‘The Victor Within’

January 25, 2001 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp — 25/01/2001

Imag­ine hav­ing a ‘frog’ in your throat and not being able to clear it. Not even being able to try and clear it. Imag­ine hav­ing a cold and nev­er being able to blow your nose, or even wipe it. Imag­ine nev­er being able to swat away a fly when it lands on you, or scratch an itch. Ever.

Then imag­ine that you were one of the best, most tal­ent­ed sports­men of your gen­er­a­tion, not just in your city but in the coun­try. And pos­si­bly, prob­a­bly, the world.

Vic­tor Ver­meulen is 27 now. He played three straight years for SA Schools and still holds the record for the high­est score ever made at Nuffield Week. Just ahead of Graeme Pol­lock. Actu­al­ly, the two men had sev­er­al things in com­mon. Tall, left-hand­ed, absurd­ly fear­less and with an abil­i­ty to destroy a bowl­ing attack that only comes along once every sec­ond gen­er­a­tion, if that.

A friend and con­tem­po­rary of Vic­tor’s, Adam Bach­er, says he has no doubt his mate would be con­test­ing Her­schelle Gibbs’ open­ing slot in the nation­al team had he not found him­self in today’s predica­ment. Adam is too diplo­mat­ic to say so direct­ly, but you know what he is say­ing is that Vic­tor had a tal­ent even more spe­cial than Gibbs’.

Vic was part of the very first post-iso­la­tion team to tour the UK, the Trans­vaal squad of ear­ly 1992. He was just 19, but a cou­ple of months lat­er he was select­ed for the ‘A’ team. His life­long dream, to play crick­et for the ‘Mean Machine’ and his coun­try, was bang on course. Ahead of sched­ule, even.

Then anoth­er bang. Vic­tor dived into a swim­ming pool and snapped his neck. He is a quad­ri­pleg­ic now, which means he has no move­ment below his neck and is obvi­ous­ly con­fined to a wheel­chair. But it is only his body that is con­fined. Very, very much only his body.

I have a copy of his book, signed by him with a pen placed in his mouth by his moth­er and best friend, Isabel­la. It is Isabel­la, and his sec­ond ‘Mom’ Mag­gie, that do every­thing for Vic these days. They ‘cough’ him, they blow his nose and they swat away his flies. “Don’t tell me flies are stu­pid,” says Vic, “because in a room of 50 peo­ple it is the quad­ri­pleg­ic’s nose they will land on.”

I have a lot of ‘crick­et’ books, and this one of the small­est. In size, that is. A mod­est, inex­pen­sive paper­back along­side so many fat, expen­sive, self-impor­tant hard­backs. But it is the only one that I have read with­out putting down.

Nel­son Man­dela is one of thou­sands of peo­ple who have met Vic and instinc­tive­ly held out a hand in greet­ing. Vic always makes a joke, with­out caus­ing embar­rass­ment: “Sor­ry I can’t shake hands sir,” he said with a straight face. “Not because I’m a racist but because I can’t move!”

I did the same when I met Vic, but my oth­er hand instinc­tive­ly reached across and put his hand in mine when I realised what I’d done. I want­ed to shake this man’s hand and my brain would­n’t take no for an answer! Vic’s brain has nev­er, ever tak­en no for answer, it seems. It’s just his body that says ‘no’ these days.

Vic­tor’s book — “The Vic­tor With­in” — is spon­sored by SAB so I hope that means he will do rea­son­ably well from it, finan­cial­ly that is. The rea­son peo­ple should buy a copy, though, is for them­selves, not for Vic. It’s the most spir­i­tu­al­ly uplift­ing mes­sage I can remem­ber read­ing. To Vic­tor Ver­meulen, thank you. Real­ly, thank you.