February 2021 – Bulletproof Truth

IPL means more than money to Morris

“It’s an absolute lottery and whatever happens on that day you’ve got absolutely no control over it.” – Chris Morris on the IPL auction.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

MONEY doesn’t seem to have changed Chris Morris. He was as affable as always in the minutes before an online press conference on Thursday. Looking into his camera, and the view it afforded onlookers, he quipped: “I’ve got to do something about my background. It used to be pictures of Faf topless.” Asked if he would be up to answering a question in Afrikaans, he replied: “I haven’t drunk enough brandy in my life to be able to speak Afrikaans.”

You might say someone who was bought for almost USD2.3-million by the Rajasthan Royals in last week’s IPL auction could afford to be cheerful. But Morris has been thus inclined since his idea of a dream car was a Volkswagen Citi Golf, which he drove until the Chennai Super Kings paid him USD625,000 in 2013. Rajasthan’s successful bid made Morris the most expensive player in IPL history, and takes his career earnings in the tournament to a shade less than USD8.2-million. That’s almost enough to buy two Koenigsegg CCXR Trevitas, the world’s highest priced new car.

And enough to pay for a lot else beyond the realm of cricket. In a world struggling to come to terms with a pandemic and in South Africa, where rampant inequality separates the privileged and the poor still more with each passing financial quarter, wasn’t USD2.3-million too much to spend on hiring a cricketer for a few weeks? “That’s not for me to answer,” Morris said. “I’ve got no control over that. That’s a question for the powers that be.”

He’s correct. Morris, like every player at the auction, does not determine his price. “It’s an absolute lottery and whatever happens on that day you’ve got absolutely no control over it. It’s an emotional rollercoaster because you’re not sure what’s going to happen on the day.”

Compared to those in more regular lines of work, players’ careers are short. Everyone, in any profession, wants to be paid as much as the bosses will allow. The IPL is as close as cricket gets to a machine that prints money. Even reporters should be thankful: in the time of Covid, the tournament is probably the single major reason they still have jobs. Then there’s this: “A lot of people look to sport as an escape from being locked up at home [during the pandemic]. It’s a nice feeling, and as sportsmen we’ve got a responsibility to provide as much entertainment as we can.”

All are arguments for paying players handsomely. But, considering the state of the real world, did Morris feel uncomfortable about having that much money slung at him for a few weeks’ work? “There are people who’ve been earning a lot more than me for the last couple of years. That’s the way the world’s going.”

That, too, is correct, as is Morris’ assertion that “cricket is a little bit behind in terms of what guys are being paid”. Elite golfers, tennis players, racing drivers and footballers make exponentially more than cricketers. Capitalism says that’s OK: “Professional sportsmen are the best in the world at what they do, so …”

The net worth of South Africa’s richest person, mining magnate and football club owner Patrice Motsepe, is estimated at USD3-billion. Morris’ net worth is, reportedly, USD17-million. That makes him 176 times poorer than Motsepe. But USD8.2-million, USD2.3-million or even USD625,000 is more than most South Africans, if they are not among the 43% of the population of working age who are unemployed, will earn in their lifetimes.

Being correct isn’t the same as being right, and it wouldn’t be right to be angry with Morris for being paid so much when all around him others are eking out little, or nothing at all. But it would be wrong not to be outraged at a system that favours the few when the many are struggling. Anyone who earns money from that system is part of it, and therefore complicit in its wrongs.

Also true is that the IPL is helping those involved in cricket at a professional level get more buck for their bang than previously. “I don’t think anybody in the cricket fraternity ever thought the game would go this way,” Morris said. “In the past cricket couldn’t set you up for the rest of your life. We can be as grateful as anyone in the world because it’s helping people provide for the rest of their lives and look after themselves.”

His father, Willie Morris, was a hard-as-nails, beanpole, moustachioed allrounder who bowled miserly slow left-arm, prized his wicket highly, and caught most of what would have flown high over other fielders’ heads in the cordon. He played 74 first-class and 70 list A matches for the then Northern Transvaal from the 1970 to the 1990s. But, because players in even the highest levels of the game in South Africa didn’t earn what amounted to a salary, Morris senior juggled cricket with property management. “He had to go from work to practice in the afternoon and then get off from work to play on weekends,” Chris Morris said. “He would come back from a long day at work and gather up the energy to hit balls to me, as a youngster, so I could catch them.”

So the idea of being able to emulate his father when South Africa’s senior domestic ranks revert to 15 provincial teams from next season — currently six franchises contest the major trophies — appealled: “It would be cool if I could get the opportunity to play for Northerns at Centurion, like my dad. To follow in Willie’s footsteps would be quite cool.”

As white South Africans, the Morrises were far better off than their black and brown compatriots. But the country’s isolation from international sport — a reaction to its white electorate’s insistence on choosing a government that brutally enforced racial segregation — meant a Test career was out of even Willie Morris’ long reach.

Not so for Chris Morris, who made his first-class debut four years after all adult South Africans were able to vote for the first time. The benefit of the end of white rule, for Morris junior, was being given the chance to play four Tests, 42 ODIs and 23 T20Is. But he was last in a South Africa shirt at Old Trafford in June 2019 in a World Cup match against Australia, and he was in the squad only because Anrich Nortjé broke a thumb before the tournament.

Why was the player able to attract more money than any other not part of South Africa’s plans? That, too, is not a question for Morris to answer. “My last conversation was just before the World Cup with Ottis [Gibson, then South Africa’s coach],” he said. “That’s where the decision was made for me to play in leagues around the world and follow what’s best for me to do as a cricketer and in my career.” He has spread himself thinly, playing 51 games for five teams in England, Australia and India, as well as in South Africa, in the not quite 20 months since his last ODI. What happens if someone from South Africa’s camp wants to revisit the situation? “I’ll have to have that conversation when it happens. There’s been a bit of chat about ‘if someone comes’. No-one has come.”

Until that happens — if it happens — Morris’ teams will get what they pay for. “It doesn’t matter who I’m playing for, I try to win every single game I play; whether I’m playing garden cricket or an international or in the IPL or anywhere else. The IPL is probably as stressful as international cricket because you’ve got the eyes of the world watching you. You’re under pressure to perform.”

The money’s not bad, either.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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South Africa look to India, England after Australia snub

“No matter what we offered them I doubt we would have been able to get them over the line.” – Graeme Smith on Australia’s no-show.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

TWO out of three ain’t bad. Especially when they’re the bigger two of the big three. So if India and England are in your corner, who cares if Australia isn’t? That’s CSA’s view, as articulated by Graeme Smith on Wednesday.

The Australians were due to play three Tests in South Africa next month but pulled out because of concerns over Covid-19 — despite CSA promising to go above and beyond what they have done to keep other teams safe during the pandemic. CSA has lodged an official complaint against CA with the ICC, but the bigger picture would seem to overshadow that scenario. Besides, the edge has been taken off that setback by engagements with India that Smith said were nearing confirmation.

“Even if we don’t win [at the ICC] — I don’t think there’s any precedent for it — the message is loud and clear,” Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, said on commentary during Wednesday’s matches in the franchise T20 tournament at Kingsmead. “It’s important that the members get together and support each other and try and find ways to get as much done as we possibly can. That added to the disappointment of Australia. Everyone [else] we’ve worked with has had that mindset and understood that. My sense is that Australia didn’t, and that’s what let us down. No matter what we offered them I doubt we would have been able to get them over the line.”

Smith said CSA’s relationships with the BCCI and the ECB were on a better footing, even in the wake of England aborting their white-ball tour to South Africa in December with half their six games unplayed. The fact that Smith and Sourav Ganguly, now the president of the BCCI, played eight Tests against each other — two of them as opposing captains — between 2004 and 2008 had strengthened the bond between the countries’ boards.

“Myself and Sourav go a long way back, and we’ve had a number of conversations,” Smith said. “India in particular have been very supportive of us. Hopefully in the next cycle we’ll have a number of tours against India that are pretty close to being finalised, actually. [ECB chief executive] Tom Harrison and the ECB have been brilliant as well. Even the way Tom handled the situation from behind the scenes [in December] with England was good. Those matches have already been rescheduled [though not announced]. There’s been a joint resolution and an understanding of that.”

Not so with the Australians. As in his playing days, Smith wasn’t willing to let them off the hook: “Australia has been the one that’s stood out in terms of difficulties. We never found the same sense of working together that we did with the other two. So there’s things that need to be improved and we’ve got to ask some hard questions of them and challenge them. That’s important for world cricket.”

Smith is also fighting on the home front. CSA was in chaos when he arrived because of years of shoddy governance by a board led by former president Chris Nenzani and ruinous management under Thabang Moroe, who has since been fired as chief executive. Acting chief executive Kugandrie Govender and company secretary Welsh Gwaza have since been suspended pending disciplinary action.

“There’ve been a number of suspensions in the leadership of CSA so the workload has certainly increased,” Smith said. “We find ourselves doing jobs we weren’t employed to do. But we’re picking up the can and trying to get CSA moving in the right direction.

“When I got involved in December I didn’t think it could get any worse, and we’ve certainly found ourselves in more challenging spaces after that. We’ve ridden quite a big wave behind the scenes. Now the objective is to push forward and take us out of the dark position we’ve been in.”

Remaining in good standing with India and England will help CSA move towards a goal that couldn’t be achieved without them. Australia? Smith didn’t say so but it was difficult not to hear it in his tone: that bridge has burnt.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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The young man and the sea

“If players know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? We don’t know.” – sports psychologist Kirsten van Heerden on bubble life.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HAPPINESS wears blue shorts. The eyes and the smile are soft. The hands hold, with care and respect, a stout yellow-belly rockcod as long as an arm. Beyond the boat a vastness of slightly ruffled, air force blue water stretches wide beneath a sky slung low with pearly clouds. In the distance a long, dark blade of land stabs the scene.

It could be the moment before the fish is returned to the ocean with amazing grace. Once found but now lost in its own freedom. Until next time. What happened before and after this instant is not recorded. But we know that the man in blue shorts standing in a boat and holding up a fish in a photograph posted on social media looks happy. And that he is Quinton de Kock.

“Can’t wait to get back on the water again!” De Kock’s caption didn’t stand out. What did was the date of his post: February 2; three days after the Karachi Test and two days before the second match of the series in Rawalpindi. The picture must have been taken some time earlier in Knysna, the quiet seaside resort on South Africa’s southern coast where De Kock lives, before he left for Pakistan. Was South Africa’s captain honestly longing to go fishing in the middle of his team’s most important series this season, and in the wake of a defeat that should have rung several alarm bells loudly?

It’s easy to leap to that question, more difficult to fathom how De Kock reached that point. Part of the answer is contained in how he has looked and sounded since the start of cricket’s bio-bubble bubble era: like the epitome of a lost cause in need of a patron saint. De Kock’s unvarnished humanity means nothing gets in the way of his instincts on the field. But it also means he struggles to hide how he feels. In the same way that a fish is a dazzling acrobat in water but, on land, in even the most caring hands, reduced to futile wriggling and gasping, De Kock’s slickness at the crease evaporates when he is sat behind a microphone looking into a camera beyond which lurks the press. What you get instead is that most precious of things: breathless honesty.

Here’s De Kock at the Wanderers on January 5, the day South Africa beat Sri Lanka with two days to spare to complete a 2-0 thumping: “Lots of small things get into your mind; things that you’re not used to in life. One day we could living kind of normally and the next you’re in lockdown. Where do we go from there? We’re stuck in a bubble, and we could be stuck in a lockdown in some place for a certain period of time, which is the worst case scenario. It’s very unsettling. I don’t know how long it can last for.”

And here he is on January 18 in Karachi, eight days before the start of that series: “Eventually [bubble life] will catch up with some players, from an emotional and mental side. You’re trying to keep yourself mentally stable and perform for your country at once. There’s only so much of that you can carry on with. But you carry on because people back home want to watch good cricket and want to watch you perform. I’ve only been home for a maximum of three weeks over the last five, six months. It’s been tough but I’m soldiering on. Going forward, two weeks quarantine is almost out of the picture because we play so much cricket.”

The context of those two online press conferences couldn’t have been more different. In the first, De Kock was a triumphant captain. In the second, he was looking forward to playing in Pakistan, a challenge no South Africa team had faced since 2007. So why, both times, was he a husk, empty of enthusiasm and parched of passion? Maybe because he had been in one bio-bubble or another, barring short intervals, since the first week of September. The bubble was an invincible opponent.

De Kock’s bio-secure blues started with arrangements for the IPL. Then came the home white-ball series against England in September and the Sri Lanka Tests in December and January. That done, it was off to Pakistan. In April, Pakistan will be in South Africa to play seven white-ball games. Another series, another bubble. South Africans still fuming about Australia’s late withdrawal from next month’s Test series over Covid fears will have to forgive De Kock if he doesn’t feel the same way — that’s one way to avoid quarantine and a bubble.

De Kock has been afforded another way. The franchise T20 competition at Kingsmead started on Friday. He is not involved, and his absence is conspicuous because South Africa’s other top players are in action. The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) revealed that De Kock is being given a break for mental health reasons. The bubble finally burst for him after the Test series in Pakistan. His parting shot to his teammates was that he would be offline and that they wouldn’t be able to find him. Last week he posted another picture: him holding a garrick of at least a metre long; the biggest of the species he has yet caught. The eyes and the smile were soft. It didn’t take a sports psychologist to see the happiness was back.

Kirsten van Heerden, who was an international swimmer for 13 years and represented South Africa at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, is indeed a sports psychologist. She’s also a player development manager with SACA, and while she doesn’t work directly with De Kock she is plugged into the challenges all players face because of the pandemic. “Often you’ll hear players say that on tours they see, pretty much, their hotel room and the cricket field,” she said. “But it’s the choice that you can go out if you want to that has been taken away. Now you can’t. That loss of control can be very difficult for players.”

Van Heerden said players can’t police what evades the Netflix firewall and leaks into their consciousness unbidden: “They’ve been given a lot more time to think and over-think, which most athletes do anyway. You drop a catch or have a bad performance, and you go back to the hotel and you’re not allowed to leave your room. There’s all this time and there’s no distraction from your thoughts.”

Life is not what we thought it was before the pandemic put the brakes on the world. But what is life now that a single positive test for Covid-19 could change everything? That is not at all clear, which is disquieting for most of us. For those accustomed to tightly regimented systems, it can be terrifying. Especially when they are marking time in the bubble.

“It would be fine if it was six weeks; even nine weeks, which is about the maximum [people can endure safely],” Van Heerden said. “But when it’s six weeks and another six weeks followed by another six weeks, it can get overwhelming. Athletes are very goal-orientated. If they know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? A lot of my job with players and athletes I work with is to say we don’t know. So we have to focus on the things we can control right now, and do the things that we know can help you in the bubble. And we don’t know if it’s going to be 10 bubbles. If you’re running the Comrades [a 90km ultra-marathon in South Africa] you can’t think of the 90th kilometre at the beginning, otherwise you’re going to be overwhelmed. It’s natural, but our job is to bring the focus back to just now, or just today, or just this week.

“Normally players wake up and their day is incredibly structured — they know what they need to do, where they’re heading and what goal they have. Now they wake up outside of that and it’s really hard for them. A lot of elite athletes get told what to do. They don’t have to think what to do. As a player, your bags magically disappear and then magically reappear outside your hotel room. I know the public will say that’s ridiculous, and that players could do that themselves. But this is the world they live in and it’s very real for them. That’s what they’ve grown up in and what they know, and to be thrown into a different world is difficult. They’re having to handle things themselves, and as strange as it may sound, for them it’s almost like having to learn a new skill.”

John Smit, who captained the Springboks to victory in rugby’s 2007 World Cup, told Van Heerden he didn’t know how to buy an airplane ticket until he planned his honeymoon. He married after playing 39 of his 111 Tests, and in eight countries other than his own. Anthony Delpech, a champion jockey who has ridden 116 Grade 1 winners in South Africa, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, was a stranger to drawing cash from an ATM: “His agent or his wife would do that.” Not knowing how to perform what most of us would regard as an everyday task is one thing. Not knowing how to recognise the difference between a pout after a poor performance and a problem that could take years to resolve is distinctly another.

“People think, ‘How can you be mentally tough and have mental health issues?’,” Van Heerden said. “I was speaking to an athlete the other day who said you have to be incredibly tough to deal with mental health issues. You can be a mentally tough cricketer, but there are things that happen in life that have nothing to do with weakness or with having a weak mind and your coping mechanisms can be overwhelmed.”

It doesn’t help that professional sport, while inconsequential to reality, can unfairly target and punish those who get it wrong. “If you make a mistake, it’s so public,” Van Heerden said. “If you are battling there’s nowhere to hide. And the public can be brutal in their comments. No-one walks out there to try and make a duck or to try and bowl badly, but in the day and age of social media everyone has an opinion. We talk to the players about social media and a lot of them are really adept at staying off it or managing it, but with nothing to do late at night you end up scrolling through Twitter. That’s not the best idea. Players are human: they’re people first. They’re mentally tough, but mental health is something different.”

The pandemic has only added to that part of the players’ challenge: “There are a lot of changes [because of the virus], and yet they still have to perform. The public is unforgiving — you’re still getting paid to play, so they expect you to win. We’re all having to adjust, but it’s not nearly as public for us as it is for elite athletes.”

To help ease the load, an app requires South Africa’s players to answer, daily, questions that indicate their levels of wellbeing. The information is forwarded to a sports psychologist — not Van Heerden — and Stephen Cook, the former Test opening batter who since the beginning of last year has been SACA’s cricket operations and player engagement manager. No-one else sees or knows what the players reveal.

“The psychologist can ask me if I’ve touched base with a guy and whether he is doing OK,” Cook said. “Sometimes he has put in a lower rating because he’s feeling a bit down in confidence after he’s had a couple of first-ballers. It might not be that he’s struggling mentally; he’s just feeling naturally a bit down that day. So it’s not perfect, but it’s a reminder to the players that there is something available. There are people there for them if they need them. Sometimes guys who get into a pickle that way, they don’t see the wood for the trees. It’s a daily reminder that someone does care about you enough to check up on you.

“For some players it’s great. For others it will be a bit of a burden. They just want to get on with life. But that’s fine. I think we’ve taken the attitude that we’ll try and help everyone, and if it helps one or two guys who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to someone, that’s fantastic. Then we’ve done something to help. It’s a piece of a puzzle rather than an ultimate one-stop shop answer.

“If I think back to mine and previous eras, you wouldn’t have opened up. It would have been seen as a sign of weakness. But now some of the best players in the world in a variety of sports are more than happy to say, ‘Listen, I’m struggling’, and feel totally safe with the perceived fallout.”

Did the app catch De Kock? We cannot know. But we do know that he handles the fish he reels in with amazing grace. And that once he has found them he allows them to be lost in their own freedom. Like he is now. Until next time.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Millions for Morris, how much for morality?

To be paid so much to play cricket at a time when that amount of money could be put to far better use will strike many as obscene.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CHRIS Morris earned enough in a few frenetic minutes on Thursday to secure Covid-19 vaccines for more than 222,000 people. Or enough to pay South Africa’s minimum wage to someone working eight hours a day, seven days a week for more than 500 years. Or to foot the bill for 270,000 inexpensive restaurant meals, or buy more than 474,000 large Big Macs, 2.1-million litres of milk, 2.3-million loaves of bread or more than 12-million eggs.

The Rajasthan Royals won a bidding bunfight with the Royal Challengers Bangalore, Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings to at the IPL auction to secure Morris’ services for this year’s tournament. The price? INR16.25 Crore, or USD2,226,250, or 32,441,582 South African Rand. In short, a lot: more than three-and-a-half times what the Chennai Super Kings spent on the allrounder in 2013. More, in fact, than anyone else in the tournament’s history. The previous record was the INR16 Crore the Delhi Daredevils paid Yuvraj Singh in 2015.

The International Monetary Fund cites South Africa as the most unequal country in the world. Morris wouldn’t be able to change that even if he gave every cent he has earned and will earn to his less fortunate compatriots. And he has shown himself to be unselfish — he used part of a previous IPL paycheque to settle the mortgage on his parents’ home. But for one person who is not a doctor, nurse, paramedic, carer for the elderly or children, ambulance driver, police officer, fire fighter, electrical engineer, plumber, taxi driver, delivery driver, anyone who works in a supermarket — from the manager to the shelf packers — garbage collector, cleaner or gravedigger to be paid so much merely to play cricket for a few short weeks at a time when that amount of money could be put to far better use will strike many as obscene and immoral. There is a lot wrong with the world, and this is one reason why. But park the indignation for a moment and ask: who among us would turn down the money?

Morris did not respond to a request for an interview, so it is difficult to gauge his feelings on the issue. But he can be sure millions of South Africans are agog. Those who can see past the sheer size of the mountain of money he has made will wonder whether he should be the IPL’s most expensive player. That, too, is difficult to say.

Currently part of the Titans squad for the franchise T20 competition at Kingsmead that starts on Friday, Morris’ most recent match in any team’s colours was for RCB against the Delhi Capitals in Abu Dhabi on November 2. Anrich Nortjé had him caught behind for a second-ball duck and he went wicketless for 19 in two overs. An abdominal muscle injury limited Morris to nine of RCB’s 15 games, so he bowled 204 fewer balls in the tournament than the Delhi Capitals’ Kagiso Rabada. But he took 11 wickets and finished 10th in terms of economy rate and ninth in the bowling averages. He was less successful with the bat, scoring 34 runs in five innings, four of them completed.

Morris helped CSK reach the final in 2013, when he took 15 wickets at an economy rate of 8.02. Two years later he claimed 13 at 7.40 to the over and was part of a Rajasthan outfit that made it as far as the second preliminary final. Another 13 wickets followed for the Delhi Daredevils in 2016, and he shaved his economy rate to 7.00 — the third-best among bowlers who had sent down at least 100 balls. That year he scored 195 runs in seven innings in which he was not out four times. He struck a dozen times for Delhi a year later, and made 154 runs in nine trips to the crease, four of them undefeated. Injury limited him to four games for Delhi in 2018, but the year after that — when Delhi made it as far as the eliminator — he took 13 wickets. Overall, then, a solid performer who at 33 has plenty of cricket left in him. But for who?

On the evidence of the matchwinning spells he has bowled throughout his career and the timely nuggets of runs he has scored, including half-centuries in every format at international level, much of what he gives the teams he represents will be valuable. South Africa seem unlikely to be among those sides. Morris last played for them in a World Cup match against Australia at Old Trafford in July 2019. The prevailing view in the camp appears to be that he is indeed a quality player, but that he is not consistent enough.

The ambivalence would seem mutual. In August 2019 Morris was listed as unavailable for a tour to India. Asked why in a text message, he replied, “Just unavailable.” Asked if that was because he had retired or signed a Kolpak contract, he wrote, “Nope.”

Why should he care that he seems unlikely to add to his four Test caps, 42 ODI appearances and 23 T20Is? He has 16.25 Crore, or 2,226,250, or 32,441,582 reasons not to give a damn. Too many, in other words.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Australia, AB and all that: The art of being Faf du Plessis

Cricket is why the world knows him, but it is only part of who he is.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

FINALLY, the Australians have got Faf du Plessis out. They’ve been bowling to him, in the middle and in their heads, since two hot November days in Adelaide in 2012. Almost nine years on, they have their man. Du Plessis was going to retire from Test cricket after Australia’s series in South Africa next month. But, since they have shied away from the tour over Covid fears, he made his announcement on social media on Wednesday.

“It has been a year of refinement in the fire for all of us. Uncertain were the times, but they brought clarity for me in many respects. My heart is clear and the time is right to walk into a new chapter. It has been an honour to play for my country in all formats of the game, but the time has come for me to retire from Test cricket.

“If someone had told me 15 years ago that I would play 69 Test matches for South Africa and captain the side, I wouldn’t have believed them. I stand in a place of utmost gratitude for a Test career full of blessings bestowed on me. Every high and low has shaped me into the man I am proud to stand as today. In all things, these instances worked towards the good of who I believe I am today.”

If that seems overly considered for a cricketer, consider that Du Plessis does nothing without due consideration. Interviews and press conferences with him are at once a boon and a bane. You know he is going to say intelligent, valuable things that will enrich any piece of writing. You also know he is going to say these things in great detail, taking care over every word; mulling their meaning, wondering about their weight. And thus you know that transcribing what he says is going to take exponentially longer than it does with other players. He knows this himself. “He’s clever,” Du Plessis said with a smile of a reporter who, at an online press conference during South Africa’s Test series in Pakistan, asked his question staccato style. “He asks quickly because he knows I’ll answer long.” Word from the South Africa camp was that, after the Pakistan series, he told his teammates individually of his decision. That would have taken a long time.

Within hours Du Plessis’ retirement post was greeted, mostly graciously, by more than 80,000 responses. Among them were messages from Jesse Kriel, a member of the 2019 World Cup-winning Springboks, Dave von Hoesslin, a former Springbok, journeyman cricketer Cameron Delport and Seth Hulley, a former World Tour professional surfer.

It’s only right that Du Plessis should attract attention from widespread quarters. Cricket is why the world knows about him, but it is only part of who he is. In August 2012, on South Africa’s tour of England, he was deep inside the pavilion in Derby wearing a chef’s tunic and giving his full attention to scores of bowls of soup. The winner of the inaugural edition of the South African version of Masterchef was in town to cook for the team and Du Plessis, something of an amateur gourmand, was lending a hand. He is famously fashion conscious, to the extent that he has designed South Africa’s team blazer. His idea of a fun day out is roaring around Cape Town on his vintage motorcycle. Or getting another tattoo, if there’s any uninked skin left. That skin is often on shirtless display, tightly wrapping muscles that might have come directly from Leonardo da Vinci’s sculpting workshop. The world would be shocked — shocked, we tell you — if Du Plessis doesn’t use beard oil. His hair has its own parody Twitter account. His Instagram account is a place of the most careful curation. But it is also here, and elsewhere on the web, that he and his wife, Imari, campaign in conjunction with their church to raise funds to provide hot meals for children going hungry during the pandemic.

There’s a lot more to this Du Plessis bloke than cricket. It follows that he took the long way to the top. In 2006 he played in the Nottinghamshire leagues, and scored a double century and three centuries for the county second XI. Notts offered a contract, but it would have required Du Plessis to become English — the county didn’t want to pay the fine levied for fielding Kolpak players. Thank you, but no thank you. In 2008 and 2009 he was back in England, this time on a Kolpak deal with Lancashire. He played 26 ODIs and four T20Is before he made his Test debut in Adelaide, and he did so then only because JP Duminy had ruptured his Achilles after the first day of the previous match, at the Gabba. He was passed over as Test captain first for AB de Villiers, then for Hashim Amla.

South African cricket is strewn with stories of those who got away, fell through the cracks, or found another way to earn money when it became apparent, even to them, that they didn’t have as much talent as some of the kids they went to school with. Du Plessis could so easily have disappeared among these cases of what might have been. Instead he made a difference so significant we can rightly name this era in the game in this country after him.

That he would do so was apparent from the start of his Test career. Wheeled out to the press to discuss his 78 in the first innings, he chose instead to talk about how he had tripped on his way down the Adelaide Oval stairs, losing a boot in process, enduring jibes from spectators all around, and wondering whether he would become the first player in Test cricket to be timed out. How would he follow that? By batting for 466 minutes — still the longest innings for South Africa — to save the match. Suddenly he was no longer a scrappy batter who was a constant threat in the field and who, before a gammy shoulder got the better of him, bowled decentish leg spin. Now he was Faf du Plessis, the man who batted for almost eight hours to defy not just anyone.

For South Africans, stopping Australia from getting what they want is better than beating them. When they lose, they go limp and say nice things, grudgingly, about the opposition. But when they are denied what they have convinced themselves is rightfully theirs they seethe with the injustice of it all so comically that it becomes a challenge not to laugh out loud in their faces.

So what happened on South Africa’s Test series in Australia in November 2016 was likely more about getting back at Du Plessis for what he had dared do in Adelaide four years earlier than disapproval of him being done for ball-tampering. Footage of Du Plessis using his fingers to fetch great gobs of spit from his mouth to shine the ball during the second Test in Hobart was broadcast by Channel Nine. That wasn’t the problem. What was at issue was the mint visible in his mouth as he did so. Four years of smouldering indignation — the gall of the bloody man getting in the way of Australia advancing fair — caught alight when the squad arrived in Adelaide, where South Africa’s over-zealous security staff body-slammed a Channel Nine reporter and kicked his microphone across the airport floor. We know this because the network had, helpfully, assigned another camera crew to film the reporter while he encroached on Du Plessis, asking questions incessantly. The story, you see, was the story itself. You have to wonder whether the reporter was wearing a box in preparation for what he must have known was coming.

None of this mattered in cricket terms because, by then, South Africa had won the series with victories at the WACA and in Hobart. Du Plessis, who had also been guilty of ball-tampering in a Test against Pakistan in Dubai in October 2013, would lose an ill-considered appeal against his conviction. But he would emerge the winner in all this with an unbeaten century of the highest quality against Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood and the every which way swinging pink ball. It was his fastest and most fluid hundred, and his glee at reaching it dazzled under Adelaide’s lights.

And even that wasn’t the last laugh, which came in March 2018 courtesy of Steve Smith, David Warner, Cameron Bancroft and a piece of sandpaper caught on camera at Newlands — briefly, before it disappeared down Bancroft’s underwear. That Du Plessis stopped himself from laughing out loud in the Australians’ faces is perhaps his greatest feat as a cricketer. Perhaps he was bored of them by then. South Africa won three of the four Test rubbers against Australia in which he played. That fateful Newlands match would confirm him as the only man to have led South Africa to series wins against them home and away.

South Africa played 13 Test series under his leadership. They won eight and were beaten in the rest. But it’s Du Plessis’ battles with Australia that defined him as a player and a captain. If the Aussies were a bicycle, Du Plessis would be the rider. In the South African view, one would be incomplete without the other. That he lost both his series at the helm against England and two of the three against Sri Lanka, which included South Africa’s first home defeat by an Asian team, doesn’t seem to matter as much as his successes against the Aussies. He is 1-1 in rubbers against India. Their win in South Africa in October 2019 was followed by another home defeat, to England.

Du Plessis didn’t help himself during the latter when, after being asked how South Africans would interpret Temba Bavuma being dropped, he said, “We do not see colour.” That was in January 2020. Battered by the fallout, much of it unfair, he resigned the captaincy in February. By July, in the throes of the Black Lives Matter conversation, he had recognised his error: “Good intentions were failed by a lack of perspective when I said on a platform that I don’t see colour. In my ignorance I silenced the struggles of others by placing my own view on it.” No politician in South Africa has that level of courage.

Then there’s AB. For too much of his career, Du Plessis’ name couldn’t be mentioned without it being tied to De Villiers’. They were both from Pretoria. They had known each other since before they had first worn long trousers. They went to the same school. They shared language and culture. They were friends. Real friends. Early on, Du Plessis was considered the more gifted player between them. But that impression lasted only as long as the most gifted player of all the players of his generation took to fully unwrap his gifts. When South Africa’s 2019 World Cup campaign veered off the rails, De Villiers — who retired in May 2018 — was either the villain or the victim of the piece. Had he offered to make a comeback? How had that offer, if it was made, been received? In his thorough, deliberate way, Du Plessis spent a long time answering those questions during press conferences. Even on Wednesday, a day on which the focus should be locked on Du Plessis and his achievements as a captain and a player, the other guy lurks like a party pooper: Wednesday was also De Villiers’ 37th birthday.

Now what? Simply, Du Plessis’ journey continues. It was underway before he tripped down the stairs in Adelaide, and he hopes to forge onward in white-ball terms. The destination doesn’t matter, but a match-winning hundred in a World Cup final wouldn’t be the worst place to end it. Against Australia, of course. You read that here first.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA comes out swinging against Aussie suits

“It would seem inappropriate to appoint a health and safety consultant outside of South Africa.” – CSA pushes for local Covid-19 experts in its battle with CA.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

THE gloves were never on in the squabble between CSA and CA over the latter’s decision to call off Australia’s Test series in South Africa next month because of Covid concerns, but knuckles are bare in the wake of CSA laying a formal complaint with the ICC. They may soon be bleeding, metaphorically speaking.

Cricbuzz broke the news of CSA’s move on Tuesday, and the details of their gripe are now to hand. They are contained in a letter to the ICC, which has been seen by Cricbuzz.

“Considering all the relevant circumstances, we do not believe that the cancellation of the tour on the part of CA amounted to ‘acceptable non-compliance’ under the World Test Championship [WTC] competition terms,” Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s acting chief executive, wrote to ICC chief executive Manu Sawhney. “Unfortunately, we have little choice but to formally progress the matter under the provisions of the WTC competition terms and the FTP [future tours programme] agreement.”

CSA says it has pulled all the stops, and more, to try and satisfy the Australians that they would be as safe as possible from the virus in South Africa. CA says that isn’t good enough. A salient fact is that 1,210 new cases were reported in South Africa on Tuesday — when only five people tested positive in Australia.

Safety fears sparked by the pandemic are accepted as reasons for boards to not fulfil WTC and FTP commitments. But that needs to be agreed between the parties or decided by the ICC. Clearly, the former is not an option in this case. So it’s over to you, Dubai.

“Hence, we now formally require ICC to proceed to obtain a security report … whereafter we will proceed to have the matter adjudicated upon by a disputes panel under the ICC disputes resolution committee terms of reference,” Moseki wrote.

The regulations say the knowledge of more than one independent authority may be required to guide the ICC towards a decision “ … if the issues raised require reports from consultants with expertise in different fields”. CSA is trying to stand firm on that point, as Moseki made plain in his letter: “We are acutely aware that matters pertaining to Covid-19 are likely to require specialist expertise and we would hope that ICC bears this in mind when making the relevant appointments. In this regard, it would seem inappropriate to appoint a health and safety consultant outside of South Africa given that such an expert consultant would be unlikely to properly and accurately comprehend the Covid-19 related risks within South Africa and how they may be adequately managed. Given the nature of the pandemic, it will inevitably require location-specific advice.”

The pandemic has morphed into a geopolitical issue because the developed world has become suspicious of other countries’ efforts to contain the spread of the disease, even though many developing nations have had more success at fighting the scourge than First World countries. But South Africa has had a high infection rate — which is receding — and a strain of the virus that was first detected there has proved resistant to some of the available vaccines.

So the ICC might need convincing that an expert based in South Africa would be considered sufficiently neutral. But it is equally true that only scientists in the country will have a comprehensive grip on the coronavirus realities in South Africa.

The requirement that whoever does the job has five days after they are appointed to submit their report to the ICC surely means experts in South Africa will be enlisted. But the ICC could allow the consultants more time to do their work.

Even though Moseki used the word “cancellation” in his letter, the series has officially been postponed. With CSA set to earn between USD2-million and USD2.7-million in broadcast rights from the rubber, it will be keen to see it rescheduled. Failing that, for CA to cough up at least some money as compensation for what CSA has spent on trying to convince Australia to tour.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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COVID means cricket needs to talk – and do something – about India, England and Australia

“I don’t think world cricket wants three nations competing against each other [almost exclusively] in 10 years’ time. How does that benefit the game? It doesn’t.” – Graeme Smith

Telford Vice | Cape Town

INDIANS’ best cricket friends aren’t all English and Australian. The English’s best friends aren’t all Indian and Australian. Australians’ best friends aren’t all English and Indian. But, given the way England and Australia are locked in orbit around India, we would be forgiven for thinking they were all of the above.

India and England are in Chennai playing the second of four Tests. The teams will then contest eight white-ball games. In August and September, India will be in England for five Tests. Australia played six white-ball matches in England last September, then went home to face India for six more and four Tests. That’s 33 games involving only the big three from last September to the next.

During the same period, New Zealand will have played five matches in the format against England and India — who are also their opponents in six white-ball games — and five T20Is against Australia. Add another game if India, England or Australia reach the World Test Championship final, as New Zealand have done, and the Kiwis get to 17 matches against India, England and Australia.

New Zealand are the No. 1-ranked Test team and they have been finalists in the last two World Cups. They should be cricket’s hottest property. But it’s money, not merit, that decides the pecking order of the game’s teams. India raise most of cricket’s revenue so they get to call the shots. And they want to play England and Australia — the game’s other bigger markets, though lesser than India — more often than other teams.

But, compared to England or Australia, India also offer other teams more opportunities. Between the end of the 2021 T20 World Cup in November and the 2023 World Cup, the current version of the ICC’s future tours programme (FTP) says India will play sides who are not England or Australia 45 times. Australia will take on teams who are not India or England in 38 games. England? On that score, 19 matches. That’s not to cast the Indians as altruistic: they will host both of those tournaments, and make vast amounts of money in the process.

And there’s no arguing with their right to do so, considering the way the game is structured. In terms of cricket’s following and thus its financial reality, India is the sun at the centre of international cricket’s solar system. England and Australia are moons that circulate the star and exert significant gravitational pull on the minor planets scattered beyond. The ICC — at board level, not in its valuable, hardworking operations arm — is the vacuum of outer space all around, apparently connecting disparate bodies but in effect ensuring the status quo is maintained. Everyone in the system knows proximity to India is vital for survival, but also that no sunblock is strong enough to ward off the deadly damage this sun could do if it so chose. T20 leagues are black holes that suck talent and resources away from the game’s more conventional centres, sometimes never to be seen again.

What if the ICC was the sun, and made the planets orbit it identically so each received the same amount of life-giving warmth? And ring-fenced the black holes, where entrance and exit would be tightly controlled? Or was cricket better served by one giant star keeping everything else alive, and sometimes flaring with bursts of greed?

“The game needs leadership right now,” Graeme Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, told an online press conference on Monday. “It needs to understand the complexities. I don’t think world cricket wants three nations competing against each other [almost exclusively] in 10 years’ time. How does that benefit the game? It doesn’t. I think that will then amplify the [T20] leagues, and the leagues will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And probably the rest of the member nations will have little to no content. If the leadership at the ICC don’t address these things now … it’s been fast-tracked because of Covid. These issues are becoming more and more relevant and amplified. I think the ICC was caught a little off guard because of some of these issues.”

Covid-19 is changing everything. Not only in cricket’s solar system, but in galaxies far, far away. The universe will never be the same. Among the casualties is Australia’s Test series in South Africa, which was to have been played next month but was postponed after CA balked at sending a team to a country where the virus is exponentially more prevalent than in theirs — but not before making CSA go far above and beyond what they would have done, even considering the pandemic, to try and secure an agreement for the tour to go ahead. CA’s decision precipitated an ongoing meteor shower.

“The relationship [between CSA and CA] is definitely strained at this stage,” Smith said. “There’s an effort, certainly from our side, to engage and to set up a meeting; more at board level now. I believe that Covid is even amplifying the haves and the have-nots, the relationships across the board and how cricket’s future landscape is going to be handled. The FTP is going to be a hugely challenging thing with potentially eight ICC tournaments in eight years, an extended IPL and a lot of the calendar dominated by India, England and Australia. It makes it extremely challenging for the rest of the member nations. And when things happen, like they’ve just happened, it amplifies that stress on nations like us and the other members that are looking for good content. Certainly, engagement needs to happen to improve things between South Africa and Australia.”

Smith was the epitome of certainty as a player. You knew he would bat with guts and grit, come hell, high water or a broken hand, as sure as you knew the sun would rise. But, now that he’s joined the ranks of the suits, certainty is almost as unknown as life on Mars.

For instance, South Africa’s seven-match white-ball home series against Pakistan in April seems set to clash with the start of the IPL. Will CSA insist that their players who are involved in the tournament stay on in South Africa and respect what is, ostensibly, the higher priority? “We need to invest in South African cricket and it needs to come first, but it’s more complex than that,” Smith said. “We also have made a commitment to release our players over the years to the IPL. There’s been a window that we’ve committed to as CSA. It’s been in the calendar. It is something we’ll need to robustly debate and make a decision in the coming days.”

Sundar Raman, the IPL’s former chief operating officer, estimated in a report released in May last year that India generated 45% of cricket’s global revenue. Of that, 75% was earned by the IPL. Mess with the tournament and you’re asking for an audience with Darth Vader himself, regardless of whether you come in peace.

The FTP says South Africa will host India in December and next January, which would pump much-needed funds into CSA’s depleted coffers. Might that venture, and the commitments other teams have made, come to fruition? “Final sign-off on all those things is in the process, but those little details take a bit more time,” Smith said. “Especially now with every nation trying to fill the gaps that were caused by Covid. It’s a bit of a bunfight out there.”

“I feel like I’ve become a doctor over the last six months with the amount of knowledge I’ve gained on Covid and dealing with it. If anyone had a choice it would be to get back to normal. Let’s get crowds in, let’s get cricket played, let’s go back to the way it was. But we don’t know when that’s going to be a reality.”

It is unlikely that the coronavirus will be allowed to spark a supernova that extinguishes India’s dominance. Not least because cricket knows that without India it would be a far darker, colder, more lifeless place. But there is no doubting that the pandemic is the big bang that is realigning the game’s planets. Into what order has yet to be revealed.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA interim board term extended

Will be in office for two more months.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

SOUTH Africa’s government has extended the term of CSA’s interim board until April 15, two-and-a-half months after its tenure was first set to end.

Nathi Mthethwa, the sports minister, announced the establishment of the board on October 30 and said it would be in office for three months. He said then that he might extend the board’s term, which he did first until February 15. A ministry release on Monday said the body would stay on for two more months.

The structure was appointed in the wake of years of mismanagement and ethics failures overseen by an elected board. Senior staff members have been suspended pending disciplinary proceedings and an annual meeting was not held last year.

The release said the board had been “tasked to expeditiously deal with current governance systems, structures and procedures”, and that Mthethwa had “considered and was persuaded by the rationale for the requested two-month extension, which was influenced by such external issues as the disciplinary hearings as well as consultations with internal and external stakeholders”. He was “persuaded to grant the extension on the grounds stated, he has consulted with the members council [CSA’s highest authority] and it was unanimously concluded that this is the best decision for cricket”.

The interim board has itself not been immune to instability. Of its original nine members, Omphile Ramela and Xolani Vonya were recused in December. Ramela was subsequently removed but is fighting that decision. Vonya has returned to the board. Zak Yacoob resigned as chair last month in the wake of the publication of a recording of his abusive tirade targetting a journalist. Board member Stavros Nicolaou replaced Yacoob in the chair.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Miller massacre can’t stop everything coming up Valentine’s roses for Pakistan

It’s one thing to be given an opportunity, another to take it. To David Miller’s credit, he did.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

UNTIL Saturday, all David Miller and Al Capone shared was that they both swung a bat left-handed — Miller for the fences, Capone for the skulls of those he thought had crossed him. Now both are implicated in Valentine’s Day massacres separated by 11,640 kilometres and 92 years.

Number 2,122 North Clark Street on Chicago’s north side is a long way from Block E2 in Hafeez Kardar Road in Lahore’s Gulberg III district in every sense. At 10.30am on February 14, 1929, four men associated with Capone put seven members of a rival gang against a garage wall and machine-gunned them to death. The headline in the papers wrote itself: “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre”. On a cool, misty evening at Gaddafi Stadium on Saturday, Pakistan’s bowlers employed far more skill than mafia murderers to mow down South Africa’s plodding batters more or less where they stood. But that wasn’t Saturday’s happily bloodless massacre.

South Africa were 46/4 when Miller arrived at the scene of what was fast coagulating into a crime against batting. Twenty-five balls later they were 65/7. The Pakistanis had bowled with precision and penetration on a turning pitch, but the South Africans looked less like cricketers and more like clumsily bludgeoning mobsters as they lurched into ill-thought, ill-played, ill-fated strokes. Having kept the series alive by winning on Friday — their first success of the tour in the wake of losses in both Tests and the first T20I — they seemed to be going gently into that good night.

Miller had gone a dozen innings in the format, eight of them completed, without reaching 50. Before the series he had spoken of making his seniority — his 78 T20I caps were almost three times as many as anyone else in the squad — count for something against opponents widely written up as superior. This was his chance to make good on that hope. It’s one thing to be given an opportunity, another to take it. To Miller’s credit, he did.

He faced three balls for two runs before he hit Usman Qadir through backward square leg for four. There were four more were that came from, along with seven sixes. His unbeaten 85 came off 45 balls and was the closest he has yet ventured to a second century in the format. There was more than a touch of Capone’s intent in the last over of the innings, when Miller launched four sixes off Faheem Ashraf. Of the 58 runs scored in the unbroken stand, Miller owned 47. The last four overs yielded 54. Forty-five were Miller’s. And yet, as he walked off with Lutho Sipamla’s arm garlanding his shoulders, he was muttering sternly — presumably about the three deliveries in the final over, one a wide, that he had not punished.

Thus were South Africa batted back into the game. If you’re Pakistan, make that battered. Babar Azam had won the toss for the first time in the series, and so was able to give his bowlers the chance to utilise a ball drier than it would be later in the game when the fog thickened. Until Miller’s assault, it seemed the attack’s excellence — particularly that of debutant leg spinner Zahid Mahmood, who took 3/40 — had won the day and the series. But, suddenly, Pakistan had serious batting to do. Even so, only once in the seven day-night T20Is at this ground that had been won by the team batting first had they scored fewer than South Africa’s 164/8.

Babar opened with Mohammad Rizwan in the first two games and was dismissed for nought and five in the first and second overs. Did that influence his decision to come in at first drop on Saturday? That proved the right thing to do, and not only because Rizwan and Haider Ali gave Pakistan stability in a first-wicket stand of 51. On top of that, Babar made 44 and was able to marshall the innings until the 14th over.

While that was happening Tabraiz Shamsi was counterpunching for all his worth. His first delivery of the match, to Haider in the seventh over, pitched outside off stump and jagged so sharply it hit the top of leg. His next over brought Rizwan’s wicket, trapped in front for 42. The downfalls of Hussain Talat and Asif Ali would complete Shamsi’s career-best haul of 4/25.

Pakistan needed 40 off 30 when Shamsi had completed his four overs, and 28 off 18 after Bjorn Fortuin had bowled the last over of spin seen in the match. So the home side were, by then, favourites to win. But South Africa’s seamers allowed whatever needle there was left in the contest to escape. Dwaine Pretorius — Saturday’s hero for his 5/17 — went for 12 in an over and Andile Phehlukwayo looked like he was bowling to an armed and dangerous Capone himself in what became the last over, which bled 20 runs.

Pakistan’s victory made them the first team to win 100 T20Is, which they achieved in their 163rd game in the format. South Africa slipped to their first defeat in seven bilateral T20I series in Asia and the United Arab Emirates, but their fourth successive series loss in the format.

Miller took South Africa closer than they should have come to pulling the series out of the fire, and they will hold up their performance on Friday as a model for the future. So Mark Boucher and his staff will return home happier than they would have been after the Tests. But there is work to do. As Boucher told an online press conference: “We didn’t come here to lose, and that’s tough.”

Not a lot of cricket is played in the mean streets of Chicago, but Boucher’s message would be understood there, too.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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The earth moves, and South Africa change direction

“Making sure that the batter doesn’t really know which ball is coming is key, and we did that really well today.” – Dwaine Pretorius

Telford Vice | Cape Town

EVERY journalist surely has had “small earthquake far away, none dead” slung at them by newsroom denizens as a prime example of what in the trade is called a non-story: not worth writing nor bothering readers about. At 6.4 on the Richter scale, the rumble that sent shudders upward and outward from 80 kilometres below Tajikistan just after 10pm on Friday was not small. Happily, it killed no-one. And, for South Africans, it was far away.

But it was felt in Lahore, where the earth moved again less than 24 hours later. As before, no-one was harmed. This time the news was indeed noted in faraway South Africa — because, for the first time on the tour of Pakistan, the visitors won.

Victory in the second T20I won’t answer the searching questions asked of South Africa while Pakistan were winning the Karachi and Rawalpindi Tests. But it was a step in the other direction from the shamble dictated by the dreary drumbeat of defeat, which before Saturday included five straight defeats in T20Is. This performance wasn’t perfect — Reeza Hendricks excepted, the top order batting was shaky — but when you’ve lost six of your last eight games across the formats, as South Africa have done, any win will do. This win, achieved by six wickets with 22 balls to spare, was better than most. The confidence generated in Thursday’s first T20I, which Pakistan won by three runs, was kept and most of the lesser aspects of that display were jettisoned.

“We learnt a lot of lessons out of the previous game,” Dwaine Pretorius told an online press conference. “Losing that one hurt us quite a bit. We went back to the drawingboard and devised a few plans as the bowling unit, who as a whole stuck to it really well today.”

The batters have let the side down more often than not. What changed on Saturday? “Especially in T20s, we’ve been playing a lot of good cricket,” Pretorius said. “I honestly believe we’ve maybe been losing one or two overs really badly. We’ve been trying to focus on, whenever that bad patch comes, not losing clusters of wickets. So we keep our intent high and don’t lose it.”

South Africa’s first hero was Tabraiz Shamsi, who didn’t concede more than five runs in any of his first three overs and came within a single of going scoreless in his fourth. He also had the reverse-sweeping Hussain Talat caught at backward point. Wrist spin of such high quality is rarely seen, nevermind when Lahore’s night sky is thick with the fog that makes gripping the ball securely difficult. Perhaps Shamsi was helped by the fact that the pitch didn’t offer as much turn as the surface used on Thursday. So conditions were closer to what he grew up with.

Then Pretorius trapped Babar Azam in front with his second delivery and ripped through the middle order to take 5/17. Ryan McLaren, David Wiese and Imran Tahir, twice, have also taken five wickets for South Africa’s men’s team in a T20I. But none have done so for so few runs. Pretorius delivered the 49th T20I five-wicket-haul in the 1,121st men’s match in the format. Twenty-four of them cost more runs than his effort. Pretorius’ haul was also the first five-for in the format in Pakistan, and the best performance against the Pakistanis in T20Is. He earned his success with a canny mix of slower balls and yorkers, not a little intelligence, and a more firmly braced front leg to make the most of his 1.86 metres.

“To say it was quite hard [to change his action] would be an under-statement,” Pretorius said. “I’ve been working for five to six months just getting that one thing right. Hopefully I can progress and make sure I can get the most out of my technique. You’re always looking for that five to 10% you can improve.

“I don’t have to think about it too much anymore, so I can focus more on the plans and the execution. It’s getting better but there’s still a lot I need to work on. I’ll keep doing that work, and hopefully in a couple of months we’ll see Dwaine 2.0.”

Pretorius had praise for South Africa’s support staff, notably bowling coach Charl Langeveldt: “I’ve learnt from so many guys involved here, especially Charl. Making sure that the batter doesn’t really know which ball is coming is key, and we did that really well today.”

Pakistan were limited to fewer than 10 runs in 14 of their overs. Three of the last four sailed for a dozen runs or more, thanks to Faheem Ashraf’s 12-ball 30 not out. But it took them 22 fewer balls to reach 100 on Thursday, when they scored 25 more runs. And on Saturday they owed a lot to Mohammad Rizwan, a centurion in his previous two innings, staying until the 16th over for his 51. Would South Africa’s brittle batting stay in one piece long enough for the bowlers’ hard work not to be wasted this time?

The question hung in the mist when Shaheen Afridi dazzled Janneman Malan with the first delivery of the innings, which shot off the outside edge and past the stumps. Malan was still caught in the headlights when the second ball, pitched on his legs, took his thigh pad on its way to bowling him. In his next over Afridi induced Jon-Jon Smuts to shovel a catch to mid-off. At 21/2 after 14 deliveries and at 46/2 after the powerplay — the same score as Pakistan at that stage — the ghosts of what had gone before in the past three weeks were set aswirl in the cold, damp murk that cloaked the scene.

But Hendricks and Pite van Biljon banished them with a stand of 77 off 54 balls. Van Biljon lived interestingly, using the back of his bat to reverse sweep Mohammad Nawaz for four and surviving being stumped off Usman Qadir because the leg spinner’s heel — which remains above the ground in his delivery stride — was adjudged not to have cut the line of the crease. Hendricks stayed out of that kind of trouble in a buttoned-down innings. Each scored 42. Qadir, all but unplayable in taking 2/4 in his first two overs on Thursday, hardly turned the ball until his last over, when suddenly he ragged it square. Too late, you could hear all of Pakistan saying as the nation stared at their preferred device.

Hendricks and Van Biljon were dismissed eight balls apart, but the age, experience and nous of David Miller and Heinrich Klaasen dispelled any notion of the contest being turned on its head. A half-chance or so wasn’t taken and edges went for four, and Miller just about sealed the deal with a booming six over long-on off Iftikhar Ahmed. That left one to get, and Miller duly dabbed the next ball into the covers for the single.

It was a stroke that spoke of South Africa’s respect for their worthy opponents, maybe because the tams will be at the same place at the same time on Sunday to decide the series. And because, until the matter is settled, you never know what could go bump in the night.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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