Cape Town: Clive Rice, South Africa's first cricket captain in the post-apartheid era, passed away on Tuesday after losing his battle with septicaemia -- a potentially life threatening infection in which large amounts of bacteria are present in the blood.

The former cricketer was suffering from a brain tumour. Rice was the first post-apartheid captain of South Africa and one of the stars of Nottinghamshire County side in the 1970s and 1980s.