Ali Bacher

Last updated

Ali Bacher
Personal information
Full name
Aron Bacher
Born (1942-05-24) 24 May 1942 (age 82)
Roodepoort, South Africa
BattingRight-handed
BowlingLegbreak
International information
National side
Test debut22 July 1965 v  England
Last Test5 March 1970 v  Australia
Career statistics
Competition Test First-class
Matches12120
Runs scored6797,894
Batting average 32.3339.07
100s/50s0/618/45
Top score73235
Balls bowled–114
Wickets –2
Bowling average –43.50
5 wickets in innings –0
10 wickets in match–0
Best bowling–1/8
Catches/stumpings 10/–110/1
Source: Cricinfo, 13 November 2022

Aron "Ali" Bacher (born 24 May 1942) is a former South African Test cricket captain and an administrator of the United Cricket Board of South Africa. [1]

Contents

Personal life

Bacher was born in May 1942 in Roodepoort to Lithuanian-Jewish parents who had migrated to South Africa. He got his nickname "Ali" at the age of seven from the story of Ali Baba. Bacher married Shira Teeger in 1965, [2] and they have two daughters and one son. His nephew Adam Bacher played for South Africa in the 1990s.

He studied at the University of the Witwatersrand and became a general practitioner. He worked as a GP for nine years but left the field, saying, "I realised I was getting too emotionally involved with the patients." [3] In 1979 he briefly went into a family business. [4]

Cricket career

Bacher started playing cricket while at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg, [5] and represented Transvaal at the age of 17. [6] He was appointed captain of Transvaal for the 1963–64 season, in place of John Waite, who was on tour with the South African national side in Australia. [7] He played in 12 Tests for South Africa, three against England and nine against Australia; he was captain in the last four. [8] In a first-class match for Transvaal against the visiting Australian cricket team in 1966–67, he made 235 in the second innings, the record score for any South African team against Australia, took five catches, and led his team to Australia's first ever defeat in South Africa. [9] He later played important innings in Test victories over Australia in the First, Third and Fifth Tests. [10]

He captained the national team in only one series: in 1969–70 against Australia at home, in which the South Africans won all four Tests. He was selected to captain the touring teams to England in 1970 and Australia in 1971–72, but neither tour eventuated, owing to anti-apartheid protests in the host countries. In 1972 he became the first player to make 5000 runs in the Currie Cup. [11] He was awarded South Africa's Sports Merit Award (its top athletics honour) in 1972. [12]

Administrative career

In 1981 Bacher had heart bypass surgery, then took up the job of leading Transvaal's newly professionalised cricket administration. [13] He was made managing director of the South African Cricket Union in the late 1980s. [14]

Believing that apartheid would not end in his lifetime, [15] and determined to maintain the vigour of South African cricket, he encouraged tours by "rebel" teams from Sri Lanka, England, West Indies and Australia during the 1980s. [16] At the same time he recognised that South African cricket had no long-term future unless cricketers in the non-white communities were encouraged to develop their potential, and he organised mass coaching clinics and development programs in the black townships. [17]

When apartheid began to collapse in 1990, Bacher immediately set out to form one body to oversee all cricket in South Africa: he contacted Steve Tshwete, the head of the ANC's sports desk, to help get the parties to agree on a unified body. Tshwete soon forged an agreement and the two men became friends, [18] travelling to London together in 1991 to successfully apply for South Africa's re-admission to the International Cricket Council. [19]

Bacher managed the South African team on its brief tour of India in 1991. [20] He instigated cricket's first video-review system in 1992 [21] and directed the planning for the 2003 Cricket World Cup. [22]

In 2005 he joined the board of the South African Rugby Union as the sponsors' representative. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graeme Pollock</span> South African cricketer

Robert Graeme Pollock is a former cricketer for South Africa, Transvaal and Eastern Province. A member of a famous cricketing family, Pollock is widely regarded as one of South Africa's greatest ever cricketers, and as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. Despite Pollock's international career being cut short at the age of 26 by the sporting boycott of South Africa, and all but one of his 23 Test matches being against England and Australia, the leading cricket nations of the day, he broke a number of records. His completed career Test match batting average of 60.97 remains the third best behind Sir Don Bradman and Adam Voges.

International cricket in South Africa between 1971 and 1981 consisted of four private tours arranged by English sports promoter Derrick Robins, two tours by a private team called the "International Wanderers", and one women's Test match. The apartheid policy followed by the South African Governments of the day meant that no Test match playing nation was willing to tour, thereby depriving world cricket of leading stars such as Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, Clive Rice and Eddie Barlow.

Athanasios John Traicos is a former cricketer who represented South Africa and Zimbabwe at international level. He was primarily an off spin bowler, and one of a small number of cricketers to have played at the highest level for more than one country.

Alan Norman Connolly is a former Australian cricketer who played in 29 Tests and one ODI from 1963 to 1971. He played first-class cricket for Victoria and Middlesex from 1959 to 1971.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackie McGlew</span> South African cricketer

Derrick John "Jackie" McGlew was a cricketer who played for Natal and South Africa. He was educated at Merchiston Preparatory School and Maritzburg College, where he was Head Dayboy Prefect and captain of both cricket and rugby in 1948.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eddie Barlow</span> South African cricketer

Edgar John Barlow was a South African cricketer. Barlow was born in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa, and played first-class cricket for Transvaal and Eastern Province from 1959–60 to 1967–68 before moving to Western Province for the seasons from 1968–69 to 1980–81. During this time he also played three seasons with Derbyshire in the English County Championship from 1976 – 1978. He completed his first-class career in Boland in 1982–83. Barlow was named as one of the six South African Cricket Annual players of the year in 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clive Rice</span> South African cricketer

Clive Edward Butler Rice was a South African international cricketer. An all-rounder, Rice ended his First Class cricket career with a batting average of 40.95 and a bowling average of 22.49. He captained Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club from 1979 to 1987.

The South African rebel tours were a series of seven cricket tours staged between 1982 and 1990. They were known as the rebel tours because the international cricketing bodies banned South Africa from competitive international cricket throughout this period because of apartheid. As such the tours were organised and conducted in spite of the express disapproval of national cricket boards and governments, the International Cricket Conference and international organisations such as the United Nations. The tours were the subject of enormous contemporaneous controversy and remain a sensitive topic throughout the cricket-playing world.

Brian Lee Irvine is a former cricketer who played four Tests for South Africa in 1969–70 in the last Test series played by South Africa before official sporting links were broken over the apartheid policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Goddard (cricketer)</span> South African cricketer

Trevor Leslie Goddard was a South African cricketer. A left-handed all-rounder, he played 41 Test matches for South Africa from 1955 to 1970. He captained the young South African team on its five-month tour of Australia and New Zealand in the 1963–64 season, levelling the series with Australia, and was also captain in 1964–65 against England in South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Sinclair</span> South African cricketer

James Hugh Sinclair was a South African cricketer who played in 25 Test matches from 1896 to 1911. He scored South Africa's first three Test centuries and was the first person from any country to score a century and take five wickets in an innings in the same Test. He is one of the fastest-scoring Test batsmen of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Gordon</span> South African cricketer

Norman Gordon was a South African cricketer who played in five Test matches during the 1938–39 South African cricket season.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Cheetham</span> South African cricketer

John Erskine Cheetham was a South African cricketer who played in 24 Test matches between 1949 and 1955, captaining South Africa in his last 15 Test matches. He later served as president of the South African Cricket Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiger Lance</span> South African cricketer

Herbert Roy "Tiger" Lance was a South African cricketer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackie Botten</span> South African cricketer

James Thomas "Jackie" Botten was a South African cricketer who played in three Tests in 1965.

The South African cricket team toured England in the second half of the 1965 season, winning the three match Test series 1–0, with two matches drawn. They had a young and improving side. Their players included Graeme Pollock and his brother Peter, Colin Bland and Eddie Barlow.

Roy Francois Pienaar is a South African former first-class cricketer. He played for Transvaal, Western Province and Northern Transvaal/Northerns in domestic cricket and spent the period between 1987 and 1989 in England playing for Kent County Cricket Club. In both 1983 and 1990 he won the South African Cricket Annual Cricketer of the Year award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Duffus</span> South African cricketer

Louis George Duffus was a South African cricketer who became the country's most respected writer on the game.

The South African Fezela XI was a team of young South African cricketers who toured England in 1961 under the captaincy of the Test player Roy McLean. Several of the team later went on to play leading parts in the revival of South Africa’s cricket fortunes in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salisbury Sports Club tournament in 1970</span> Tournament and related controversy in Rhodesia

Garfield Sobers, captain of the West Indies cricket team and one of the most prominent cricketers in the world, outraged many in the Caribbean in September 1970 when he took part in a friendly double-wicket tournament at Salisbury Sports Club in Rhodesia, a country in southern Africa that was unrecognised internationally because of its mostly white minority government. The resulting furore nearly caused him to lose the captaincy, and threatened the unity of the West Indies team itself.

References

  1. ↑ Odendaal, André (2003). The story of an African game. New Africa Books. ISBN   9780864866387 . Retrieved 2 February 2011.
  2. ↑ Rodney Hartman, Ali: The Life of Ali Bacher, Penguin, Johannesburg, 2006, p. 84.
  3. ↑ Allan, Jani. Cricket can rescue SA from its sticky wicket, says Dr Ali. Sunday Times (South Africa). 24 July 1988
  4. ↑ Hartman, p. 184.
  5. ↑ Hartman, p. 28.
  6. ↑ Transvaal B v Eastern Province, 1959–60. Cricketarchive.com. Retrieved on 21 May 2018.
  7. ↑ Chettle Wisden 1965 , pp. 884–885
  8. ↑ Siegman, Joseph (2000). Jewish sports legends: the International Jewish Hall of Fame. Brassey's. ISBN   9781574882841 . Retrieved 2 February 2011.
  9. ↑ Wisden 1968, p. 834.
  10. ↑ Wisden 1968, pp. 841–54.
  11. ↑ Hartman, p. 166.
  12. ↑ Siegman, Joseph M. (1992). The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. SP Books. ISBN   9781561710287 . Retrieved 2 February 2011.
  13. ↑ Hartman, p. 195-200.
  14. ↑ Hartman, p. 244.
  15. ↑ Hartman, p. 213-14.
  16. ↑ Hartman, p. 224-45.
  17. ↑ Hartman, p. 248.
  18. ↑ Hartman, pp. 312–15
  19. ↑ Hartman, pp. 323–31.
  20. ↑ Hartman, pp. 343.
  21. ↑ Hartman, pp. 365.
  22. ↑ Hartman, pp. 495–520.
  23. ↑ Hartman, pp. 541–545.
Preceded by South African Test cricket captain
1969/70		Succeeded by
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.