“Having watched him, the way he used to bowl, he has given me a lot of confidence as a young player knowing someone like that is now on my journey.” – Lungi Ngidi on Charl Langeveldt.
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
IN Charl Langeveldt’s previous life he was a prison warder. So he knows all about getting out of jail. And how to transfer his knowledge of escapology to the bowlers he now coaches. South Africa benefitted greatly from those skills at Buffalo Park in East London on Wednesday, when they won a match they should have lost.
England needed 50 off the last six overs to win the first T20. By then Jason Roy had sent 36 balls careening into the night for his unbeaten 66. Eoin Morgan’s 23 not out had come off 19 deliveries. Both seemed intent on taking their team home with plenty of balls to spare. Surely Joe Denly, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Tom Curran and Chris Jordan would, between them, score what Roy and Morgan didn’t? And without having to resort to Adil Rashid and Mark Wood. So how did England shamble to 176/9? They choked.
“These type of wins, we want to be able to scrape them in the big events,” Temba Bavuma said of the only one-run defeat yet inflicted on England in their 115 matches in the format, and with a view to the T20 World Cup in Australia in October and November. “We know we’re going to be called upon to do that. The best time to start is against top teams like England.”
As big a role as England played in their downfall, it was up to South Africa to do the necessary once the rabbits were frozen in the headlights. Enter Langeveldt. Of the 90 deliveries bowled by South Africa’s seamers, more than half — 49 — were slower balls. Some were off-cutters, some leg-cutters, some tumbled down the pitch out of the back of the hand.
One, quite beautifully bowled by Dale Steyn, was still above Jonny Bairstow’s eyeline in the two metres before it reached him. Then it dropped like a dead pigeon, forcing Bairstow to stab his bat directly downward to keep the damned thing away from his pads and his wicket. Steyn smiled in wonder. Bairstow smiled in desperation. Umpire Adrian Holdstock smiled with relief that he didn’t have to decide whether the ball would have hit the stumps.
Beuran Hendricks wasn’t used until the 15th over. Dwaine Pretorius didn’t bowl at all. That prompted the conservatives — some of them on SuperSport’s commentary team — to protest, even after the match was won. Can they not take yes for an answer? Because they once played international cricket doesn’t mean they understand how international cricket is played now. When next they get the chance to talk to Langeveldt, they could do worse than learn from him so they don’t expose their ignorance and arrogance.
The bowlers won Wednesday’s game; Langeveldt’s bowlers. He forged a career not by bruising batters into submission in the time-honoured South African way but by seizing on the small things — a smidgen of swing, a modicum of movement, an attitude of all’s good — to do big things. He found ways to win matches, particularly with the white ball. Langeveldt’s 100 ODI wickets amount to a touch more than a quarter of Shaun Pollock’s South Africa record of 387. But Pollock bowled 2,571.4 overs and Langeveldt 581.3. That’s 11,941 more deliveries for Pollock, or almost four-and-a-half times as many opportunities as Langeveldt had.
Lungi Ngidi was 14 years old when Langeveldt played the last of his 87 games for South Africa in October 2010. Almost 10 years on at Buffalo Park on Wednesday, a taller, faster, blacker version of Langeveldt, who looked a lot like Ngidi, not only defended seven off the last over but had Curran caught in the deep with an off-cutter and conjured a breathlessly paceless delivery to nail Moeen’s off stump.
“He’s had a massive impact in terms of the mental side,” Ngidi said of Langeveldt’s influence. “Having watched him, the way he used to bowl, he has given me a lot of confidence as a young player knowing someone like that is now on my journey. He has made sure I back the skills that I’m good at. Where someone else would say maybe a change of [the type of] ball was needed or maybe a yorker, [he says] stick to what’s working. And it worked out just fine.”
Langeveldt’s was easily the least heralded of the appointments South Africa made in December. The headlines were reserved largely for Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis. That they had bigger playing careers than Langeveldt is beyond question. They loom larger in the memory of South Africans who remember a time when the game was in better shape. They are the poster boys for an improved present. They carry a heavier share of the hopes for a brighter future. But what do they know about getting out of jail?
First published by Cricbuzz.
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