from Financial Times 1997 (thanks Caite)
Shaun Pollock is back from injury, has been named the international young
cricketer of the year, and is in the SA side doing duty in Nottingham. John
Perlman finds that the all-rounder's distinctive approach to cricket was forged
at an early age.
Games of garden cricket in the Pollock backyard could be tough for the youngest
kid in the family, especially if dad got off from work early enough to join in.
And it got even tougher for the 10-year-old on Christmas Day, 1983. He found
himself bowling to dad's younger brother - and Uncle Graeme always was darned
difficult to get out.
There are some who believe that Shaun Pollock has been profoundly shaped by
those battles between the flower borders: "He is out there with the same
sort of attitude as if he was playing in the back garden. He's having fun,"
says Graham Ford, director of coaching for Natal. "This does not mean he
isn't competitive. It's more that he doesn't have that fear of failure."
Natal was where the 24-year-old fast bowler's early career was shaped - most
notably by the West Indian great, Malcolm Marshall, who was on the coaching
staff.
On the SA tour of England he is seen by some as the man who makes the difference
between the two teams.
When SA shaded England by 1- 0 in the 1995/96 Test series, Mike Atherton, among
others, said they had the edge because they had a class all-rounder. He was
talking then about Brian McMillan. But Bob Woolmer, the former Kent and England
all-rounder, believes Pollock "is one of the most complete all-rounders I
have seen since Gary Sobers".
The numbers are not quite there yet to back this up. Before the tour started,
Pollock had taken 73 test wickets for an average of 23.42 runs, with a career
best of 7- 87 against Australia on a flat track in Adelaide this year. His
average with the bat in Test matches was 32.65; his highest Test score 92.
But Woolmer believes the best with the bat is still to come from a player who -
at the time he made his Test debut against England at Centurion Park in late
1995 - was coming in at number nine or 10 for his province.
"When I saw him in the nets I thought 'crikey, this guy can bat'," he
says. "Shaun hasn't got a Test hundred but he is certainly capable of one,
and I believe he could make the Test team as a batsman."
It is another expectation to live up to - Pollock is pretty used to those. His
father, Peter, an aggressive fast bowler, took 116 wickets in a 28-Test career
cut short in 1970 by SA's isolation from the world game. He never saw his dad
play.
Uncle Graeme, the princely left-hander, averaged more than 60 in a similarly
abbreviated career. In England, Shaun will find the footprints of his forebears
on pitches all over the country - especially at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, where
Graeme Pollock's glorious 125 in the first innings and Peter Pollock's 10-wicket
haul secured a 94-run win for SA, and with it the series.
There was a time when the family name was "a bit of a burden", but
those days are over: "The pressure is off. I don't worry about it at all,
although I'm planning to take more wickets than Dad."
That Shaun Pollock has moved out of the family shadows is reflected on wryly by
his uncle: " I used to be known as Graeme Pollock. Now people talk about me
as Shaun's uncle," he says.
And the youngster's ever-growing standing in SA cricket is often explained by
Woolmer and others in just one word: confidence.
Dave Richardson, who kept wicket the day Pollock marked his Test debut with
three notable scalps - Atherton, Graeme Hick and Graham Thorpe - says the
English batsman are having to deal with a much more accomplished bowler this
time around than when Shaun was a youngster who took 16 wickets in that last
series, including the five in England's second innings of the final Test to set
up SA's victory.
"He is probably a little quicker and a lot more accurate," Richardson
says.
"What the English had to deal with initially was a very good bouncer that
hit a lot of people on the head (Atherton twice in England's first innings at
Centurion Park). Now he hits the seam much more often; he has got more control
and has also learned some away swing, so he swings it both ways."
Test opener Andrew Hudson, a teammate in the Natal and SA teams, echoes these
sentiments, but believes Pollock's stronger sense of himself comes more from the
soul than from the seam or swing.
Hudson and Pollock, like fellow Natalian Jonty Rhodes, are devout Christians.
"Shaun is happy with who he is and what he is doing because it is what God
wants him to do," Hudson says.
"He has a free spirit, and by taking the pressure off himself, Shaun can
let his talent show, just as he has done, in a wonderful way."
Pollock says: " A lot of players try to place a lot of importance on
performance. Then they have a bad game and they go into their shell. Religion
helps you keep things in balance and in focus."
As the only teetotaler in a team sponsored by SA's largest brewery, Pollock has
had to laugh at himself. When the team toured Pakistan last year, he said he was
looking forward to "seeing all the other boys learning to live like Polly
has lived all his life".
But he quietly advises anyone who mistakes his laid-back manner for a lack of
competitive will to think again.
The current tour of England, he says, is "every schoolboy's dream. This is
where the game started."
Pollock still sees himself as fellow opening bowler Donald's junior partner.
" Allan is the out-and-out strike bowler," he says. "I hope I can
keep things under control at the other end, and then strike a bit myself. People
will be looking to play a few more shots against me."
The tour management has been concerned to keep Pollock fresh for the big games -
which presents him with a big challenge.
" In your head you realize that you have to sit out some days and watch the
blokes, but in my heart I always want to play. I just have to learn to live with
it; maybe get hold of some nice, thick books."
Pollock probably won't be asking England ex-captain Atherton for his copy of A
Suitable Boy, though. "I think I'll just start with a Wilbur Smith,"
he says.