"What is one person’s career compared to 40m people?"

As I head off to the Oval tomorrow for the England v South Africa test match my thoughts turn to my very first test match. 

It was some 42 years ago when my father took me as a (very, very) young boy to the Wanderers in Johannesburg where South Africa were taking on a tired, underperforming Australian side in something of transition.  

The South Africans were already up 1-0 in a four match series having decisively beaten Australia at Port Elizabeth and the second test would really settle matters - the South Africans having already beaten the Australians 3-1 in the 1966/67 series.

Ian Chappell, who hadn’t had a particularly good game in the first match, was picked again in the second. He hadn’t made a great impression in the 1966/67 series either but was still touted by the captain Bill Lawry as “the best all-round batsman in the world”. 

Although Chappell had made 34 in the first innings I distinctly remember my father pointing this out to me as Chappell strode out to the wicket, to replace Lawry, in the Australian second innings, that hot morning. I also remember that remark being rammed back down his throat by the crowd, to a man, as Chappell trudged back having been dismissed first ball, bowled by Eddie Barlow.

Oh, how I loved test cricket.

Sadly, from a cricketing point of view at least, the series ended two matches later. South Africa had won by 4-0 but there would be no more test cricket for South Africa, at least for another 22 years. 

The exclusion from world sporting contact due to the Apartheid regime has been well documented. I do not personally remember the Sharpeville massacre but vaguely remember the Rivonia Trial in 1963/64. These were difficult indefensible times partially resolved by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission established after Nelson Mandela’s release.

It is, I think, interesting that, in the week of Mandela’s 94 birthday and of the first test in this summer's series against South Africa, it should fall to one of those 1970 cricketers to articulate, at least for me, the importance of the exclusion. Mike Procter played only 7 tests in a short international career, all against Australia, and would no doubt, absent the ban, have played a great deal more.

In an interview this week with Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special, Procter made clear that he had no regrets about the ban despite the effect it had on his career. He had said as much to Jim White in the Telegraph recalling the 1970 cricket protest in Cape Town.

"What is one person’s career compared to 40m people?" Indeed.