William Stephen "Buster" Farrer (8 December 1936 – 31 January 2025) was a South African cricketer who played in six Test matches between 1962 and 1964.
[1] His parents excelled at sport: his father Stephen captained the Border cricket team, and his mother won the South African under-18 singles tennis championship.
[2] He attended Dale College, near the family home in King William's Town, excelling in sport and captaining the school cricket team in his final year, 1954.
[10] In the mixed doubles he partnered Estelle van Tonder of South Africa to the third round, where they lost to the British pair Gerry Oakley and Pat Hird, 8–6, 6–2.
On his return he took a job in a sporting goods store in Johannesburg run by the former Yugoslavian tennis player Franjo Kukuljević.
[12] He improved his tennis in the Johannesburg club competition but was unable to reach the South African Davis Cup team.
After he returned to King William's Town to help his father with his growing sporting goods store, he gave up regular tennis because the local standard was so low, and concentrated on cricket.
The next season, he was appointed captain of Border, and after one match he was selected for South Africa in the Third Test against New Zealand in Cape Town.
Batting at number three he made only 11 and 20, but two weeks later, captaining a South African Colts XI against the New Zealanders on his home ground of East London, he hit 147 not out in the first innings, his first first-class century.
Buster ran the family's sporting goods shop in King William's Town for many years before handing it over to his son Colin.