Clive Rice

Clive Rice was South Africa's captain when the nation was reinstated in the international arena in 1992.

The political change in South Africa from apartheid to democracy was imminent in 1992. There was a great deal of concern as to what the outcome might be but Nelson Mandela had it firmly in control, and it was a peaceful change. There was talk of South Africa heading back into international sport but we weren't optimistic about it happening quickly.

I was busy playing a league game and was fielding when Lee Irvine – the ex springbok batsman/wicketkeeper, one of the current national selectors at the time, arrived at the ground and I was summoned to the side of the field to have a meeting with him. He said that Ali Bacher had just phoned in from India and told the selectors that they had to pick a team immediately and we were departing in 1 weeks time to play three one day internationals against India. He wanted to know what team I wanted to go on tour as I was going to be the captain, to lead South Africa back into International Cricket. I could not believe that this was actually happening to me as I had been selected back in 1972 to go to Australia and that tour had been cancelled. Finally I was going to fulfill a dream.

The team was selected and we began preparations. A 707 was chartered for the team and supporters. We finally left South Africa with an enormous amount of excitement.

When we arrived in Calcutta we were greeted by crowds of cricket supporters, it was unbelievable. The streets were lined with thousands of people all the way to the hotel. It looked as though the whole of Calcutta had come out to welcome us. A journey that should have taken 15 minutes took about 2.5 hours. We were escorted by hundreds of motorbike and scooter riders who were all part of the fans and in fact the welcome was truly amazing.

We got down to preparations quickly as we needed to find out what the local conditions were like. Most of the South African team had never played abroad and we needed to settle in as quickly as possible. We had a look at the pitch that we were going to play on, it was absolutely bone dry (the surface was even flaking it was so dry), we were not even allowed to walk on it. There was not a blade of grass, it did not seem as though it would suit South Africa as we were not used to playing on pitches like that. The nets on the other hand had plenty of grass and were certainly not simulating the conditions that we were going to experience in the first day test. The grounds man said he would not be able to cut the grass off or prepare the nets similar to the pitch.

The day of the 1st ODI was a hugely memorable occasion. More that 100,000 people turned up to witness the spectacle. The media had come in from every cricket playing country in the world. The press conference consisted of not only sports journalists but political journalists as well. The media conference included about 300 journalists which was unprecedented in cricket. It was extremely difficult to concentrate on the game as the South African management was so elated that we were now back in International Cricket. Every distraction lead to their eyes being off the ball. In hindsight this was understandable and was a learning curve for us all. It only sorted itself out when we played the last game in Delhi.

Captaining the side on the field was all through hand communication as the noise of the crowd and the explosions of crackers was absolutely deafening. Out of that first game a young Sachin Tendulkar was certainly making a name for himself. He batted magnificently to lead India to victory. The South African side, Alan Donald, who had first played in 1985 against the Australian Rebels in South Africa, stamped his presence in International Cricket, picking up 5 wickets and being South Africa's most effective bowler, on a pitch that was much more suited to spin bowling. Kapal Dev asked me why I had not complained about the state of the pitch. I made it quite clear to him that despite it being unsatisfactory, and we all knew that was the case, South Africans would not come back into International Cricket and start whining. We would take it on the chin and put it down to experience.

After the huge reception that we had at the test match, we went to visit Mother Theresa, which was another enormous experience to see the unbelievable good that she was doing for humanity. One of the journalists who was with us on the tour said to me that he would never ever complain about the poor in South Africa and the lot that they had as he had now seen people that did not know where their next grain of rice was coming from, and in fact our poor were rich compared to what we witnessed in India.

I have a framed picture with Mother Theresa and myself meeting on that wonderful day. The night that she died, that picture fell off the wall and I could not understand why it had fallen off the wall until the next day when I heard of her sad passing away.

We moved on to Gwalior for the next ODI, visiting the Taj Mahal en route – another magnificent experience. At Gwalior our cricket kit had been lost en route from the airport to the practice ground, so we were not able to practice. The hospitality continued in full force as we were invited to the summer palace for dinner and this meant that we had woken up in the morning at 4am to fly out of Calcutta and were now only going to be back from the summer palace at 1am, as the bus ride took 1 ½ hours. This once again was poor preparation for a 1 day international – but all a learning curve. We picked a team of that consisted of players who had not played in the 1st ODI so that everyone would get an International cap on tour.

There was lots of drama before the game started as there were accusations of ball tampering in the 1st ODI which lead to in-fighting between Dr Ali Bacher and Geoff Dakin who was the President of SA Cricket. India went on to win this game as South Africa got bowled out. This was a much better game in terms of the focus now starting to move more towards cricket and less towards the emotion of being back in International Cricket.

We moved on to Delhi to play the final ODI. Here we picked the best team and it ended up a fantastic game of cricket with SA chasing 287 – a formidable target which India had set us. We chased this total down and recorded our first win and in fact it was the highest score recorded by at team batting second in ODI cricket at that stage. Ravi Sashtri batted magnificently for 100 and when he got his 100 I congratulated him and asked him what was going on in the crowd because they were obviously unhappy. I then started to understand Indian politics in cricket. Because Ravi was from Mumbai and the Dehli crowd wanted one of their players in the side and not Ravi, they were booing him. I could not believe that the magnificent 100 that he scored was not appreciated by the locals. Adrian Kuiper, Peter Kirsten and Kepler Wessels played magnificently for SA to achieve this win.

This gave South Africa immense confidence that we could compete at International level and do justice against any team and set up the up and coming World Cup tour to Australia the following year.