The South African cricketer Mike Procter, who has died aged 77 following complications from surgery, was one of the game’s greatest all-rounders. He could match 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 one point of difference was that Procter was able to demonstrate his prowess in only seven Test matches for South Africa, while the others clocked up 500 Test appearances between them. Yet no one who played cricket at that time has any doubts that Procter belongs in such company.
In those seven Tests in 1967-70, all against the Australians, who probably regarded themselves as the best team in the world at the time, Procter took 41 wickets, while also hinting at the majesty of his batting; he was on the winning side six times with one game drawn.
Then, as a consequence of apartheid, South Africa was banished from world cricket for more than two decades, 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. In later life he would say: “What is a Test career compared to the great suffering of 40 million people?”
Procter’s frustrations may have been eased by the fact that he was not too bothered with personal stats. A lot of cricketers feel obliged to say that without really meaning it, but in Procter’s case this was the truth. He played the game with a cavalier freedom that was mesmerising, bowling fast, batting aggressively as well as living life to the full once stumps were drawn. The figures could look after themselves.
Yet those figures are still quite astonishing: 21,936 first-class runs at an average of 36.01, and 1,417 wickets at 19.53 apiece; four hat-tricks in first-class cricket and six consecutive first-class hundreds – for Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, a participant in South Africa’s Currie Cup competition – a feat that he shares with CB Fry and Don Bradman. So Procter had to be content to play non-international cricket from 1970 onwards. In southern Africa this was predominantly for Natal and Rhodesia; he also excelled in his brief stints for the Rest of the World in five “Tests” against England in 1970 and in Kerry Packer’s breakaway World Series Cricket in Australia in 1977-78. For 14 seasons from 1968 he played for Gloucestershire, which soon became known as “Proctershire”. At the county 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 Eastern Province against the England/MCC tourists in 1938-39. At Highbury preparatory school and Hilton college, Mike was a prodigious games player. Initially a batsman/wicketkeeper, he was persuaded by his coach, John Saunders, to start bowling. He was the vice-captain of the South African schools side 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 permitted to appear in one first-team match that summer, against the tourists. So the two teenagers from Natal held the Gloucestershire’s innings together in a 116-run partnership – against South Africa.
In 1968 overseas players were allowed to adorn the English game and Gloucestershire promptly signed up Procter, with Richards going to Hampshire. By then Procter had become a Test cricketer, tormenting the Australian batsmen on their 1967 tour; he would be joined by Richards in the South African side in 1970 when the magnitude of Australia’s defeats grew ever larger.
Procter would have warranted a place in the team as a batsman, but at this stage of his career it was his bowling that had his captain keen and his opponents searching for extra protection. Then came the exile. Though Procter was consigned to domestic cricket, he revelled in that challenge with a zest that sometimes eluded Richards, who would eventually struggle to hide his boredom at the prospect of another humdrum county game.
His innate competitiveness plus the buzz of the Bristol dressing room meant that he never seemed short of motivation. His barnstorming play guided Gloucestershire to two one-day trophies, and he ended up captaining the county for five seasons from 1977.
He was an unorthodox paceman, charging up to the crease before appearing to bowl off the wrong foot – though this was never the case. He was open-chested and relied upon a swift arm action for his speed. He was not shy about bowling bouncers and could easily intimidate the more timorous batsmen on the circuit.
Occasionally, to their relief, he would bowl off-breaks, but even then he might prevail. I once experienced that sense of relief at facing his off-breaks for Somerset at Bristol, whereupon he bowled a bouncer off two paces. I proudly hooked the ball towards the square leg boundary before falling on my stumps, to be dismissed hit wicket.
As his career advanced his capacity 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 string of lbws against bemused opponents. Still to be seen on YouTube is a one-day semi-final at Southampton in 1977 when he removed the top four Hampshire batsmen in five balls (with two lbws) while bowling around the wicket.
A young Mark Nicholas was working the scoreboard that day, and he has recalled how the next batsman, Nigel Cowley, was plumb lbw to his first delivery as well, but the umpire Tommy Spencer could not bring himself to raise his finger once more.
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 (though not in the same over). Instinctively he would take the aggressive option, which was not so commonplace in the 1970s as it is today. Few batsmen in that era hit the ball so far or so hard.
Procter stayed involved with cricket after his retirement, though it was always a struggle to match the excitement of playing the game. He was briefly the cricket director at Northamptonshire before he was parachuted in as the coach of the South African national team suddenly returning from the wilderness in 1992.
As a match referee for the International Cricket Council (ICC), he had the misfortune to be in charge of the Oval Test of 2006 when Pakistan declined to take to the field after allegations of ball-tampering. More damaging to his refereeing career was his banning of the Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh, for allegedly racially abusing Andrew Symonds at Sydney in 2008, a decision that was eventually overturned after appeal.
He then became the convener of selectors for South Africa, though this job lasted less than two years, after which he devoted more of his energies to the Mike Procter Foundation, a charity supporting underprivileged and poorer children in Durban.
In 1969 he married Maryna Godwin, a tennis player who the previous year had reached the quarter-finals of the US Open. She survives him, along with their children, Greg, Jessica and Tammy.
• Michael John Procter, cricketer, born 15 September 1946; died 17 February 2024
