Blast from the Past: Gerhardus Liebenberg

Now this may seem a strange subject to write your first blog on, Liebenberg was hardly your most prolific run scorer or that’s what I thought anyway. In my mind Liebenberg was rubbish, now without meaning to get a court summons by Mr Liebenberg’s lawyer that is what I remember of his career. My memories of his are of the 1998 test series between England and South Africa where he played 4 of the 5 tests. I was 13 when this series took place and even at this time I was a fully blown cricketing geek. This series took place 13 years ago and in my memory Liebenberg scored no runs and was a walking wicket.

When I decided I was going to write this I thought it necessary just to check and make sure my memory was correct and that my mind wasn’t playing trick with me and in fact Liebenberg had a glorious summer with the bat. My mind was most certainly not playing tricks with me, in 6 innings he scored 59 runs at an average of 9.83, hardly awe inspiring but too be honest I was surprised to see he scored this many, in my mind he was out for virtually nothing every time he batted. In fact my over riding memory of the 1998 series against South Africa isn’t Robert Croft saving the test match At Old Trafford on the last day with Angus Fraser having to defend the final over of the match, nor is it the great battle between Alan Donald and Michael Atherton on the 4^th day of the 4^th Test match at Trent Bridge, this passage of play is generally acknowledged as being one of the most intense and greatest in Test match history. It isn’t even the fact that England eventually won the test series, their first test series win against a major test playing nation in a 5 test match series since 1986/7. Don’t get me wrong, I have clear vivid memories of all of these events but still the long abiding memory I always have is of one man’s struggles and that is Gerhardus Liebenberg.

When ever I talk about this series to my friends or if the conversation arises of the worse test match player’s Liebenberg name always gets mentioned. That may be a little harsh, I’m sure there are players with worse records but I haven’t come across a series before or since 1998 where I have remembered a player’s poor performance as much as his in the summer of 1998. This is obviously the case in particular with one of my best mates from university when we were passing some time and didn’t fancy for once going to the pub we were watching a video of the 1998 English cricket season and during the part where they showed the battle between Atherton and Donald my mate turned to me and said ‘Do you remember Liebenberg? He was useless’. I think its unfortunate his name was Gerhardus Liebenberg, it’s a slightly unusual name it’s a kind of name that you won’t forget, well it’s one that I never have and obviously nor has my university friend.

It’s only when you look at his entire career statistics that in fact he was a pretty decent player, he scored almost 10,000 first class runs at an average just below 35, your not a bad player if you accomplish that feat. He didn’t succeed at test match level, but he’s not the first, there have been many since who haven’t and will be many more. He never played another test match after the Headingley Test against England and only played in one Test match before which was against Sri Lanka where he scored a first ball duck and 45.

Looking back at this series it is strange what you remember but I will never forget the performances of Liebenberg and how he made batting and Test match cricket look very difficult, if you ever need an example to prove that Test Match cricket isn’t easy then Gerhardus Liebenberg is a leading example.