SA fielding ace Bland ends fine innings

COLIN BLAND, who has died aged 80, was a South African cricketer who became the sport’s first superstar fielder.

He showcased his talents on one famous soggy morning at Canterbury during South Africa’s 1965 tour of England, when the Kent captain Colin Cowdrey persuaded him to entertain spectators deprived of play with a fielding exhibition. Picking the ball up and throwing while running at full tilt, Bland hit the target 12 times out of 15.

“They spoilt me by giving me three stumps to aim at,” he said. “I always practised with one.”

Bland’s brilliance was no accident. Cricket practice in the 1950s tended to involve a spot of batting in the nets before repairing to the bar, but he stayed outside. An early Rhodesian teammate recalled: “He would throw at one stump from all angles and distances, hour after hour.” It earned him the nickname “the Golden Eagle”, and even batsmen well aware of his abilities could be surprised.

At Lord’s in 1965, with England looking set to build a big lead, Bland ran out Ken Barrington for 91 with a pinpoint throw.

Shortly afterwards, Bland repeated the dose. Jim Parks tried to protect the stumps by running between the fielder and the throw, but Bland scudded the ball under Parks’s body and uprooted the middle stump. England’s advantage was kept to manageable proportions, and the match ended as a draw. South Africa won at Trent Bridge, then Bland helped to ensure the series win by hitting 127 in the final Test at The Oval.

In all, Bland played 21 Tests, his last being the first match of Australia’s 1966-67 tour, again at Johannesburg, when he badly injured his knee after crashing into the perimeter fence trying to stop a boundary. He never played international cricket again, although he continued at domestic level, finishing as captain of Orange Free State in 1973-74.

He was also an aggressive batsman with a Test average of 49. That included three centuries, the highest an undefeated 144 against England at Johannesburg in 1964-65.

Bland made 10 more centuries in first-class cricket, but his overall average of 37.95 was lower than his Test mark. In 1964-65 he was the first batsman to score 1 000 runs in a season in South Africa.

Of Scottish descent, Kenneth Colin Bland was born in Bulawayo in 1938, the son of Brownlee, an accountant with Rhodesian Railways, and his wife Audrey.

He excelled in sport at Milton High School and made his first-class cricket debut at the age of 18 in 1956-57, when he top-scored in both innings as Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, were skittled out for 57 and 152 in Salisbury (Harare) by an England touring team spearheaded by bowlers Frank Tyson and Peter Loader. A maiden century followed a year later for the South African Universities team.

After briefly running a sports shop, Bland worked as a coach – of hockey and squash as well as cricket – in South Africa, before moving to England in the 1990s and continuing to coach. As late as 2007 he was sought out by MCC to help teach fielding.

Bland was named as one of Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year in 1966.

Colin Bland’s marriage, to Dorothy Cornwall, was on November 11 1965 She and their two sons survive him.

Colin Bland, born April 5 1938, died April 14 2018. —