Klusener happy as silent destroyer (30 May 1999)
A close-cropped South African country boy
30-May-1999
30 May 1999
Klusener happy as silent destroyer
The Electronic Telegraph
Scyld Berry is granted a rare interview with South Africa's star
performer
A close-cropped South African country boy. A pace bowler who hits the
deck hard. A batsman who hits the ball harder still with the heaviest
bludgeon around. As a first impression you might be tempted to think
the Almighty created Lance Klusener by taking a couple of planks,
sawing them in two, and joining together the shorter pieces.
That would be a mistake, though, or rather two mistakes. For you
would not only be underestimating Klusener but also cricket's
capacity to sift the thinking from the thoughtless. If Klusener were
not a perceptive all-round cricketer, he would not be the leading
wicket-taker in this World Cup, or have scored so many runs so
quickly (112 off 89 balls) without being dismissed before yesterday's
match, or have won three man-of-the-match awards in South Africa's
first four games.
After winning the third of these awards, in Amsterdam on Wednesday,
Simon Hughes grabbed a few words with Klusener for television and
said: "You're the forgotten man in a sense, a bit of a mystery." To
which Klusener replied: "Yah, I like it way." And hence the
misleading impression he might give of having nothing to say. In fact
he is intelligent, decent, polite - and exceedingly shy of any
publicity. He says his ambition is to play county cricket for a
season or two ("hopefully somebody will take me" he says, as if any
county would not); but South Africa's astute manager Goolam Raja says
Klusener's ambition is go through a tour without giving an interview.
Barry Richards, who attended the same school of Durban High a
generation earlier, singles out Klusener's "powers of observation and
ability to learn" as his prime attribute, and this was as apparent in
his bowling in Amsterdam against Kenya on Wednesday as it was when he
clubbed Sri Lanka and England with his impeccably selective hitting.
While South Africa's new-ball bowlers banged the ball in short on the
newly turfed and slow pitch, and Kenya's opening batsmen rushed to 66
without loss and raised the possibility of another giant-killing,
Klusener stood at fine-leg beside the poplar which is inside the
boundary Canterbury-style, and he watched under his sun-hat (always a
floppy sun-hat), picking up all the cues, without the need for an
ear-piece.
He had not fielded beside a tree before - "next to cattle or dogs in
country districts cricket, yah" - but he was ready when his turn
came. He pitched the ball up having worked out that front-foot
driving was difficult, and he mixed in slower balls, which brought
him four of the wickets in his five for 21, the fifth coming with a
reverse-swinger which trapped Tom Odoyo first ball. These powers of
observation seem to be as much a part of his make-up as the reticence
about public speaking.
Klusener grew up on a farm on the coast of Natal north of Durban. At
the prospect of talking about himself and his cricket he almost
writhes with discomfort, but he settles into a line and length once
he talks about home, and sugar-cane, and burning off dead leaves
before harvesting; and becomes eloquent when he mentions fishing,
either on the coast or for trout in rivers, "when it's important to
get away and be by yourself, and have the opportunity not to see
anyone or hear anyone for quite a while."
He played his first cricket in the garden with African boys. "We
played together, all kinds of games. Not rugby, they weren't really
into rugby, but football and cricket mainly. I've just got one sister
so if I didn't play with them I didn't play at all. I probably did
most of the batting but they were quite happy to play along. My
father was a big influence on us." Was he the one who emigrated from
Germany? "No, two back." But when or why his great-grandfather
emigrated he does not know.
"As much as you grow up with your family you grow up with your
friends as well, and growing up with a nanny who speaks only Zulu -
and I spent quite a bit of time with her and her children - I ended
up learning the language. I can speak it as fluently as I speak
English. Then you start thinking the way they're thinking and
appreciate the things they appreciate. A lot of westerners forget
about nature and take a lot of simple things for granted, like a tap,
but a lot of Zulus have to fetch their water from a river. I'm lucky
to have grown up with them, but it could equally have been Transkei
or wherever."
He was a boarder at Durban High School from 13 to 18, one of 120 or
so boarders out of a thousand pupils, so he reckons. "You were always
encouraged to play sport at school. If you didn't you were almost
looked down at, and that definitely gave me a reason to compete and
do well. I did bowl at school but I wasn't very big and strong so I
thought batting was the way to go, and I tried to get in early.
"When I left school I spent three years doing national service in the
army. That's when I played country districts cricket, all over South
Africa, but I spent a lot of time in Northern Transvaal and Zululand.
It was in country districts that I started to bat and bowl and have
fun, that was the turning-point. The standard of cricket is such that
you can get away with learning to bowl there."
He soon became part of an exceptional Natal side, bursting with
all-rounders, which has provided five members of South Africa's World
Cup squad and Neil Johnson of Zimbabwe; then, after an under-24 tour
of Sri Lanka which exposed a weakness, part of the South African
side. Only 11 players in the history of Test cricket have scored a
hundred and also taken eight wickets in an innings. Klusener did so
by his fourth match.
His eight wickets came in the second innings of his Test debut, on a
pacey pitch in Calcutta, after he had conceded 75 off his 14 overs in
the first innings (some learning curve there). The century came off
100 balls in the return series in South Africa, when he so hammered
India's pace bowlers that he went from 75 to 102 in nine balls. In
his fifth Test he blocked out to save the game, something else two
short planks could not do.
It can be no coincidence that England came back into the Test series
last summer the moment Klusener broke a foot at Old Trafford. In
Amsterdam Allan Donald remarked: "If Lance had been there on the last
morning at Headingley he'd have knocked the runs off." In his vibrant
though ghosted autobiography White Lightning, Donald observed how the
South Africans became ever more tense after Old Trafford until they
"choked", and says that Klusener, if he had stayed, would have helped
here too for, though generally taciturn off the field, he offers
unmalicious wit and fearlessness. According to Donald, he has
recently been saying: "Who's Shoaib Akhtar?"
Next Saturday sees the winner of Group A play the winner of Group B
in the Super Six phase: Pakistan v South Africa most probably, a
final before the Final. Then Klusener and the South Africans will be
exposed to their main weakness, that of attacking spin in the form of
Saqlain Mushtaq and perhaps of Mushtaq Ahmed, too, although the
legspinner could be preserved for the final. With his 3lb 2oz bat
Klusener has been overcome by spin before, but he learns so fast that
yet again he might carry the favourites through to Lord's on June 20.
By then all of South Africa's opponents will be sorry they have not a
Klusener.
Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)