Prince, Boucher and the coaching conundrum

Ashwell Prince never won a trophy with the Cobras. Mark Boucher won five with the Titans. What does that say about coaching credentials?

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHAT does a cricket coach do? Not the kind of coach who teaches beginners how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break or take a slip catch, but those who work at first-class and international level. Every player there already knows how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break and take a slip catch. So, what do their coaches do?

Correct technical flaws and change techniques, no doubt. Also, make sure the gameplan is adhered to while players focus on their own roles. And, in the particular case of Gary Kirsten, find a way to make giants like Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni stay on the same page long enough and well enough to win a World Cup.

The perennial question of what elite coaches do returned, with a twist, last week when Ashwell Prince told CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project of being asked, by director of cricket Graeme Smith shortly after his appointment in December 2019, to join South Africa’s backroom.

Smith, Prince said, told him Jacques Kallis was being lined up as the team’s batting coach. “If Kallis is going to be the batting coach, what am I going to do,” Prince said. “What is my role in the coaching staff? I’ve only ever been a batsman. Since I was a reasonable fielder, fielding coach came to mind. But there already was a fielding coach [Justin Ontong]. With Kallis there as the batting coach, I again asked as to what my position will be. [Smith] then said, ‘We’ll see where we can fit you in’.”

It’s not difficult to understand why that wouldn’t have sat well with Prince: “If you want a certain amount of black or non-white faces on your staff, don’t call me. If there’s one thing [Smith] should have known about me, having captained me, is that I want to be treated with respect. If you’re going to put me in a position, put me in a position instead of [me] sitting on the balcony with the Proteas staff without a role.”

This week Prince was appointed to the properly defined role of Bangladesh batting coach. He will thus leave Newlands, where he has been head coach since replacing Paul Adams in December 2016. The Bangladeshis will gain a forthright team man who does not suffer fools. Or, as a cricket-loving Australian shouted after spotting Prince in Hobart in November 2016, when he was commentating on South Africa’s Test series: “Ashwell Prince! You were a mean motherfucker!” Indeed. Prince was the toughest of players. So what will South African cricket lose?

Not a successful coach, in trophy terms. In four-and-a-half seasons in charge of the Cobras, and, concurrently, two Mzansi Super League campaigns with the Cape Town Blitz, Prince never won a title. His one-day team finished last in 2016/17, as did his first-class and one-day sides in 2019/20. His only trip to a final was with the Blitz in 2018/19, when they were beaten by the Jozi Stars. From January 2019 to March 2021 — more than two years — the Cobras failed to win any of their 15 first-class matches.

But it would be unfair to write Prince off on the basis of the unimpressive record of his teams. It’s the job of franchise coaches to produce players for South Africa, and he guided Zubayr Hamza, George Linde, Pieter Malan, Dane Paterson, Kyle Verreynne and Janneman Malan to international honours.

More importantly, Prince has served as the conscience of cricket in his country. Unafraid and unapologetic — his critics would call him unhelpfully dogmatic — he has yet to duck a bouncer on transformation, social issues, politics, or anything else. The quieting of his voice at least until after the 2022 T20I World Cup, when his contract with Bangladesh expires, is the highest price South Africa will pay.  

Prince is not the only South African coach in the news. Mark Boucher came home last month not to applause for his team’s successful series in the Caribbean and Ireland, but to outrage over allegations made against him at the SJN. Boucher is known to have made a written submission to the project to respond to claims implicating him that stem from his playing days.

The affidavit’s contents should provide balance to a narrative that has been overtly one-sided. But how Boucher’s version will find its way into the public domain is unclear. Should he release it and risk the ire of the SJN for, it could be argued, disrespecting the process? Or does the responsibility of shedding light on Boucher’s submission lay with the SJN? Cricbuzz has asked the SJN for a copy, but has not received a response.

Boucher could outflank all that by appearing at the SJN hearings in person. Like Prince, he is among the hardest people yet to pull on a pair of whites. It took a flying bail to the eye to end his playing career. What harm could be done to him by testifying to a body that has shown respect even to AfriForum, the execrable white supremacist mob that made an SJN submission amounting to a defence of systemic racism.

There may be more to this than that. Boucher won five titles across the formats as head coach of the Titans from 2016/17 to 2018/19. It’s a salient fact, because much has been made of his appointment to his current position despite holding only a level two coaching certificate.     

Do his detractors want to obsess over credentialism, or do they want a coach whose teams win? South Africa lost seven of their first nine series under Boucher, at least in part as a consequence of the damaging chaos in CSA’s boardrooms and offices. But they have since won three of four rubbers and drawn the other.

A cynical view would be that Boucher’s haters are coming after him over racism claims now that they can no longer say his teams are losing and he is out of his depth as a level two coach. But the more pressing issue is whether he has been party, as has been alleged, to a team culture that included, excused and did not eradicate racist behaviour.

Seemingly forgotten in the haste to hang Boucher is that other people would have been part of building that toxic culture, that some of them would have been black and brown, and that the team dynamic has evolved to the extent that Black Lives Matter is now part of dressingroom conversation. Boucher is part of that changing culture, too. As South Africa’s coach, he is surely instrumental in forging change.

What does a cricket coach do? Much more than we might think. It’s time we, in South Africa in particular, answered the question properly.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Kudos for Kingsmead, not the cricket

Too often teams batted with little discernible urgency, an approach South Africa will not want to take to the T20 World Cup.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

NEWLANDS has trees, the palpable snootiness of the obliviously privileged, a brewery just beyond the boundary, and a mountain looming über alles. The Wanderers offers nasty traffic, snarling crowds — both symptoms of the defensive brashness that is a survival tool for people who have to live in Johannesburg — and thunderstorms powerful and beautiful enough to jolt even the most jaded.

Centurion’s sweep of concrete and grass is an oasis of civilisation in the sprawl of nondescript company head offices that line the highway linking Joburg and Pretoria like paeans to thoughtless consumption. Another sparkling incongruity in this parade of expensive mediocrity is the arresting Nizamiye mosque — built in the grand Ottoman style — whose vast dome and four minarets, each 55 metres tall, tower over its lesser neighbours.

St George’s Park, the gods’ own cricket ground for those who’ve given their souls to the Eastern Cape, has everything: history, atmosphere, cricket on a human scale, pancakes made by church-going matriarchs, and a brass band. Spectating there, on long days of sun, wind and endlessly unspooling songs by the band, whether runs are flowing or wickets falling, becomes an exercise in meditation more than it is merely watching a game.

Kingsmead? Less than a kilometre north of the middle of Durban’s sub-sea level pitch, beyond a B field and its surrounding office park, the modest but golden dome of what maps list, inadequately, as the Durban Hindu Temple has stood since 1898. Devotees know it as Shree Thakurdwara and Dharmashala. Two other temples in the area were demolished in accordance with the racist laws of forced removals. They made way for a courthouse and a railway station. But the survivor has been there since 25 years before Kingsmead’s first Test, between South Africa and England in January 1923, which was also its inaugural first-class match. Due south is a bluish, metallic, slumping wedding cake that was, until January 11 this year, a Hilton Hotel. It was opened in 1997 by Nelson Mandela and closed by Covid-19.

All around is a hustle and bustle of municipal offices, law courts, police barracks, assorted shops, an international convention centre, and the shrine of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats, an organisation founded in 1927 by former soldiers to, the group’s Wikipedia page says, “keep alive … the finer virtues that war brings forth”. Whatever those are.

Not too far away, in streets that aren’t all that meaner, it isn’t difficult to buy drugs, sex and tat that looks African to tourists’ eyes. The first two of those trades are plied, albeit less freely than before, along what used to be called Point Road. It is now Mahatma Gandhi Road. Then, to the east, comes the sticky, warm, rolling embrace of the Indian Ocean.  

Kingsmead is easily the most urban of South Africa’s major grounds. It is rooted in the reality of its place in downtown Durban, a city rich with the diversity of its Zulu, South Asian and colonial past. Gandhi became part of that history in May 1893 when he arrived in Durban from Bombay as a London-trained barrister. Three days later he was thrown out of court for refusing to remove his turban in the presence of the magistrate. The Natal Advertiser headlined the story “An Unwelcome Visitor”. In response, Gandhi wrote a letter to the paper: “Just as it is mark of respect amongst the Europeans to take off their hats, in like manner it is in Indians to retain one’s head-dress.

Not least because the outrageous humidity could cause you to drown in your own sweat, nothing moves too quickly in Durban. Except the sun. Even on summer days it drops out of the sky like a spilled slip catch, casting a greying pall over the scene and causing umpires to flick bails off stumps at an hour when the light is brilliant elsewhere in the country. That’s when it isn’t raining in Durban, which it tends to at the merest mention of cricket.

None of the above explains why CSA decided to put its franchise T20 tournament at Kingsmead — the fact that conditions there should be more or less like what they will be at the T20 World Cup in India in October and November is no doubt closer to the truth — but it’s a useful hook on which to hang a tale of cricket in the time of the pandemic.

Four days of practice, some of it on pitches cut into the outfield, were followed by 17 matches — all of them day games to comply with South Africa’s lockdown restrictions — contested on five surfaces over 10 days. Most pitch and outfield preparation had to be done late at night and early in the morning. That was a challenge considering as much as 50 millimetres of rain fell on some nights. But the daylight hours were largely dry: only two games were affected by the weather, and not enough to prevent them from being decided.

On match days the nets were available only to the teams who were playing. If other sides wanted to train that day they went to the Chatsworth Oval, 28 kilometres south-west of Kingsmead and operating under identical bio-bubble conditions. The six squads of 20 players each all stayed, along with the match officials and CSA types, in the same hotel in Umhlanga some 17 kilometres to the north. Around 800 coronavirus tests were conducted. None of them returned positive results.

The success of the tournament, and the similarly seamless staging of six women’s white-ball internationals between South Africa and Pakistan at Kingsmead in January and February, is an unmitigated triumph for the KwaZulu-Natal Cricket Union (KZNCU). Twenty-three matches in five weeks, none of them washed out, is all but unheard of at a venue that has, perhaps unfairly, become synonymous with unhappy endings: seven of the 47 men’s white-ball internationals there have met a watery fate. By contrast, all of the 64 men’s internationals in the shorter formats played at Newlands have been won and lost. So take a bow KZNCU chief executive Heinrich Strydom, groundskeeper Wilson Ngobese, and the rest of the staff, for dodging the downpours and doing a lot else besides.

There was less to celebrate about the cricket itself. Kingsmead’s own Dolphins reeled off five consecutive victories to reach the final, then choked against the Lions — who almost blew it against opponents they had reduced to 38/4 and limited to a total of 107/7. The Lions took 19 overs to win by four wickets. The whipping boys were the Cobras and the Knights, who each lost four of their five games. The Cobras should know the feeling well: they’ve won only two of their 13 matches across the formats in the past year. Even the Knights, who have won seven of 13 in the same period, are doing better. 

Lions opener Reeza Hendricks was the leading batter after the league stage of the tournament with 186 runs in five innings. David Miller, Pite van Biljon, Rassie van der Dussen, Temba Bavuma and Christiaan Jonker all scored more than 140. The Dolphins’ Keshav Maharaj stood out as the star bowler before the knockout rounds. No-one sent down more than his total of 20 overs, yet no-one could touch his economy rate of 4.35. Prenelan Subrayen, Imran Manack, Chris Morris, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortjé also went for less than a run a ball. Ngidi and Sisanda Magala took 10 wickets each during the round-robin stage with Robbie Frylinck, George Linde and Mthiwekhaya Nabe claiming eight apiece.

Of the 14 players who appeared for South Africa in their T20I series in Pakistan in February, only Janneman Malan — because of injury — didn’t feature in the franchise competition. So the overall standard should have been higher. An argument why that wasn’t noticeably true, particularly on the batting front, could be that the conditions, by design, didn’t allow for strokemaking as freely as is often the case in white-ball cricket in this country. Only the Cobras’ Zubayr Hamza scored two half-centuries, and there were just 11 other 50s. Raynard van Tonder’s 57-ball 81 not out for the Knights against the Warriors was the closest anyone came to scoring a century. That nobody else in the Knights’ XI reached 20 in that match tells it own story.

So does the fact that not once in the nine games won by the team batting second was that side able to earn a bonus point for reaching their target inside 16 overs. And that despite them chasing less than 120 three times and less than 150 in four other games. The Lions deserved their success, but they provided the worst example of this lacklustre tendency by dismissing the Knights for 106 and then taking 18.1 overs to wend their way to a ponderous seven-wicket victory.

Too often teams batted with little discernible urgency, an approach South Africa will not want to take to the T20 World Cup — where the pitches will likely be slower and the bowling definitely better. Shree Thakurdwara and Dharmashala’s dome has added elegance to downtown Durban for 123 years, but even the most devout don’t hang around admiring it all day.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Paterson could become the last of the Kolpaks

“As a 30-plus year-old bowler you don’t have that many years left in you.” – Ashwell Prince sends Dane Paterson, freshly 31, on his way with a backhanded hug.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

DANE Paterson could become the latest and perhaps the last South African to take the Kolpak route out of the country’s cricket structures. Fast bowler Paterson, who has played a dozen white-ball internationals since January 2017 and featured in two Tests against England last season, is believed to be in discussions with Nottinghamshire.

“We’ve been informed he’s doing so,” Paterson’s Cobras coach, Ashwell Prince, told an online press conference on Monday, without naming the county concerned, when asked whether Paterson had agreed a Kolpak contract. “But he needs final boxes to be ticked by the ECB [England Cricket Board]. We’ve been told it’s going to be done.”

If the deal is sealed Paterson will become the 69th player to exercise the Kolpak option. Only 20 have not been South African. But the arrangement could be shortlived. The United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on March 31, which spells the imminent end of the Kolpak ruling’s impact on cricket. Currently, the measure enables counties to thwart the England Cricket Board’s (ECB) rules on how many foreigners they are allowed to field. Kolpak privileges are extended to the citizens of the 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries whose governments are party to the Cotonou agreement with the EU. Essentially, Kolpak makes the citizens of 105 other countries — the remaining 27 in the EU and the 78 Cotonou signatories — English in terms of their eligibility to play county cricket. That will change on December 31 this year, which marks the end of the UK’s transition period out of the EU. So, unless the transition is prolonged, the Kolpak window will close at the end of the year.

But Paterson would seem to have a plan B up his sleeve. “He has signed a Kolpak deal effectively,” Cobras spokesperson David Brooke said. “He is just awaiting the final rubber stamp from the ECB. If Kolpak falls away then he will be playing as an overseas pro for the county. We have been requested not to mention the name of the County until Dane has had his final interview with the ECB to ratify it.”

The news has probably come as a surprise to Cricket South Africa, who it appears were under the impression Paterson had turned Notts down. But there is unlikely to be major disappointment about a player who turned 31 on Saturday leaving a country not short of fast bowlers. “As a 30-plus year-old bowler you don’t have that many years left in you,” Prince said. “I’m sure they sit down and calculate what realistic opportunities will they have of playing for the Proteas. If not, they’ll consider other options.”

Of course, all avenues for making a living by playing cricket — along with vast swathes of the global economy — have been thrown into doubt by the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, Yorkshire revealed they had become the first county to furlough their players and staff. Salaries are covered for now, largely by the UK government’s job retention scheme, but the situation remains fraught with uncertainty. The most high profile Kolpak defector in recent years, Duanne Olivier, played his first match for Yorkshire in March last year.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Piedt signs US deal, and that’s good news

“I can go to a country that’s looking to improve their cricket and I can be part of that.” – Dane Piedt on his decision to move to the US.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IN an era of Kolpak defections and players retiring to become travelling T20 mercenaries amid predictions of a dire future for cricket and cricketers in South Africa, Dane Piedt has found another way out. “To new beginnings,” he tweeted on Friday alongside emoticons of a US flag and clinking champagne glasses. His post included a photograph of him, a pen poised above a document, and a nearby celebratory measure of bubbly.

Piedt has signed a contract to play in the new Minor League T20 tournament in the US planned for the coming northern hemisphere summer. What the global coronavirus pandemic will do to those plans remains unknown, but the blueprint, announced in February, promises an event that will stretch across the country with teams in 22 cities. Piedt has a choice of basing himself in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Seattle, a decision he has yet to make — although the fact that some of his favourite basketball players are LA Lakers stars might be instrumental in settling on where he establishes his new home.

At 30, he has called time on a Test career in which he took 26 wickets in nine matches, the most recent of them against India in Ranchi in October. But Keshav Maharaj, who debuted more than two years after Piedt, has played 30 Tests and has nailed down his place in a team that rarely picks more than one slow bowler. Tabraiz Shamsi has made a strong claim to be Imran Tahir’s successor in the white-ball formats. Nobody needed to spell out the writing on the wall for Piedt, who told Cricbuzz on Friday: “Those guys have done well, and they’re of the age where they’re only going to get better.”

Rarely for an off-spinner, Piedt is an attacking bowler who bristles with variations. Also unusually, he has managed to become among the most respected as well as one of the most popular players on South Africa’s domestic scene, which made him a sound choice to captain his franchise, the Cape Cobras, at first-class and one-day level. He won 18 of his 46 games in charge, and lost 14. In 2018-19 he took 54 wickets at 27.74 in 10 matches in the first-class competition, claiming five five-wicket-hauls and two 10-wicket-hauls in the process. 

Those who might want to criticise his move should know that “I didn’t go looking for something else — this offer came to me”. And that he could have gone years ago: “When I was 26 I turned down a Kolpak offer [from a county he declined to name]. If I had agreed to that deal I wouldn’t have got the opportunity to take 54 wickets for the Cobras last year.”

For Piedt, moving to the US is a positive development and not part of the negative narrative that can seem to have entrapped cricket in South Africa. “I can go to a country that’s looking to improve their cricket and I can be part of that,” he said. And they are lucky to have him.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Bedingham bye-bye prompts Prince pout

“The reality is that we can’t keep pretending there is nothing wrong.” – Ashwell Prince

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

ASHWELL Prince has come out swinging like he never did in his years as a circumspect Test batter in the wake of David Bedingham agreeing to play for Durham for the entire 2020 season. Prince now coaches the Cape Cobras, Bedingham is one of his players, and the county complication means he will miss South Africa’s 2019-20 franchise one-day competition.

“It’s about opportunity, it’s about uncertainty for the players,” Prince was quoted as saying in a Cobras release on Friday. “We tried everything to keep David here. In my honest opinion he has a better chance to play international cricket for South Africa if he had to stay. It’s high time that CSA [Cricket South Africa] sit down and look at things a little bit closer and get to the fact of the matter of why players are leaving. Don’t beat around the bush. That’s where we’re at. I have a good understanding why he left. If anyone at CSA has spoken to him, they will also understand the reason.”

Cricbuzz has learnt that the matter was indeed raised with CSA acting director of cricket Graeme Smith — who in December talked Dwaine Pretorius out of signing a Kolpak deal with Nottinghamshire, which would have precluded him from playing for South Africa. But Pretorius, then uncapped, was in South Africa’s squad at the time and has since played three Tests. Bedingham, 25, has played for the country’s Colts and under-19 teams but has yet to attract the attention of the national selectors.   

“If I have to criticise, people who can play at the highest level cannot just be seen around every corner; you just don’t see it — it’s 1% of players who can play at the highest level,” Prince was quoted as saying. “Yes, there’s no guarantee that David could go on to play at the highest level. But in my opinion I feel that he had a good chance to play international cricket. Some people might say he has not done enough yet, but you can argue that he should be around the South Africa A squads at the very least and he hasn’t had an opportunity at that level. The reality is that we can’t keep pretending there is nothing wrong.”

Like Pretorius, Bedingham is white. And in terms of CSA’s selection policy teams for franchise matches must include three black African players and three more who are generic black: typically of mixed race — or “coloured” — or of Asian descent. South Africa’s demographics mean the Cobras have an abundance of homegrown coloured players to choose from but struggle to groom black Africans. And when they find them, white players could lose out. So Prince’s issue is likely with the quota for black Africans — though he didn’t spell that out in his comments, perhaps because that would provoke outrage in black cricket circles.

The ink was still wet on the news of Bedingham’s imminent departure when it emerged that Durham had also acquired Farhaan Behardien’s services in a Kolpak deal. Unlike Bedingham, Behardien is coloured. Also unlike Bedingham, Behardien is 36 and in the autumn of his career. But South Africa’s structures can ill afford to forego the knowledge and experience he has amassed in 114 first-class matches, 59 ODIs and 38 T20Is.

Bedingham averages 45.75 with seven centuries in his 55 first-class innings. In 23 trips to the crease for the the upper tier Cobras he has made three hundreds and averages 50.42.

In an interview with SA Cricket Magazine in November he was quoted as saying: “My dream is still to play for my country. Once you believe you can’t play for your country, though, you do have to look at options like Kolpak. There is obviously money and security abroad, as guys like Simon Harmer and Duanne Olivier [who have signed Kolpak deals] have shown. One doesn’t always know how they will fare abroad, though, with the different conditions, pitches, lifestyle, etcetera. It’s different for everyone. Some are happy to take the risk to earn the money. Others are more family-orientated and might need to decide otherwise. I’m not there yet, but if I do get there, I’ll look at all the aspects with perspective and decide accordingly.”

Bedingham’s decision to sign as an overseas player rather than a member of the Kolpak crew means he may yet be back to stake his claim to a place in South Africa’s team. But he is now a big step removed from doing so.

First published by Cricbuzz.

On a good day, Pieter Malan can see forever

“That’s not pressure, that’s privilege. Pressure is playing out there in a semi-pro game, nobody watching, and you’re fighting for your career.” – Pieter Malan on reaching the Test arena.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

SEVERAL minutes after the end of his press conference at Newlands on Tuesday, Pieter Malan popped back into the room. “I don’t get them for free — I still have to pay,” he said as he retrieved the sunglasses he had left behind.

That wasn’t his only zinger. There was this, when he was asked about the pressures of playing Test cricket: “That’s not pressure, that’s privilege. Pressure is playing out there in a semi-pro game, nobody watching, and you’re fighting for your career. Being out there, the Barmy Army cheering, Jimmy Anderson running in, it felt like a video game at some stage. It was unbelievable. I felt very privileged to be in a position to fight for the team and try and bat long and just be there for as long as I can.”

There was also this, on the challenges of making his debut: “For me the most difficult parts are away from the ground; when you’re in the bus or in the hotel and your mind starts racing and you can’t do anything about it. If you’re in the middle, as soon as you walk down the stairs … I’ve walked down the [Newlands dressingroom] stairs a lot of time, playing for Western Province. I’ve even played a club game here, so you walk down the stairs and always take a second or two looking at the mountain, appreciating where we play because then you end up playing in Kimberley and there’s nothing to look at.”

Malan spoke with the authority earned by lived experience. As recently as December 1 he was playing in a semi-professional one-day game for Western Province against Northern Cape in, yup, Kimberley. Officially, that’s two levels below the international arena. In real terms, it’s a world away from where Malan was when he opened the batting for South Africa in the second men’s Test against England at Newlands.

His first innings was over in a minute less than half-an-hour in which he faced 17 balls for five runs: he steered to first slip a Stuart Broad delivery that was veering away. “That shot was so out of character it was ridiculous; I don’t play that shot,” Malan said. “It was probably a bit of Test debut nerves, taking in the situation too much and then I end up sparring at a ball I should have left. Second innings, I just tried to knuckle down and play the way that I normally do and it seemed to work better.” Indeed, there was no getting rid of Malan that easily once he took guard again, this time on a pitch significantly flatter. He scored 84 off 288 balls in a marathon of more than six hours and showed his mastery of the important art of knowing when not to offer a shot. “In the last three or four years, that’s been a massive part of my game — leaving the ball well and eliminating dismissals that I felt were soft. Especially as a new-ball player, you want to make them bowl at you. In South Africa, it’s tough opening the batting. There’s a lot of things happening; there’s nip, there’s bounce. So the less you can give the bowlers, the better. In their third and fourth spells, that’s where the real runs are.”

If all that makes Malan seem suspiciously grown up for a debutant, that’s because he is. He turned 30 in August, and went to Newlands with the experience of 245 first-class innings and 10,161 runs in his kitbag. In the process he has lived a chunk of life. He made his debut for Northerns in January 2007 and was playing for the Titans two years later. Because of a glut of batting talent at Centurion he moved to other end of the country, where he has turned out for Western Province from November 2013 and the Cobras from February 2015. “I don’t think I did myself any favours when I was younger,” Malan said. “I took a lot of stuff for granted, and didn’t put in the hard work that, in hindsight, I needed to put in. It’s also a matter of opportunities and them being limited and not taking them when I got them. It’s been a long road but it’s a road that I am glad I’ve been on because I am a better cricketer and I am a better person.”

Did he wonder if Test cricket had passed him by? “I thought it was never going to happen but life works in funny ways. I decided if it’s going to happen, it will happen. That it’s not something for me to worry about. Luckily it did happen.” But earning his chance for South Africa depended on him making the right choices. Like putting himself in the hands of Ashwell Prince, the Cobras coach who, like Malan, took plenty of obduracy to the crease in his 66 Tests. “Ashwell has been massive in my career,” Malan said. “He gave me my first chance for the Cobras, and back into franchise cricket. He has played 60-odd Tests, averages over 40 and has scored hundreds. So when he tells you something, you listen. He has lived it, he has done it, he is not making it up as he goes along. We work on small technical stuff that we just keep refining because you need to keep improving. It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. You improve something, then the bowler spots another weakness, and you end up going back and forth. He is very good with that. And also from the mental side: he pushes you all the time and I enjoy that. You can never be comfortable, you can always be better, you can always do more. He is that type of coach.”

A picture doing the rounds on social media shows Malan in sleeveless training gear about to catch a tennis ball with his biceps bulging as if he has stepped straight out of the pages of super hero comic book. How long does he spend in the gym? “I’ve seen that photograph. I don’t do a lot of arms, actually. They should have taken a shot of my legs — that’s where I spend most of my time. But I do enjoy the gym. That’s where I go to switch off, put the music on and train and get away from whatever is going on around me.”

Like the fact that, even though South Africa lost by 189 runs at Newlands, Malan’s debut — which only happened because Aiden Markram broke a finger in the first Test at Centurion — was a solid success. And that, for all its weaknesses and limitations, South Africa’s domestic system clearly does prepare players for the international arena. The gym might also be where Malan goes to not think about the fact that, because of his age, his time in Test cricket could be limited.

Even so, his future promises to be bright. Don’t forget the shades.

First published by Cricbuzz.