"I think the game is about conversations and fellowship," he says. "Yes, the stats are great and it's interesting to see who won and lost, but the essence of the game is its integrity and that of the people involved.

"It's about fun and enjoyment. I'm very old-fashioned, but cricket has been an absolute gift for me. It's given me so much pleasure, so many extraordinary experiences and I have met magnificent people because of it."

Of Mike Brearley, his captain at Middlesex during their successful 1980 season, Van der Bijl says: "He's the only person I know who actually played cricket because he wanted to captain to understand human emotions and people's potential - a perfect platform for his profession as a pyschoanalyst. Cricket attracts such remarkable people."

Despite an approach that might sound more at home in a Sunday league than the ego-fuelled, results-driven international scene of today, Van der Bijl was hugely successful, but never earned an official international cap because of South Africa's isolation.

A giant of a man who combined nagging accuracy with alarming bounce, he was arguably the greatest loss among a group once dubbed "God's forgotten cricketers" by the press.

Though he was picked for the 1971-72 tour of Australia, he never expected it to go ahead as anti-apartheid sentiment spread through the cricket world.

It meant his father, who made 125 and 97 in the 1939 "timeless test" in Durban, was the only man in the Van der Bijl family with an official test cap.

"We have an ironic family history in that my dad's uncle was picked in 1896 to play for South Africa in England and couldn't go for business reasons," explains Van der Bijl, 63.

"I was picked and couldn't go for political reasons. So three generations were picked and we only got one cap between us."

For the record, Van der Bijl - who was a teacher during his playing days - took 767 wickets for Natal, Transvaal and Middlesex at an average of 16.54 through the 1970s and early '80s, and claimed 29 wickets in six rebel "tests". He stopped playing in 1983.

Based in Dubai for the past three years as the ICC's umpires and referees manager, Van der Bijl is making up for the years lost in isolation by living in one of the world's most culturally diverse cities at the centre of the global game.

He draws satisfaction from the smooth running of international matches, and along with wife Bev is enjoying the Middle Eastern surrounds.

"One of the gifts of being in Dubai is that you start to understand the other cultures, religions and nationalities.

"One of my great beliefs in life is that we teach history the wrong way round. The first thing you should learn as a child is that we're part of the human race; the last thing you learn is that you happen to be Protestant, South African and from European descent. Being in Dubai reinforces that."