Spotlight on Michael J Procter

Martin Chandler | 9:16am BST 04 May 2025

Published: 2025
Pages: 36
Author: Body, Wendy (Editor)
Publisher: GCCC Museum & Learning Centre
Rating: 4 stars

What might he have achieved if he could have played in more than seven Test matches? It is a question that many have asked and, of course, we will never know the answer. But personally I believe that Mike Procter would have ended up with a batting average well above forty, and maybe even above fifty. And with the ball? As it is his 41 wickets, all Australian, cost him just 15.02 runs each, so maybe he’d have pegged that one at twenty.

But if Procter’s career had panned out that way I don’t suppose I would have been reviewing this particular booklet. As it was the lack of a Test career meant that Procter was able to spend 13 consecutive summers in county cricket with Gloucestershire. Over that time his name became synonymous with the county so it was no surprise that, a year after his sad passing, he became the subject of this tribute from the Gloucestershire Museum.

There has never been a biography of Procter but, the man himself having given his name to as many as three autobiographies, most recently in 2017, there is no shortage of material for those wanting to know about his life. It is no doubt for that reason that this booklet does not set out to summarise a life well lived, nor take any sort of statistical journey through Procter’s cricket career.

So after a two page introduction what you get are a series of appreciations, written by some of the people who knew Procter best. Amongst his West Country teammates Alan Wilkins, Jack Davey and Andy Brassington all contribute. From South Africa the roll call includes Graeme Pollock, John Traicos and Peter Kirsten and there are many illustrations of Procter at work and at play as well as a selection of items of memorabilia.

As I moved through the booklet, an experience that I have to say brings if not a tear to the eye then a slight lump to the throat, I became increasingly concerned that I had read nothing from  by way of a tribute from Barry Richards so much so that I even began to wonder whether the pair were not so close as I always fondly believed. I need not have worried though as a paragraph from Richards appears on the penultimate page just before, entirely fittingly, the booklet finishes with Procter’s own words, and his tribute to Gloucestershire.

The booklet is available by contacting the Museum by email to gcccht2014@gmail.com. The cost is £10.99 inclusive of UK postage and packing, which is quite a lot for a small booklet, but all proceeds are shared between the Museum and the Mike Procter Foundation, so two thoroughly worthwhile causes.