20 Questions With Mike Procter

As a white boy, Mike Procter grew up in South Africa, a beneficiary of the unfair advantages of Apartheid. When he saw white people doing road works on the way to his hotel from Heathrow during a school cricket trip to England, his eyes were opened to the injustices back home. One of the great fast bowling all-rounders (with a Test bowling average of just 15 and 48 first class centuries), Procter would be stripped of his international career during the years of South Africa's international isolation. Although he helped stage a walk-out in the early 1970s during a domestic game in protest at the Apartheid government refusing to allow two players of colour to tour with the country, he still resented the likes of Peter (now Lord) Hain for their campaign to boycott South African sport. With time, however, he realised Hain, with whom he has been interviewed on stage about their different experiences of the time, was right. Here he tells the story of his extraordinary life in cricket and beyond.