To his ultras he was Proc or Proccie or Michael John. Gloucestershire became, with pride, Proctershire. Nobody ever called it WGshire.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
MIKE Procter wore his greatness lightly, as if he understood that the gift bestowed on him — to play cricket better than almost everybody else on earth — didn’t make him special. Perhaps he knew his talent was a happy accident. Maybe he didn’t think about it much. Either way he had none of the ego that infects others who aspire to his stature, and even some who fly as high as he did.
Once he had met you, he counted you among the people he knew. He would chat readily and casually when you saw each other again. He smiled effortlessly and laughed easily and loudly. He spoke straightforward South African English. He was as comfortable having a quick word on the stairs as he was commanding the centre of a stage. When the phone rang he picked up, and he had no problem being quoted. He did these things without a hint of superiority or smugness, or as if he was doing you a favour.
That you had not played at the level he did, nevermind anywhere near as successfully, didn’t matter. He was a star who did not, or chose not to, see his aura. Maybe, if you’re Mike Procter, everyone else is so far below your level they might as well play dominos, not cricket. So all the Test and first-class players, clubbies, social cricketers, umpires, scorers, groundstaff, caterers, commentators, coaches, managers, administrators, bus drivers, autograph hunters, presidents, potentates, parasites and press you encounter melt into a mass of mediocrity. But you treat them with the respect many among your peers would struggle to show those they consider beneath them.
The recipients did not reciprocate. Procter was revered to his face and behind his back, and to the extent that some of his devotees daren’t mention his name. To his ultras he was Proc or Proccie or Michael John. Gloucestershire became, with pride, Proctershire. Nobody ever called it WGshire. Doubtless Procter wouldn’t do more than smile with quiet warmth if he knew the county club’s flag will fly at half-mast until the start of the championship on April 5.
Perhaps all that discomforted Procter was the force of nature he barely controlled in his lusty frame when he bowled. His run-up, which started near the sightscreen, was a flight of fury by the time he reached the crease. He was about effect, not aesthetics: the substance of swinging the ball around corners at pace was more important than the style employed.
There was a brutishness about the way his right arm whipped towards the batter so quickly — and with no guidance from a broken rudder of a left arm — that everything else was forced into action with indecent haste. Consequently his delivery stride was short enough for it to be claimed he bowled off the wrong foot. He didn’t, but to keep him upright his right foot had to land a nanosecond after his left. The violence triggered shock wave after shock wave through his blond mane. His follow-through called to mind a speeding truck skidding off a highway.
The whole wasn’t so much a bowling action as a reaction to the human body being subjected to an outrageous amount of compressed energy. With every ball he looked like he had been struck by lightning.
Even in an era of unflattering playing attire, Procter came apart at the seams. His shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, the points of its collar flapping and snapping like pennants in a hurricane. His sleeves were shoved more than rolled to the elbows.
His batting — which was his strong suit when he arrived — was more orthodox, though no less arresting. Blessed with a cracking cover drive, he could also cut like a knife fighter and smite bouncers through and over square leg and midwicket as if they had insulted his mother. He was a genuine allrounder in the sense that captains clamoured for him as a batter as much as a bowler. He was also a captain fine enough to be admired in the role by that captain of captains, Mike Brearley.
Whatever Procter was doing, you wanted to watch it; including the ridiculous catches he took in the cordon. Like he did at Headingley in August 1970 as part of a Rest of the World XI playing against England. Happily the moment has been preserved in the amber of YouTube.
Procter’s hands are on his hips well after Eddie Barlow has started bustling towards Alan Knott. The delivery swings sharply towards Knott’s pads, straightens after pitching, takes the outside edge, and screams low and fast towards the slips. Procter, at second slip, would have seen precious little of the ball’s flight before and after it pitched. He dives to his right, his arm parallel to the ground and maybe a centimetre above it, and takes a clean catch before any of his teammates move a muscle — save for Garfield Sobers at third slip, whose feet remain rooted as he takes a glance over his left shoulder like a man just managing a glimpse of a Ferrari disappearing down a street.
Procter, his cap having tumbled off his head, holds up the catch in triumph where he lays, and again as he stands and accepts congratulations. He is, as always, modest. His smile is wide, his hair, for once, sleek. Forty-four days away from his 24th birthday, he is the picture of bulletproof youth. But already the knee problems that would plague him, but not derail him, are apparent — once Procter is back on his feet he flexes his right leg twice.
This was Procter’s 103rd first-class match. He would play 401 in all along with 271 list A games, and bowl 77,769 deliveries across both formats. That’s a lot of lightning strikes. Jacques Kallis, a grown-up or less exciting version of Procter, was 55 days into his 24th year when he played his 103rd first-class match. He would appear in 257 at that level and play 600 senior white-ball games. Kallis bowled 45,453 deliveries, or just 58.45% of Procter’s total.
When the pain in his knee became too great Procter bowled off-spin. And bowled it well. In Bulawayo in October 1972, he took one wicket with seam and eight with spin. His 9/71 in that innings remain his career-best figures. Procter was the captain of Rhodesia, who played in South Africa’s Currie Cup. Their opponents were Ali Bacher’s strong Transvaal side, who would win the title that season. The Bulawayo match was their sole loss.
Bacher, the only player dismissed not to fall to Procter, told Cricbuzz: “I was taking off my pads and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Procter was bowling off-spin!” As the wickets tumbled and defeat loomed, Johnny Waite, Transvaal’s manager and batting coach, summoned his team’s No. 11, David Lewis, for a coaching session. “Johnny told him he knew how to face off-spin, and how he had dealt with Jim Laker on a turning Oval pitch,” Bacher said. “He told him where his feet needed to be, how to push forward, how to angle the bat. This went on for a good half-hour before the ninth wicket fell.”
Lewis, a Cardiff-born leg spinner with a career first-class batting average of 9.38, took guard with Waite’s advice swirling in his head and fielders swarming the bat. Then he looked up and saw, near the sightscreen, Procter at the top of his long run. He had reverted to bowling fast. “Oh! My dear!” Lewis is reputed to have said.
Procter was not without complexity. The Bulawayo match was played eight years into the 15 years of brutal race war that would lead to the establishment of Zimbabwe. What was he doing there then, and in the 58 other first-class and list A games he played for a team representing an oppressive, illegitimate regime? As recently as September 2016 he defended the rebel tours that undermined efforts to end apartheid. He spent too much money betting on horses and, like many of us, drank too much for his own good.
But, unlike most of his cohort, whose careers were stunted when South Africa were banned because of apartheid, Procter could see beyond the boundaries of selfishness. “What is a Test career compared to the suffering of 40-million people,” he told ESPNCricinfo in May 2012. “Lots of people lost a great deal more in those years, and if by missing out on a Test career we played a part in changing an unjust system then that is fine by me.”
Procter credited playing in England with opening his eyes to racial injustice. Had that 1970 match at Headingley been in the South Africa of the time, he and Sobers would have been barred by law from being on the same field together; much less from sharing a dressingroom or a beer after play.
Maybe because of his lack of airs and graces, maybe because he needed the money, maybe both, Procter served the game long after he played his last match. He was a coach, an administrator, a commentator, a selector, and a match referee, all at a high level.
Mortals, other fine players among them, would consider that an impressive lifetime in cricket. But what if they had scored centuries in six consecutive first-class innings? What if they had taken hattricks in two consecutive matches? What if they were the only player in history to take a hattrick and score a century in the same first-class match twice?
Other players might think that would make them special. Michael John Procter, who achieved those feats and much more, did not. His great heart gave out on Saturday, but the memory of him will beat viscerally and vicariously in other hearts. It is there, not in the mind, that Procter will be held tight. It is there that he will be felt. It is there that his lightning will strike forever.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 