OBITUARY: Brian O’Connell, a great sporting and academic all-rounder

Most of the richly deserved and warm tributes paid to the late Professor Brian O’Connell have, rightly so, centred on his academic brilliance and his astute and visionary leadership in turning around a struggling University of the Western Cape (UWC) into an institution of international repute.

After all Prof O’Connell, during his tenure as Rector of UWC between 2001 and 2014, played a pivotal role in transforming the university from an apartheid-era “Bush College” into an institution of international repute.

In addition to receiving several honorary doctorates from various institutions around the world, including the University of Cape Town in 2018, O’Connell was honoured with the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

“He was a rare and passionate individual, a remarkable South African and a great human being who committed himself to the upliftment of the country’s disadvantaged citizens and the restoration of their dignity,” the NRF said in a statement.

In 2013 Prof O’Connell was awarded an order of Knighthood (Commander of the Order of Leopold II) by the Belgian government for his contribution to the global tertiary institution sector.

While his achievements as an academic stand tall, Prof O’Connell also carved a niche for himself as a highly talented all-round sportsperson. In addition to being a top badminton and soccer player, he also won the WP Senior Schools’ discus competition during his days as a student at St Columba’s High School in Athlone, Cape Town.

But it was as captain of the Western Province Cricket Board’s provincial team that O’Connell showcased his abilities as an all-rounder and astuteness as a leader.

Despite having previously captained the WP under-23 and B teams, his promotion to lead the A team in November 1975 came as a surprise to many, including O’Connell himself. While few gave him a chance of succeeding, he rose to the challenge magnificently.

He took over a team that had in the previous season lost the SA Cricket Board of Control’s (SACBOC) three-day competition, the Dadabhay Trophy, to a Transvaal-side powered by the runs of West Indian great Rohan Kanhai who finished the season with a remarkable average of 95.2.

O’Connell also had to cope with leading a team weakened by the absence of top players such as Rushdi and Saait Magiet, Lefty Adams and Braima Isaacs who all refused, on religious grounds, to play in the new Stellenbosch Farmers’ Wineries-sponsored competition. Former captain and star opening batsman Dickie Conrad had by that time become the first black cricketer to play in the WP Cricket Union’s top division when selected for Green Point CC’s first team in March 1975.

Before being appointed captain — ahead of more experienced campaigners such as Viccie Moodie, Willie Hendricks, Kulu Maclons, Robbie van Graan and Jock Mahoney — O’Connell had made only one previous appearance for the WP senior team, against Natal in March 1974.

“Throughout my student life I had been placed in leadership positions. However, the captaincy of the provincial side was a different type of challenge, because I knew very little about the provincial scene,” he told me in 1998 in an interview for the book More Than a Game.

True to his inquisitive and intellectual nature, the first thing O’Connell did was to find every book he possibly could dealing with captaincy. “For the first time in my life I actually began to read seriously about how to captain a cricket side even though I had done the job at various levels for many years.”

In addition to arming himself with theoretical knowledge, it was his strategic and lateral thinking that instilled a sense of self-belief into a team that had been written off as a bunch of no-hopers at the start of the 1975/76 campaign.

“Brian was great at getting the more experienced players to buy into his leadership of the team. He told us no-one was expecting us to win and that many thought we were not up to the level of the players who weren’t available,” said Omar Henry, a key member of the team that became SACBOC champions under O’Connell.

“Brian also had the amazing ability to speak the Queen’s English when necessary or to switch to colourful Kombuis Afrikaans when the situation demanded. He could comfortably deal with any situation or fit into any company.”

Leadership

O’Connell wore the mantle of leadership comfortably enough to top the WP batting averages that season scoring 289 runs in the six provincial games that were played. His nine visits to the crease (two of which were unbeaten), included two half centuries, at a healthy average of 41.28. When one factors in the substandard pitches and the slow outfields on which many of the games were played, that average could easily have been closer to 50!

“When he took over as Rector of the University of the Western Cape in 2001, the institution was in big trouble and about to go bankrupt. I was around the campus at the time and saw how Brian operated. It seemed to me that he effectively used some of the lessons he picked up during his days as our provincial captain,” Henry added.

O’Connell, who grew up in District Six, started his cricket career with local club Good Hopes in the early 1960s.

“I was playing in the street one day when an official from the club invited me to attend their next meeting. I went and was immediately selected for the first team.

“But I don’t have boots and white flannels, I protested,” O’Connell told me in 1998.

That proved to be no problem as the teenager was immediately provided with a pair of boots and sent, with money, to the nearby Grand Parade to buy some white material from one of the fabric stalls.

“Within an hour of my return I had my flannels which were made by Boeta Ismail [Maya] Abrahams, who was a tailor. The spirit and love for the game during those years was tremendous.

“Some of my best cricket memories come from my days with Good Hopes. I was even renamed ‘Braim’ by the predominantly Muslim membership of the club.”

He built up a strong friendship with the Abrahams brothers Abdulatief (Dallie) and Abduragmaan (Dukas) — Boeta Maya’s sons — often attending madressah (Muslim school) classes with them and Dukas accompanying Brian to Sunday school and church.

Jassiem recalls O’Connell relating how he became Good Hope’s delegate to meetings of the Green Point Track-based WP Cricket Association: “After attending his first club meeting Brian was immediately appointed the club’s delegate to board meetings. Despite pointing out that he didn’t know much about the club that he had just joined he was instructed to represent them ‘because you can speak English’.”

An all-rounder in every aspect of life, Brian O’Connell is survived by his wife, Judith, and children, Amanda-Leigh and Bryan.