Graeme Pollock made 274 against Australia — the highest score ever made by a South African in Tests until 2012, and one of the finest innings in the game's history, played by a batsman whose career was cut short by apartheid isolation.
Graeme Pollock was 26 when he made 274 in Durban. By all accounts he was one of the finest left-handed batsmen the game had ever produced. Thirteen months later, South Africa were banned from international cricket due to apartheid. Pollock never played another Test match. He was 26.
Australia had made 435. South Africa came in to bat. Pollock — already South Africa's most feared batsman — came to the crease at number three with the innings well established.
Pollock made 274 in 417 minutes off 294 balls — powerful, classical, featuring 43 fours. He hit every Australian bowler with equal authority — McKenzie, Freeman, and Gleeson all dispatched through and over the field.
South Africa made 622/9 declared. They won the Test, and the series 4-0. It was their last Test series.
Pollock retired at 26, playing county cricket and domestic South African cricket for the next 20 years. He never played international cricket again. In 2000, when South Africa's greatest players were ranked, Pollock was almost universally considered to be in the top five cricketers who never got to show the world their full ability.
Pollock's 274 — the defining innings of his truncated career
South Africa's last Test series — 4-0 win over Australia
Pollock's retirement at 26 — apartheid ends his international career
February 5, 1970
South Africa vs Australia, Kingsmead, Durban
Pollock's innings
274 off 294 balls — South Africa's greatest innings
1971
South Africa banned from international cricket — Pollock's career ends at 26
South Africa's international isolation lasted until 1991. Pollock was 47 when they returned. Several of his contemporaries — Barry Richards, Mike Procter — faced the same deprivation. The generation of 1970 South African cricketers represent the greatest talent the game never got to fully assess.
The greatest innings by the greatest 'lost' cricketer — a man who might have broken Bradman's average had he been given the opportunity to play the 15-year career his talent warranted.
Pollock's 274 is sport's 'what if' innings — the masterwork of a career cut short. Barry Richards once said that Graeme Pollock was the finest batsman he ever saw — and Richards himself is considered one of the five best never to have played enough Tests.
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Twenty-six years after Brisbane, cricket produced only its second tied Test — Dean Jones's heroic 210 through crippling heat and Dean Jones's fever, Ravi Shastri's unbeaten 48 and India needing 2 off the last over, only for Maninder Singh to be out lbw off the final ball.
Australia vs South Africa
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Lance Klusener smashed Australia to the brink of elimination, then ran out Allan Donald off the penultimate ball to tie the match — but Australia advanced to the final on superior run rate, ending South Africa's greatest World Cup campaign in devastating fashion.