Krish Reddy, ‘cricket’s encyclopaedia’, is no more
THE cricket community was now bereft of their “walking encyclopaedia”. That’s how many who were closely associated with Durban cricket personality Krishna “Krish” Reddy responded to the news of his death this week.
Reddy, 77, who was comfortable wearing various cricket caps – as a player, writer, historian, statistician and administrator – died on Friday of natural causes. He will be laid to rest today with a funeral ceremony at the Clare Estate Crematorium.
An outstanding Reddy trait was his knowledge of non-racial cricket, in the days when black and white cricketers played on separate wickets. He spent years researching and preserving cricket information, and became the go-to man for statistics. His passion for the sport enabled him to accumulate a store of cricket facts, figures, write-ups and paraphernalia, much of it stored at his Reservoir Hills home. which some have described as a cricket museum.
Some of his work was published in the Mutual & Federal South African Cricket Annual from 1996 to 2003.
He was presented with a special scroll for the “accurate recording of the deeds of generations of cricketers” when the annual published its 50th volume in 2003.
Reddy was previously part of a panel of 100 cricket analysts from around the world to choose Wisden’s “Five Cricketers of the Century” and had a hand in selecting South Africa’s “Ten Cricketers of the Century”.
He also compiled a history of the old Natal Cricket Board as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations.
The Other Side was an anthology on black cricket in Kwazulu-natal published in 1999. Another in his long list of publications is Blacks in Whites, co-authored with Dr Ashwin Desai, Professor Vishnu Padayachee and Dr Goolam Vahed and published in 2002.
His detailed statistical record of Basil D’oliveira’s cricketing exploits in South Africa was included as an appendix to Peter Oborne’s D’oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy: The Untold Story.
Desai described Reddy as a selftaught archivist. Without him, “we would be bereft of a large swathe of South African cricketing history. He meticulously kept statistics of provincial games and collected articles and mementoes of the time in which liberation cricket stood as a beacon of non-racialism locally and globally.
“He was old school. No email for the likes of him. If you collaborated with him, you could expect to receive material through snail mail. This material would be shared with an extreme form of generosity and be written beautifully in longhand.”
Desai said Reddy had a wry sense of humour, always quick with a line from Shakespeare. “In the world of slash-and-bash cricket, of money and mayhem, he was a man eternally on time, from another time,” he said.
Cassim Docrat, a long-time associate, said Reddy’s death was a great loss to both the local and international cricket community. “He was a cricket encyclopaedia, who had player and match stats at his fingertips. He was very dedicated to the game, a family man, and an educationist.”
Professor Logan Naidoo said: “Whenever we needed information on black cricket, we called on him.
“He has left an unforgettable legacy,” said Naidoo.
Yunus Bobat, president of KZN Cricket, said: “We will always appreciate and honour the unwavering passion Krish showed to uplift our beautiful game.”
KZN Cricket CEO Heinrich Strydom said Reddy “was a great man who served this game with distinction”.