Anrich Nortjé – Bulletproof Truth

Nortjé’s absence conspicuous on CSA contract list

Only Kagiso Rabada has taken more test and ODI wickets during Anrich Nortjé’s career. Yet CSA have not contracted Nortjé.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

QUINTON de Kock, Dean Elgar, Sisanda Magala, Wayne Parnell and Keegan Petersen were not on the list of contracted men’s players CSA announced on Tuesday. Fair enough, in every instance. But the case of Anrich Nortjé, who also wasn’t named, raises questions.

De Kock, an all-format star until December 2021, now plays only T20Is. Test specialist Elgar has retired. Magala and Parnell each featured in only seven of South Africa’s 33 white-ball matches last year, and Petersen in just two of their four Tests.

Nortjé, also an all-format performer, appeared in only nine of those 37 games. But that was due to a lumbar stress fracture that kept him out of action from September 10 last year to March 7 this year.

At 30 he is in the prime of his career and among the fastest and most effective bowlers in the game. From his Test and ODI debuts in October and March 2019 only Kagiso Rabada has taken more wickets for South Africa in those formats, and none of Nortjé’s current teammates have a better T20I economy rate.

Nortjé returned to action in three matches for Eastern Province in the ongoing CSA T20 Challenge, the last two of them five days apart. He bowled all four of his overs in each game and kept a tidy enough economy rate of 6.83, and joined Delhi Capitals following the birth of his and his wife Micaela Nortjé’s first child last Tuesday.

If Nortjé is fit enough for most of what will be a gruelling IPL campaign — he missed Delhi’s first match on Saturday to be with his newly enlarged family — why isn’t he fit enough to be recontracted by CSA? Because, it seems, he wants to carefully manage the rest of his career.

Cricbuzz understands Nortjé has told CSA he wants to concentrate on T20 cricket — franchise and international — for most of this year before extending himself to ODIs by the end of 2024. That’s understandable for someone who missed the 2019 IPL and has been ruled out of the last two World Cups by injuries. Test cricket? We may have seen the last of Nortjé in whites. But, importantly, he has not retired from the international arena.

So the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the United States in June remains on his radar. The tournament is likely to be De Kock’s swansong in a South Africa shirt. That’s if he cracks the selectorial nod. De Kock scored a 44-ball 100 in a T20I against West Indies in Centurion in March last year, but in 24 subsequent innings in the format — for South Africa, Lucknow Super Giants, Melbourne Renegades and Durban’s Super Giants — he has passed 50 only twice, and been dismissed for three ducks and six other single-figure scores. He knows he has work to do to make the T20 World Cup squad.

Kyle Verreynne and David Bedingham could consider themselves unlucky not to be contracted. Verreynne scored consistently in the SA20 and the domestic first-class competition, and Bedingham’s 110 in Hamilton was among the few positives of South Africa’s Test series in New Zealand in February. Nandré Burger and Tony de Zorzi are the new faces among the 18 — down from last year’s 20 — who have landed contracts. There was good news for Andile Phehlukwayo, who is back in the centrally paid ranks despite playing for South Africa only six times in 2023.

There wasn’t as much to report from the women’s list, which increased by one to 16 players. Ayanda Hlubi and Eliz-Mari Marx have signed up and the only notable absence is that of Shabnim Ismail, who has retired.

CSA contracted players for 2024/25:

Men: Temba Bavuma, Nandré Burger, Gerald Coetzee, Tony de Zorzi, Bjorn Fortuin, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Andile Phehlukwayo, Kagiso Rabada, Ryan Rickelton, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tristan Stubbs, Rassie van der Dussen.

Women: Anneke Bosch, Tazmin Brits, Nadine de Klerk, Lara Goodall, Ayanda Hlubi, Sinalo Jafta, Marizanne Kapp, Ayabonga Khaka, Masabata Klaas, Suné Luus, Eliz-Mari Marx, Nonkululeko Mlaba, Tumi Sekhukhune, Chloé Tryon, Delmi Tucker, Laura Wolvaardt.

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Nortjé back, but balancing babies and bowling

“Anrich is a low-maintenance cricketer. He does his work and gets on with it.” – Robin Peterson

Telford Vice / Cape Town

ANRICH Nortjé didn’t go around the world in 80 days. He went nowhere, in a cricket sense, for 100 days more than that. When the monster moustache with a man attached stood ready to bowl on Friday, the equivalent of six months had passed since that last happened in a competitive match.

Delhi Capitals fans will thus expect Nortjé to be on hand for their first match of the IPL against Punjab Kings in Mullanpur on March 23. But they may need to temper their hopes with realism. Whether he will or won’t be there could hinge on reasons that go beyond cricket.

Nortjé’s appearance for the Warriors in a CSA T20 Challenge match against the Tuskers at St George’s Park was the first time he had played in an official game since the second ODI against Australia in Bloemfontein on September 9 last year — when he left the field after bowling five overs. A lumbar stress fracture was discovered. It kept him out of the World Cup, South Africa’s Test series against India, and the SA20. He spent some of the downtime popping up in familiar places, notably as an ambassador during the men’s under-19 World Cup in South Africa in January and February.

Nortjé’s 180 days of going nowhere slowly ended successfully on Friday. He was upstaged by Marco Jansen’s 4/19, but all things considered he would have been satisfied with his return of 0/12. His readiness wasn’t tested by bowling consecutive overs — he sent down the second, sixth, ninth and 15th — and the opposition weren’t the strongest. The Tuskers were bowled out for 88 and have lost both of their matches. But only eight of Nortjé’s 24 deliveries yielded runs off the bat and he was hit for just one four.

“He came through well,” Warriors coach Robin Peterson told Cricbuzz, adding that Nortjé had played two practice matches before his return. “His pace was up; he’s as quick as I’ve seen him. He looks happy with his body. Now his target is playing back-to-back competitive games.”

That won’t happen before Sunday. Micaela Nortjé is due to give birth to the couple’s first child imminently. Consequently Nortjé is not leaving Gqeberha for the Warriors’ away games. He missed Sunday’s match against the Dolphins in Durban and won’t be in Centurion for the clash with the Titans on Wednesday. But he has been pencilled in for the home game against Boland on Sunday.

Nortjé is among the fastest bowlers in the game: he owns three of the IPL’s 10 all-time quickest deliveries, all three of them upwards of 150 kilometres and hour. To keep his membership of that club he needs to be able to trust his natural equipment to perform accordingly.

Nortjé missed the 2019 IPL because of a shoulder injury and, that same year, the World Cup with a hand problem. He has had to abide other absences forced by physical agonies. Even though he has recovered from his latest setback, could he still believe in a body that will turn 31 in November?

“There’s always that element of getting confident in the machine again,” Peterson said. “But Anrich is incredibly professional. He’s had injuries before, so he’s got some sort of formula on how to recover and what to do. The more I watch him bowl, the more he seems fine. He looks fit and healthy. He looks happy.”

What was his mental state? “He’s rock solid,” Peterson said. “He’s got no issues. Anrich is a low-maintenance cricketer. He does his work and gets on with it.”

This is good news for Delhi’s fans but also concerning. They will welcome the fact that Nortjé is fit and firing again. They will also wonder whether he will be good to go for them only six days after he is due to play on Sunday. Even if he is, he will go into cricket’s biggest tournament with precious little bowling behind him.

But, as Phileas Fogg tells fellow members of the Reform Club rendered incredulous at his assertion that he can make it around the world in as few as 80 days, “A well-used minimum suffices for everything.”

The bigger issue is whether Nortjé becomes a father in time to reach India and perform, in Mullanpur on March 23, for a franchise who pay him USD785,000 — more than 10 times the value of his annual CSA contract — to bowl like the wind.

The still bigger issue is that he is contractually bound to, sooner rather than later, leave behind the woman he loves and their precious newborn and plunge into the madness of the IPL. All that money buys a lot of nappies, but not happiness.

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Simons says turn runs to rupees

“Someone’s going to punch him in the nose at some point.” – Eric Simons on Gerald Coetzee

Telford Vice / Delhi

SACHIN Tendulkar isn’t among the people you expect to see at a bus stop in downtown Mumbai. But there he was on Thursday, smiling brightly from the sidelines of the vast tangle of anything on wheels and anyone on foot that starts before dawn and continues long after dusk on the streets of one of the world’s most bustling cities.

A younger, leaner, more carefully coiffed Tendulkar, that is, who beamed into a hot and humid afternoon from a poster stuck to the wall of the bus shelter. Whatever he was advertising mattered less than the message the sight of him conveyed: you’re in India, where cricket’s preferred currency isn’t the rupee but runs. Near the airport a giant billboard starring an impossibly suave Virat Kohli suggested much the same: here, of all places, bat properly if you want to stay in the game.

If two of cricket’s finest batters say so who could possibly argue? The point was proved by England’s flaccid batting in the opening match of the men’s World Cup in Ahmedabad on Thursday — and, more forcefully, by the Kiwis’ furious response at the crease.

But what if you’re the person responsible for turning opponents’ runs into rupees? In South Africa’s dressingroom that buck stops with Eric Simons, their bowling coach, who told a press conference in Delhi, where his charges begin their campaign against Sri Lanka on Saturday, “I think we’re going to see a high-scoring tournament and good pitches. You’re going to need every cog in your machine working well when it comes to bowling.”

And if some of the key cogs are in for repairs? South Africa’s challenge, and by extension Simons’, is how to get the machine to deliver the kind of performance it might have been capable of had Anrich Nortjé and Sisanda Magala not been forced out of the tournament with back and knee problems. Magala’s 19.07 is South Africa’s lowest average for ODIs in 2023 and he has the best strike rate, 18.00. But on this bombastic stage the loss of Nortjé’s aggression, which bristles as blatantly as his cartoon moustache, seems the bigger blow.

“One of things Anrich brings is intimidation. I’ve sat in I don’t know how many meetings, and the more the opposition talks about certain batters or bowlers, the more you’re in their heads and ahead of them in the game. Someone like Anrich would have been spoken about.”

In Nortjé’s absence should the more silky, less spiky Kagiso Rabada, who matches Nortjé for presence and is more seasoned than the other quicks in the squad, get to work on his own moustache? “He’s one of our key members,” Simons said. “He has a lot of experience and he’s someone the opposition respects. Getting him bowling at his best is not just important for him but for us as well.”

Nudging Rabada to that point will be a significant subplot in South Africa’s bid for glory. From his Test debut in November 2015 only Stuart Broad has taken more wickets among fast bowlers in the format — nine more, and Broad sent down 756.1 more overs than Rabada. Trent Boult is the only ODI pace bowling wicket-taker ahead of Rabada during the South African’s career. Measured from Rabada’s first ODI in July 2015, Boult has claimed eight more wickets. But he has bowled 69.4 fewer overs than Rabada.

It will seem an overly subtle, nit-picky distinction but it serves to parse Rabada the supreme Test bowler from his slightly more mortal ODI self. He has played in only one ODI World Cup — in 2019, when South Africa crashed to their worst performance in the tournament by losing five of their eight completed games. So Rabada’s ordinary return in the event of 11 wickets from 78 overs at 36.09 must be seen in that context. It doesn’t define him.

“Kagiso wants to be the best he can possibly be,” Simons said. “It’s every game, every practice, and every time we talk. We had a long conversation, him and I, about tactics to be used at the death in India. It’s constant movement and learning, and every day being better than yesterday.”

Simons enjoys getting granular with the detail: “This is a World Cup, but the more we focus on the fact that there’s a match on Saturday, and it’s going to be 300 balls, and you’re going to bowl however many overs, and break it down to this moment rather than what happened in the past and what might happen in the future, the better it is.”

If all that understated sophistication doesn’t fill the Nortjé void there’s always Gerald Coetzee, a bruiser with a wide expanse of bare, often angrily curled top lip where his moustache might be. “Someone’s going to punch him in the nose at some point, there’s no doubt about it,” Simons said. “That’s what this game’s about, particularly in India. How you deal with it is what’s important.”

Coetzee didn’t look as dominant as that makes him sound during South Africa’s home ODI series against Australia last month, when he bowled 27.3 overs in four matches and took six wickets at 35.66. But, Simons said, he had the brain to go with his brawn: “It was a great learning experience for him to come up against Australia, a very aggressive batting line-up. To see him come through it and come away with ideas and plans [tells us] he’s a very intelligent cricketer.”

If anyone can get South Africa’s bowlers to straighten up and fly right, you fancy Simons can. A fast bowler who grew into an allrounder and has become one of the more articulate coaches in the game, he has carved out a career that wouldn’t have seemed obvious for someone who played 23 ODIs and no Tests.

Famously he was India’s bowling consultant during the 2011 World Cup. Less readily remembered is that he was South Africa’s head coach in a dressingroom full of people who failed to read a Duckworth/Lewis sheet well enough to ensure the batters at the crease knew they needed to score one more run than they did to avoid the tie that took the team out of the 2003 World Cup.

Simons said being part of India’s staff was “a very different animal” to his current role. Even so, 10 of South Africa’s 15 players have featured in the IPL, earning a collective advantage that wasn’t available to non-Asians in previous World Cups in the subcontinent. Thus the South Africans “have tremendous experience of India, what it’s like to be here — not just the conditions but the hotels and the travel, and what’s involved with that”.

There was, of course, more than that to winning what, for South Africa, has as yet proved unwinnable: “A lot of it is things the guys know and understand. It’s about being involved in a World Cup and how you stay calm in the moment and focus on — which you guys probably hate us saying so much — the process.

“One of my key mantras as a coach is that if we’ve got a clear plan then all we have to worry about is execution. If your plan is not clear you have stress about what to do plus the execution. So the better prepared we are the better we are.”

Simons fetched from memory the example of Mike Horn, the South African-born explorer who was also part of India’s 2011 triumph: “His message to the Indian team was, ‘If I don’t prepare I die, so what stress are you guys talking about?’ Preparation is crucial.”

Horn was on hand in the build-up to South Africa’s Test mace-clinching series in England in 2012, when he helped Graeme Smith’s team scale those heights by sending them up a mountain in Switzerland. But he couldn’t put the South Africans back together after crass CSA board interference took Kyle Abbott, the team’s best fast bowler at the 2015 World Cup, out of the XI on the eve of the semifinal against New Zealand.

Some things are beyond even the most creative conjuring of the coaching staff. But not this: in India runs are worth more than rupees. Sachin knows this. So does Virat. As, importantly for South Africa’s cause, does Simons.

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Long day’s journey into trouble

“When you look at the last game between England and New Zealand and the way that finished, this could easily be set up for that.” – Jason Holder

Telford Vice / Centurion

GERALD Coetzee hadn’t been a Test player for even 30 seconds when he wandered into trouble. The fall of South Africa’s eighth wicket in Centurion on Tuesday brought him to the crease. But before he could arrive in the middle he was accosted by Keshav Maharaj, who was on the field in a day-glow bib attending to something Marco Jansen needed.

From afar the slight, shortish Maharaj might look timid. Closer to the truth is that he is South Africa’s chief whip, a vocal, respected authority inside the dressing room and out. So when Coetzee walked up with his shirt untucked, Maharaj, a veteran of 48 Tests who isn’t part of this XI, wasn’t having it. He stopped the debutant in his tracks and proceeded to shove his shirt into his whites.

Having satisfied the dress code for entry to the highest level, Coetzee punched the first two balls he faced, bowled by Jason Holder, through mid-off for four. Coetzee dealt ably with two more deliveries before bad light forced the close, and Jansen drove Alzarri Joseph’s first legal ball of Wednesday’s play — his initial offering was wided for height, impressive considering Jansen is 2.09 metres tall — for another boundary.

It took West Indies 27 deliveries to snuff out the innings for 342. Joseph jammed Coetzee with a short delivery, which flew off the gloves to second slip, and produced another short delivery to remove Anrich Nortjé by way of a crossbatted blooper to gully. Joseph already had his best figures when he claimed he dismissed Coetzee, and his 5/81 was his first five-wicket haul in his 27th Test.

South Africa ended West Indies’ reply 130 runs short of parity 45 minutes before stumps, with Nortjé threatening to set his moustache on fire in a hostile last spell of 4/7 in five overs to finish with 5/36. Raymon Reifer’s 62, a labour of 143 balls and more than three-and-a-half hours, was part of stands of 36 with Tagenarine Chanderpaul, 64 with Jermaine Blackwood and 47 with Roston Chase. None of their other partnerships survived past 11.

By the close, the home side had built their lead to 179. But they had lost Dean Elgar, Tony de Zorzi, Temba Bavuma and Keegan Petersen. Bavuma became the only South Africa captain except AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis to suffer a pair in his first Test as captain, all at this ground.

Holder ended the day’s play with his first delivery of South Africa’s second innings, an inswinger that trapped Petersen in front. That made Holder the only West Indies player after Garfield Sobers to claim 150 wickets and score 2,500 runs.

Much will depend, for both teams, on how Aiden Markram fares on Thursday. He scored 115 in the first innings, and looked like he was batting in a different match on a different pitch and against different opponents for his 33-ball 35 not out, 24 of them stroked in boundaries.

If you’re looking for a thread of cohesion to pull from all that, consider this: 18 of the 24 wickets to fall have gone down in the third session. The first two sessions have yielded just six wickets. That’s more than 75% of the wickets falling in a third of a match in which the runs have been more or less evenly spread between the sessions. Why is that happening?

“In general a lot of wickets fall later in the day here,” Nortjé said. “It could be because of the sun and more things happening in the pitch. It seems to be a regular occurrence here. I don’t have any explanation, really, but you could see the ball misbehaving here and there. That could be contributing to it.”

Holder also had a go: “There’s variable bounce, which is a contributing factor. When batters got stuck in they really applied themselves. But I don’t think it’s a surface where, even if you bat for a lengthy time, you’re ever in. You’ve got to watch every delivery closely and try to play as late as possible.”

So how did Holder explain the freewheeling Markram? “He’s well-balanced, and he’s really moving well. That’s the key to batting on any surface. He’s pretty poised at the crease. He looks like he has more time than anybody else.”

A counterintuitive subplot is that the match is being played on one of the better batting surfaces seen in South Africa in years. Some of the pitches prepared for the South Africans’ series in India in November 2015 — particularly the pitch in Nagpur, which was rated poor by the ICC — led to a backlash that started with the Wanderers Test against India in January 2018, in which play was temporarily suspended because there were concerns the pitch was dangerous.

Twenty-one Tests have been played in South Africa from that match. Of the 33 completed innings, seven have produced totals of less than 200 and 16 of under 300. That equates to almost 70% of sub-300 innings. The average runs per wicket in South Africa in that time is 26.68. Only in the Caribbean, where the same number of Tests have been played during that period, has it been lower: 26.37. But all 21 games have been won and lost in South Africa, compared to the five draws in West Indies.

So Holder was hopeful that the pitch would play its part in a drama for the ages: “This game has created a really good challenge for us. When you look at the last game between England and New Zealand and the way that finished, this could easily be set up for that. But we’ve still got to go and play the cricket. South Africa are a little bit in front of us but the game is not far beyond us.”

New Zealand beat England by one run at the Basin Reserve on Tuesday, only the second time that a Test has been decided by a margin that narrow. Plenty will have to happen if Centurion is to deliver a sequel, especially as the protagonists could not, under any circumstances, be accused of playing Bazball.

But Holder is correct in saying the sides could have a proper contest on their hands. It is possible, after all, to play proper cricket on a proper pitch even as you maintain old-fashioned virtues like tucking in your shirt.

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