Harvey Robert Image 1 Natal 1936

Description

Swinburne, Orange Free State born all-rounder Robert Harvey was a right-handed batsman and right-arm medium pace bowler who first played first class cricket for Natal in two matches in 1933-34 without success.

But when he was picked again two years later for Natal in the match against the 1935-36 Australians, he scored 16 and 104. Although eventually bowled by Clarrie Grimmett, he resisted for three and three-quarters hours, and “alternated periods of hard hitting with rigid defence”. After Grimmett (and Bill O’Reilly) had led Australia to two Test victories in the first three matches of a five game series, with no South African batsman apart from Dudley Nourse making more than 66 runs in any one innings, Harvey was picked for the Fourth Test at Johannesburg in February 1936. He had limited success, scoring 5 and 17 as the South Africans suffered their worst defeat of the series, though he did hit one six off Grimmett.

The only first class match between the Fourth and Fifth Tests was the second game between Natal and the Australians, and this time Harvey scored his career highest score of 138, making slightly more than half the Natal first innings total of 272. He shared a second wicket stand of 135 with Herby Wade who was captain of both the Natal and the South African teams. Although it would prove his final international appearance, Harvey was retained for the Fifth Test at Durban and made scores of 28 and 1 in another heavy defeat being, in the second innings, the first out of five dismissals (of the last six batsmen in the team) to be caught by Vic Richardson off the bowling of Grimmett. On the whole tour of South Africa by the Australians, only four centuries were scored off them: two by Nourse (one in a Test) and two by Harvey.

Those centuries, though, were the only ones in Harvey’s first class cricket career. He remained as a batsman and, increasingly, a bowler with Natal up to the 1939-40 season but although he passed 50 on 11 further occasions, he did not reach 100 again. In his first class career of 25 matches he scored 1,298 runs averaging 38.17. With his bowling (he was unused in his Test appearances) he took 37 wickets at 26.10 apiece with a best return of 5-21, the better of two five wicket hauls, and also took 18 catches in first class play.

At the end of the Second World War, in which he served as a temporary captain in the South African forces, he was awarded an MBE.

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