The Greatest Fielder of All Time: Jonty Rhodes

Hello and welcome to TellEnders. Hello and thank you for having us on TellEnders your weekly loosely cricket based podcast. This is Greg Geforce James. We have Sir Jimmy Anderson. We also have Felix White and today a very special guest, one of our all time favourite cricketers. He's played 52 tests,

245 One Day Internationals for South Africa. One of the greatest cricketers of all time. One of the, I would actually go as far They will discuss this, the greatest fielder of all time. Also played for Gloucestershire.

He's coached in the IPL now a co-owner of the Rotterdam Dockers in the new European T20 Premier League. Please welcome to tell in this, John T. Rhodes. Hi, guys.

Thank you. John T. It's a real treat to have you on this podcast. And I say that with my whole heart, John T.

Yeah. You I speak for me and Felix. I don't know about Jimmy because Jimmy's an unknowable man entity. No, I think you do speak for Jimmy.

I speak for all of us. You are one of the reasons we fell in love cricket to the extent we have fallen up with cricket. So thank you for the electricity and magnetism you showed

in a time when not everyone really bothered with electricity or magnetism. You were. You know what? It really was, can I just quickly say, Greg, I was thinking about this as we knew Johnny's coming on.

I think watching John C, watching you on TV, John C, was the first time I realized the child that fielders weren't just there to have the ball hit at them. Yes.

Because you use, my memory of you is you used to prowl, like you used to like hunt at like sort of backward point and walk towards like, like really quickly towards the ball. And I genuinely think it was the first time I felt like,

Oh, feel as though they're just to sort of protect themselves from people. Do you know what I mean, Jim? Have you got an image of Johnsey doing that? Well, going out the ball rather than the ball going at him.

Exactly. Yeah. Walking towards it. You do that though, Jim.

There's a lot. There's a lot of Johnsey in your fielding because you love fielding. This is something we talk about a lot in the podcast, Johnsey. Jimmy absolutely adores fielding and is very good at it.

Yeah, I can tell he loves it. I think you've got to though. You do it. that. I mean, you know, Johnty's played a lot of cricket. And if

you don't know fielding, it drags the time in the field drags. It's embarrassing if you if you drop catches or miss fields, you've got to put the time into to be good at it. And I think for me, like, I've spoken to Felix a lot about this one, we

did the book. When I was like 14, just 1314, just starting out in cricket, I wasn't very good at batting or bowling. So Fielding was the one thing that I could actually impact the game with. So and we had, we had, and I'm sure Johnty Nelsdale, Bankingstone pretty well.

He was our overseas player at Burnley and he was again, an unbelievable fielder. So learning from someone of his quality, I think just, yeah, made me fall in love with it. Prowling is the right word for it, Fee.

You nailed it. And I wonder, Johnty, if growing up in South Africa with all those big cats. With the big cats, I wonder whether you, you were hunting like a pack of cheetahs. Maybe that, maybe that's what you were like. And you saw that and you thought, let's do

that. But for cricket, well, I don't know. I was a bit like a warthog, I think, which was kind of, you know, on its knees, nose in the dirt digging up roots. I was a really grubby fielder, but yeah, effective. The warthogs are the one that runs with the tail up in the air. So

But when it runs, you see it. Cheetah's way more stealth and speed. And I definitely see myself as a Cheetah, more of a warthog. Because I still remember being told by the great Eddie Barlow

when he was coaching one of the Freestay, one of our provinces in South Africa. He said, you know, there was this guy, Colin Bland, that I used to play cricket with.

And that guy just used to miraculously appear in different parts of the ground. And he said, you know, everyone expects to be in the cover region and suddenly that took a quick single to midwicket and there he was.

And he said everyone can hear you from like the next stadium down the road, the football stadium across the road and why are you making all this noise? So yeah, I was a bit more grubby than a cheetah. So kind of warthog. If you're familiar with the African bush in the savannah, the warthog, Pumba as in Lion King, that was pretty much me I would say. Not very graceful,

just effective. What's interesting for a generation of cricket fans, we were all taught how to feel that we tried to feel like you. Everyone tried the one-handed pickup and dive throw at one stuff.

I loved the one-handed pickup. That is, there were people listening to this now nodding going, yeah, I tried that. Yeah, I tried that certainly. Or just some mad catch at Gully or Point or something. Yeah, because you used to release it, didn't you?

I've got an image of you like sort of horizontal in the air, releasing it as a pick up and throw. Not looking like a war dog in my mind, but anyway. Flying war dog.

But it's, I mean, the crazy thing is, you know, and it's interesting in that in my generation, I never had a fielding coach. So I never got taught anything. It was pretty much a pickup from tennis, football, hockey.

And it made me really effective in the field. And of all things, as a hockey player and a football player, I was a striker. You know, so I was trying to score goals or whatever the goalkeeper was doing, coming off the line, cutting down the angle, those kind of things.

I then implemented in the field. So, you know, so I suppose the reason why I felt a bit like more hotog than cheetah was that I didn't feel graceful. But I was I wasn't there to, you know,

I was just there to be effective. A lot of the times I kind of catch the ball and almost on my knees and guys would just say, just take one step.

But I think I perfected the camera dive, which made me look amazing. And it probably was one step away. Throwed my teammates crazy.