According to batting averages for cricketers to bat 20 times in Tests, Bradmen leads the field but next best is Pollock, at 60.97, from 2256 runs Pollock’s international career was prematurely terminated by sporting bans placed on South Africa because of apartheid policies of the South African government so it is difficult to access Pollock’s greatness. At the age of 26, he played the last of his 23 Tests.

Born in Durban on 27th February 1944, he, like his elder brother Peter, was recognised as a fine talent and scored his first hundred at the age of nine playing in the under 11s.

At 19 years 318 days, he became the youngest South African to score a Test Century in the third Test against Australia in Adelaide, having failed to get past 25 in the first two Tests.

But it was in the fourth Test that he made his reputation, joining Eddie Barlow at the wicket when South Africa won 2-70 in reply to 345. Barlow was out for 201 Pollock for 175 and South Africa went on to 595, then their highest-ever innings against Australia.

The debate was whether Gary Sobers, then representing South Australia or Pollock was the more talented and attractive left hander. Sobers hit hard because his back lift was an arc, but Pollock never seemed to lift his bat up (31lbs, almost a pound heavier than the willow Broadman used) and hardly followed through. Bill Lawry (an Australian batsman) called Pollock “the finest dispatcher of a loose ball I have ever seen.”

The cocktail of politics and sport kept South Africa out of world cricket from 1970 to 1992. Pollock played Corrie Cup cricket in South Africa and occasionally played for World invitation teams. In July 2000, his nephew Shaun, son of Peter, became South African captain and in January 2000 Graeme Pollock was named South African cricketer of the century.