Neil Adcock has died at the age of 81. There are notices about his death here and here. Adcock was a member of the South African Test team in the years that I developed my lifelong love of the game. Apart from the appeal of his very name to a young boy beginning to involve himself in the minutiae - I mean, Neil Amwin Treharne Adcock - he was a top-class fast bowler; he was (with Tayfield, Goddard and Peter Pollock) one of only four South African bowlers before the post-apartheid era to take more than 100 Test wickets. In 1961 he was among Wisden's five cricketers of the year. At the Wanderers Ground in Johannesburg in 1957, I saw him bowl out Peter May for 61; it is a dismissal I have never forgotten.
(From the penultimate link above: 'Adcock comes from English stock. He derives his unusual christian name of Amwin from the combination of the names of two aunts, Amy and Winifred. Treharne was the surname of an uncle.')
