Barry and Graeme, Lhuan-dre and Dewald

There is generally a champion player in each sports team. We know who they are. There are plenty of examples like Lionel Messi, LeBron James and Jonah Lomu. In cricket they are the ‘prized wicket’ (or whatever the cliché de jour is) or the leader of the bowling attack. It is quite rare for a team to have two champion players simultaneously, real greats of the game who don’t have an obvious hierarchy. This rare occurrence does seem to have an almost inevitable dynamic where the rivalry between the two players on the same team is more intense than the rivalry between them and their opponents in the match. This can often be beneficial to the team they are playing for and always beneficial to those of us who just sit and watch. One case was Barry Richards (first-class career average 54.70) and Graeme Pollock (first-class career average 54.67); great players and, as their career averages suggest, barely separable. They combined together for one glorious hour in Durban on 5 February 1970 when they flayed the Australian bowlers for 103 runs in the hour after lunch, each apparently trying to outdo the other in stroke-play. Ian Chappell famously turned to his fellow custodians of the slip cordon during the partnership and said “whatever Barry makes, Graeme will double it” or words to that effect. Richards made 140 and Pollock 274. Remarkably, this was the only partnership of note that they had, even though they played 40 matches (26 first-class and 14 one-day) together.

Thoughts of that partnership came flooding back when watching the debutants Lhuan-dre Pretorius and Dewald Brevis batting together against Zimbabwe on Saturday. While it is true that they are both too early in their careers to have established ‘champion’ status and also true that ‘v Zim in Bulawayo’ does not resonate quite like ‘v Aus in Durban’, there was some resemblance to Richards and Pollock all those years ago. They are both clearly contenders to be ‘Champion Player’ for South Africa in the not too distant future. You would be hard-pressed to make a case that they weren’t competing against each other, especially when you consider that Pretorius reached his fifty off 52 balls, which was the third fastest fifty on debut for South Africa for about half an hour before Brevis reached his in 38 balls, the fastest for South Africa, dropping his team-mate to fourth on that list. The left-hander went on to triple his partner’s score, and did so with mathematical precision (153 to 51) that eluded Pollock’s ‘doubling’ of Richards.

Here are details of the respective partnerships: