Peter van der Merwe

Who was Peter van der Merwe?

Peter Laurence van der Merwe was a South African cricketer. Born in Paarl, Cape Province, and educated at St Andrew's College in Grahamstown and at the University of Cape Town, he played in fifteen Tests from 1963 to 1967.

He began playing first-class cricket as a left-arm spinner for South African Universities, and was the principal spinner in the South African Fezela XI that toured England in 1961, but as his batting improved his bowling declined, and he didn't bowl at all in first-class cricket after the tour to Australasia in 1963–64. In 1960 he helped raise money to enable Basil D'Oliveira to travel to England to play professional cricket, by organising a team of white players to play a match against a team of non-whites captained by D'Oliveira.

He played for Western Province from 1958–59 to 1965–66, then for Eastern Province from 1966–67 to 1968–69, captaining each team. His leadership qualities led to several appointments above more experienced players and more successful batsmen: he first captained Western Province at the age of 23; he was selected as vice-captain of the touring team to Australasia in 1963–64 at 26 despite having never played a Test; he captained the team to England in 1965 having played only 7 Tests and making only 198 runs at an average of 24.75. The 1965 team won the three-match series 1–0, and although he made only 110 runs in the Tests at 18.33, he was appointed captain for the home series against Australia in 1966–67, when he enjoyed his most successful series as a batsman, batting at number seven or eight and scoring 225 runs at 32.14.