots. On both his parents’ family trees were grandparents and great-grandparents that had left the UK in the late 19th/early 20th centuries to make new lives in South Africa.
One of the most interesting photographs in Crow’s presentation was not of Clive Rice but of his mother – carrying a ‘Release Nelson Mandela’ placard at a protest against the ANC leader’s imprisonment.
“Clive was always anti-apartheid”, Tim Crow said, “even though he later played in rebel tours. He believed that as a professional sportsman he was entitled to earn his living from the game wherever he was; but his opposition to South Africa’s racial laws never wavered.”
The international isolation of his homeland led Clive Rice to pursue a cricket career in England, initially as a professional in the Lancashire League. His performances there soon brought him to the attention of the county clubs, “He was approached by more than few other counties”, Tim Crow revealed, “but I think the challenge of taking over the all-rounder spot at Notts from the great Gary Sobers was what clinched his arrival in Nottingham”.
But an arrival was almost also the end – Rice also had a contract with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and that led to the Notts Committee – ‘hardline opponents of Packer’, according to Tim Crow – putting Rice’s contract on hold. Eventually, the legalities were settled and Clive Rice became an integral part of the renaissance of Nottinghamshire cricket.
Appointed captain in 1978, he led Notts to their first County Championship for more than fifty years when they clinched the title in 1981.
Rice was to excel even that a few years later when in 1987 Notts did ‘The Double’ of winning the Championship and the NatWest one-day trophy.
His partnership with another stellar all-rounder Richard Hadlee was a significant part of those successes but, despite mutterings from outside the county, Rice always insisted that Trent Bridge was not just a seamer’s dream. He cited the contribution of spinner Eddie Hemmings and pointed out, not unreasonably, that the opposition quicks were bowling on the same wicket, if to less effect than Rice and Hadlee.
Tim Crow used a combination of statistics, newspaper and television reports and tributes from the many contemporaries of Clive Rice that he had spoken with to build a picture of a player whose all-round talents were remarkable, even in an era when world-class all-rounders were seemingly everywhere.
He told the story of a single-wicket competition run to find the world’s best all-rounder. Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee were invited initially but Hadlee suggested that the organisers add Rice to the list.
“And, of course”, said Tim Crow, “he won the whole event – and went on to win three of the four that were staged.
“Rice later did something similar with a ‘Superstars’ contest staged in Nottingham – he had a phenomenal will to win”.
Rice was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1981 and was South African Cricketer of the Year four times; he was also judged the best all-rounder in English First-Class cricket in 1977, 1979 and 1981 – the latter, of course, the year of Botham's all round exploits in The Ashes, which shows how dominant Rice must have been.
In South African domestic cricket he captained Transvaal to the Currie Cup title - in fact Transvaal won the Currie Cup ten times in 20 years whilst Rice represented the side. He played for South Africa in a number of Unofficial Tests, latterly as captain, and captained South Africa in their first ODI.
One photo that illustrated both Rice’s playful side – not often seen on the cricket pitch – and his media star role in South Africa was a double page spread from a popular magazine that showed a naked Clive stretched out with only his trusty cricket bat to cover the essentials. As Tim Crow pointed out, “this is probably the most famous image of Ricey in his home country, which says something about the level of fame he enjoyed”.
Crow finished his talk with a TV clip highlighting the skills of Rice and Hadlee and left the meeting promising to return to Trent Bridge when his book is published, probably sometime in 2025.
Membership of NCLS is £15pa or entry on the night for £5 per session. Full details of the 2024/25 programme from nottscricketlovers@outlook.com.
November 2024