Colin Bland Cricketer

Kenneth Colin Bland, was a cricketer who played for South Africa. Bland originally came from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe but then not a Test cricket- playing nation. He also played for the South African provincial sides Eastern Province and Orange Free State. A tall and elegant right-handed batsman, Bland broke into the South African Test team in 1961, and was a regular until 1966. As South Africa in the apartheid era played Test cricket only against England, Australia and New Zealand, his career was restricted to just 21 Tests, in which he scored 1,669 runs, including three centuries. Bland's chief fame, though, rested on his fielding. By common consent the finest cover fieldsman of his time, and rated by some as the finest ever, he was able to the turn the course of whole matches. His spectacular run out of Ken Barrington in the Lord's Test of 1965, followed by a similar dismissal of Jim Parks, may have prevented England from establishing a match-winning first innings lead, the match eventually being drawn. Bland was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1966.