First published on www.news24.com
Legendary former Natal fast bowler Vince van der Bijl had a remarkable cricket career and is now dedicating his efforts at helping underprivileged kids play sport. John Bishop reports.
He was a giant of a fast bowler, widely considered the finest never to have played Test cricket, “a prodigious talent” in the words of former England and his Middlesex captain Mike Brearley.
Today Vince van der Bijl looks, for all the world, like a former pace bowler who has spent his career trundling up the hill, bending his back into the strong south-easter.
He was, in his pomp, burly and standing 2.03 metres, a formidable threat both physically and with ball in hand; today, following a long, torrid bout with cancer and a genetic spinal disorder, the 76-year-old Van der Bijl is hunched and has limited mobility.
What remains untouched and undiminished, perhaps even bolstered by the physical ravages of illness, is Van der Bijl’s passion and drive, his abiding optimism and generosity of spirit.
Burning as brightly as ever is an almost obsessive desire to make a difference in divided, troubled South Africa, and hundreds of young children, bogged down in the quagmire of township life near Cape Town, are today’s smiling, happy beneficiaries.
Van der Bijl has a remarkable story to tell.
Educated at Bishops in Cape Town, he was a towering schoolboy sportsman who was considered more of a shotputter, a goal-kicking lock forward and a batsman than a potential fast bowler.
“My move to ‘varsity in Pietermaritzburg in 1967 changed my life,” he now says. “It was a turning point.”His eyes were opened to a new world in Natal, away from the vast shadow cast by his highly respected and decorated father.
Pieter van der Bijl, a Rhodes Scholar, was the headmaster at Bishops Prep, a war hero and a Springbok cricketer who came within three runs of being the first South African to score a century in each innings (125 and 97) in the Timeless Test against England in the summer of 1938-39. “I was always introduced as ‘Pieter’s son’ but suddenly I had to make my own way in a different world. It was a critical period.”
His new life also brought him into contact with veteran Springbok cricketer Trevor Goddard, who was the sports director at Natal University and played league cricket for the club side. Goddard, in the nets and playing for Varsity and Natal, was at Van der Bijl’s shoulder – “he did more than anyone to shape my bowling action and my approach to cricket.”
Goddard taught Van der Bijl the value of line and length, transforming him into a potent fast-medium bowler.
After making his Natal debut a year later, he was named SA Cricketer of the Year in 1971 ahead of his inclusion in the ghost Springbok team to tour Australia that summer. It had not all been beer and skittles for the naïve student.
He innocently used lip ice on the ball for the first time in his 1968 debut match for Natal against Eastern Province, unaware that it was illegal, and then cheerfully explained to umpire Carl Coetzee that “it makes the ball swing”. His surprise was complete when he was reported and disciplined by the SA Cricket Association after the game.
But Van der Bijl was up and bowling and bowling and bowling.
Over the next 14 years, he soldiered on for Natal, playing in 101 Currie Cup matches, punctuated by one-dayers, and carrying an enormous workload.
His huge frame, remarkably, held up under the demands and he did not miss a single Natal game because of injury. He was of the amateur age and his long, eminently successful career spanned South Africa’s sporting isolation. His summer with Brearley’s Middlesex in 1980 was the only time he was paid for playing cricket, and he retired after a single season with Transvaal in 1983.
His bowling records are scarcely believable.
He set a new South African record of 75 wickets (average 14.92) in the summer of 1981-82; he was the highest wicket-taker (587) for Natal or any province; he averaged over five wickets a match for Natal (532 Currie Cup wickets in 101 matches); he captained Natal from 1976-80, winning the Currie Cup and Gillette Cup double, and he was Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1980 when he topped the county bowling averages with 85 wickets at 1.72 apiece, helping Middlesex to the county and Gillette Cup titles.
Brearley compared him to West Indian great Joel Garner – “but Vince moved the ball more and had greater range.” His final first-class tally was 767 wickets in 156 matches (average 16.54). Almost as remarkable was that the KZN Cricket Union, in their infinite wisdom, did not invite their champion record-holder to their main centenary celebration last year.
He shrugs it off. Van der Bijl has his eyes firmly on the future, not on past disappointments. He does, however, remember his red-letter day, January 15, 1972.
Walking around the boundary at the ‘Maritzburg Oval, flopping about in his size 15 tennis takkies, a buoyant Van der Bijl met Bev Marshall and invited her to a house party that evening.
He had moments before completed his best first-class haul of eight for 35 against Western Province (match analysis of 13-53).
Clearly it was not compulsive viewing for everyone and, when Bev met Vince at the party, she thought his name was Vintcent van Wyk, and had no idea he played cricket.
Less than a year later they were married and, for 51 years, Bev has been keeping her cricket player grounded.
Van der Bijl is, at heart, a teacher and he was at Maritzburg College for five years. A period in the paper business and three years as the high performance director for Cricket South Africa followed, before he became the Dubai-based International Cricket Council director of umpires and match referees in 2008. Van der Bijl retired from the ICC in April 2015 and later that year “double cancer stopped me in my tracks”.
“After being laid low for a year, and it was touch and go, I emerged healthy but no longer with any purpose.”
Van der Bijl, of course, should have been grabbed by Cricket South Africa and bottled.
His experiences as a genuinely great cricketer, his lengthy service for the ICC, his involvement with the MCC, his integrity and his balanced, sensible approach to the challenges in South Africa, would have been invaluable at a time when the CSA was confused and corrupt.
He was never asked: “I could not, to be frank, have worked alongside two people on the board who I knew had their own agendas…”
Van der Bijl was steered in the direction of Ukhanyo Primary in Masiphumelele near Kommetjie.
Crowded into half a square km of township are 50 000 shack dwellers, most unemployed while 25% are HIV positive. There are 3 500 kids in the two schools (1 910 at primary level) and 30% do not have an adult in their home. Van der Bijl was immediately inspired by the school and the children, and he founded MasiSports, an NPO, in August 2017: “Our purpose is to enable a holistic education of academics, sport and life skills.”
Critically, he had the contacts. MCC donations set the ball rolling and today there is a long list of South African and international donors with Judith Neilson, an Australian philanthropist, the patron. The school, in 2016, had one netball court and one coach; today they have 19 teams, and 12 coaches, in seven sports, all in branded kit and playing in official schools’ leagues.
In April, a consignment of 23 000 second-hand running shoes arrived in the Western Cape from Ireland, part of Ciaran McHugh’s “In My Shoes” charity.
“What a bonus it is to have every child with sports shoes. Masiphumelele High School now have astro-turf fields, cricket nets and netball courts with the same sports and cultural activities as Ukhanyo Primary. This is a major step in ensuring positive generational change.
“We talk of the white bubble in this country but the poor township bubble is incredibly restrictive and inhibiting,” says Van der Bijl.
“The kids seldom got out of the township. About 15% of them had never walked on the beach with the sea a couple of kilometres away and 50% hadn’t been to Cape Town. Now they get out and mix with other teams and parents.
“The Springboks have won four Rugby World Cups yet 95% of our schools do not offer sport. Imagine the untapped potential.”
Today the Van der Bijls live high above Fish Hoek with a spectacular view from their front ‘stoep’ across False Bay. But Vince’s focus is in the opposite direction, firmly fixed on his vibrant schools, an oasis in crowded, squalid surrounds, less than 4km away.
Van der Bijl’s commitment is to build hope in a barren, bleak shanty town; his dream is to see the model spreading to other townships. His line and length remain unwavering.
