Richard Parry (8)

From available evidence, Krom Hendricks appears to have been the fastest bowler in South Africa in the 1890s, regularly knocking over the best batsmen in Cape Town and impressing the touring English cricketers. Yet Hendricks never played a first-class match, let alone a Test match.

As you can guess from the title, the reason Hendricks never played cricket at a higher level appears to be race-related, as Hendricks' mother was a black woman from St Helena, although there also appeared to be other factors at play as Hendricks' contemporary Charles Llewellyn was also the son of a black woman from St Helena yet played Test cricket for South Africa

The fact we even know about Hendricks is through the sleuthing of historians like Richard Parry and Jonty Winch, who have written Too Black to Wear Whites in an attempt to belatedly bring Hendricks out of the margins of cricket history.

A problem with Too Black to Wear Whites is that there is very few primary sources on Hendricks to work with; much is made of a letter he wrote to a Cape Town newspaper which remains the only thing in Hendricks' voice. So, beyond old newspaper match reports, there is little to say about Hendricks. Another is that the authors feel the need to continually point out how racist Cape Town society is; I would like to think that anyone reading a book called Too Black to Wear Whites, doesn't need to be told that, for example, when a white person says Hendricks shouldn't be chosen due to the colour of his skin, it is racist. However, we get a lot of that here.

However, beyond these quibbles Too Black to Wear Whites is an important entry in cricket's literature and, like Hendricks himself, should be better known.… (altro)