SA’s all-round cricketing great ‘Dik’ Abed dies in Holland

SOUTH African cricket and Cape Town have lost one of their greatest sporting sons with the death of Sulaiman “Dik” Abed in the Netherlands at the age of 73.

The youngest of the five sport-loving Abed brothers – Babu, Tiny, Goolam and Lobo were the others – Dik had the game running through his veins. He was a dashing allrounder who bowled at a lively pace and whose trademark delivery was his famed leg-cutter that enabled him to claim hundreds of wickets.

Two of his brothers, Gasant “Tiny” Abed and Salie “Lobo” Abed, were part of the Sacboc national side that toured east Africa under the captaincy of Basil d’Oliveira and also played a home series. Abed played for the non- racial Western Province Cricket Board team during the 1960s in the Dadabhay Trophy before pursuing a career at Enfield CC in England’s Lancashire Leagues.

Abed played in the Lancashire Leagues for 10 seasons and twice (1970 and 1972) won the Frank Worrell Trophy for being the leading run-scorer.

Enfield CC honoured Abed in 1988 as an “all-time great” for his contribution to the club.

Due to apartheid, the Bo-Kaap-born cricketer never had the distinction of representing his country in Test cricket. Abed did taste international cricket action when he represented his adopted country, the Netherlands, long after his “retirement”, in the 1982 ICC Trophy in England.