Former South African captain Clive Rice passes away, aged 66

Cape Town: Former South African cricket player and Captain Clive Rice passed away on Tuesday morning in hospital. According to the media report he was suffering from brain tumour for a long time. He died at the age of 66.

He visited India in March earlier this year for his radiation treatment of brain tumour at Bangalore’s Health Care Global Hospital.

After the treatment, he had told “The Hindu”, “Can’t doesn’t exist, the word ‘can’ does. And if you’ve got to sell your BMW to come here and do the treatment, then do it.”

“They were brilliant. I had three treatments which were an hour long. I was tied down onto a table and this cyber-knife machine was floating around, and then specifically targeting that cancer cell in my brain, and radiating it to take it out.

“You can’t believe how professional they were, and the team of doctors that I had that were doing it, every day now you wake up and you just feel better and better. I was very happy with what happened. In fact, it’s a miracle,” Rice had told “Sport24” about the treatment in Bengaluru.

Sorry to hear about the passing of Clive Rice "ricey"..astute captain and a man that played the game hard!! Rip #CliveRice

— Herschelle Gibbs (@hershybru) July 28, 2015

He played three one-day internationals for South Africa following the country’s return from isolation, against India in 1991 and was also the captain on their first tour to India in 1991. Later on he was not selected for the world cup 1992 squad and after that played not much cricket for his country.

The former all-rounder played 482 matches during his first class career for Transvaal, Natal and Nottinghamshire, and scored 26,331 runs at an average of 40.95.

He also took 930 wickets with bowling average of 22.49 between 1969 and 1994.