Empire Cricket Booklet

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JONTY WINCH AND RICHARD PARRY

Llewellyn was dropped for the next Test at Cape Town and there might well have been an ulterior motive on the part of William Milton and his selection committee. Their treatment of Hendricks demonstrated a very strong racist line on who was qualified to represent South Africa. 31 A rumour that Llewellyn was not entirely white could have been enough for Milton simply to block his selection, a decision he could have partly, if not convincingly, justified to some extent on cricketing grounds. Llewellyn had made the second-highest score in the South African first innings at Johannesburg but had little luck with his bowling, returning fi gu res of O for 71 in fourteen overs. The selection decision could also have been simply parochialism. The Cape selectors went for their men and named Alf Richards - in his only Test - as captain instead of Halliwell. The Test was lost by an innings, as had been the case at Johannesburg. It was a series dominated by the bowling of George Lohmann. The next few years would reinforce the view that Llewellyn was a tremendous prospect. At the Currie Cup in Johannesburg in March 1897, he captured 30 wickets at an average of 12.13. The following year at Cape Town, he was not quite as successful in collecting another sixteen wickets but impressed the Transvalers again when he scored 63 and 12 and took six wickets. He twice clean bowled Sinclair before' the hardest hitter anyone had ever seen' could get going. 32 That Western Province should defeat Transvaal in the final of both tournaments was largely because of the bowling of experienced professionals, George Lohmann at The Old Wanderers and James 'Bonnor' Middleton at Newlands. The advantage that Western Province gained from fielding'professionals' would later be addressed with the South African Cricket Association (SACA) ruling against their future participation. Llewellyn was very much a certainty for the South African side when Lord Hawke brought out another English team in 1898/99. This time, he was older and better prepared. He took 2/35 and 3/89 in the First Test at The Old Wanderers, a match the South Africans should have won. Five catches were dropped off Llewellyn's bowling in the course of England's second innings, but the most crucial

centre decided on the Test side. The Transvaal selec tion committee, comprising Halliwell (chairman), Tommy Routledge, E. J. L Platnauer, Bert Rose-Innes and nineteen-year-old Sinclair, chose the team for the Second Test at Johannesburg. Amongst several changes from the side that had played the First Test at Port Elizabeth, they were keen to include 'Krom' Hendricks and Llewellyn. An outcry followed at the Cape with the Western Province Cricket Union duly preventing the coloured Hendricks from making the trip to the Rand. 27 In contrast, publicity over Llewellyn's selection was low-key and, as it turned out, there were no objections to his playing. 'Krom' Hendricks had never made any pretence of being anything other than coloured. He played in Malay cricket in Cape Town and had represented a 'Malay' team against the English tourists in 1892. Moreover, Hendricks had specifically and publicly announced through the Cape Times that he was 'col oured' and notMalay. 28 Llewellyn, on the other hand, played within the white cricketing structure, had made no public statements of any kind with regard to his colour, and was viewed by Natal's white cricket community as a highly promising prospect. To accept Hendricks in the side was to accept an acknowledged player of colour representing South Africa; to accept Llewellyn did not require a similar leap. Merrett writes that although Llewellyn and Hendricks were of similar parentage - both had white fathers and coloured mothers from the island of St Helena - Llewellyn's 'colouredness' was evidently more marginal. 29 This is possible, although no photograph of Hendricks has been discovered. A letter did appear in the Cape Times which argued that'P. C. Charlton, a member of the Australian team of 1890, is very much darker than Hendricks, the Australian's mother being a New Zealand Maori and his father an off coloured'. 30 Photographic evidence sheds some doubt on the letter's reference to Charlton, although the implication that Hendricks was light-coloured is not easily refuted. It would also reinforce the point that it was less what they looked like than the different positions they found themselves, which required different political decisions.