adversity
Mark Lamport-Stokes : Cricket
Yin and yang; darkness and light; setback and advantage. Any of these stark contrasts could be used to encapsulate the burgeoning career of Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga.
In the space of the last 18 months, the popular 21-year-old has had to face square on the numbing adversity of being called for ”throwing” in a Test match and, more recently, a wrist fracture which will sideline him from this month’s cricket tour of Zimbabwe by New Zealand.
Sufficient darkness and setback there to derail many a young cricketer’s future – and perhaps forever.
But what of the light and the advantage? The athletic Olonga is fortunate to possess the God-given natural talent to be able to bowl a cricket ball at high speed. He is also quick to admit that the Australian cricket academy (for a brief three-week spell) and South Africa’s Plascon cricket academy (over the last four months) have been instrumental in putting his first- class career firmly back on track.
Conservatively, Olonga will only have recovered from his wrist injury by this November/December but – that setback aside – he believes the lessons learned from the likes of Clive Rice, Hylton Ackerman and New Zealander Mark O’Donnell in recent weeks will stand him in good stead during Zimbabwe’s series against Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan in the New Year.
”My time in South Africa with the academy has definitely made me a much better bowler – both mentally and in terms of what I can do with the ball,” Olonga says.
”While I’ve been here, I’ve learned how to reverse-swing the ball a little bit and I’ve also been working on a slower delivery. All this helps to give me a lot more in my bowler’s bag of tricks.”
”I’ve also approached the mental side of my game a lot and I’ve learned so much at the academy about how to recover after you’ve bowled a bad ball, how to work out a batsman and how to be mentally strong. We’ve had a sports psychologist address us every week in a two-hour lecture and all these things have helped to make me a more rounded cricketer, I believe.”
Interestingly, Olonga makes a distinct comparison between South Africa’s academy and the Australian equivalent in Adelaide. ”I went to the Aussie academy for three weeks last year and I found that they really emphasise the technical aspects of the game. Everything is broken down in minute detail and a lot of use is made of both video and computer,” Olonga explains.
”But here in South Africa, it’s all been more mentally stimulating – they don’t focus so much on the technical side.”
Olonga pays tribute to how much cricketing knowledge he has gained from the experienced Clive Rice, particularly with regard to ”out-thinking” a batsman.
”The biggest thing that Clive has told me is to use the crease and to vary my pace. Nowadays, with most international fixtures, you find the wickets aren’t very helpful for bowlers and that you’ve got to learn how to adjust, how to vary your pace and vary the line of the delivery.
”I haven’t been taking wickets because I’ve been bowling down the same line all the time and, after a while, the batsman can line you up and pick out where he’s going to play you. But Clive has taught me how to dominate as a bowler instead of letting the batsman decide what line he’s going to play on.”
Although Olonga injured – and broke – his left wrist in Zimbabwe’s morale-boosting series against England last December, he regards that series as a crucial watershed in his own cricketing development.
”Playing against England was a major boost for my confidence because I realised I could take wickets if I put the ball in the right place. At the time, I knew I bowled too many bad balls and that I had to tighten up my game. But all I could do then was bowl away-swingers and a decent bouncer – after that, apart from variation in pace, that’s all I had.”
Yet, even before Michael Atherton’s English tourists arrived Zimbabwe, Olonga was still putting the finishing touches to a bowling action which he had to re-model. As an emerging 19-year-old in 1995, he had been called for throwing in a Test match against Pakistan in Harare. He now recalls this experience as both traumatic and as an unexpected bonus. ”That throwing incident was very traumatic for me because I was very young and I was trying to make an impression. Yet I think it was an experience I would much rather have gone through than not gone through.
”I think that adversity has made me a lot stronger than a lot of other bowlers will be – most of them get out there and everything’s come easy to them. But I believe I’ve now got resources deeper than them to dig from.”
From being a bowler with an action somewhere between front-on and classically side-on, Olonga has had to retread himself as a front-on exponent. He hasn’t lost his away-swinger but he believes he has lost about a yard in pace.
”My pace has been the spearhead of what I do but it has certainly suffered a bit since 1995. But I’m building up again and I’m getting stronger. I don’t think I’ll get my accuracy 100 percent before I get my pace back up … I think I’ve got to bowl fast and try and work from there.”
Apart from that yard of pace which he is
confident he will regain, Olonga has lost nothing else in his bowling metamorphosis. In fact, he has gained overall.
”I still have an away-swinger because, as far as I know, swinging the ball’s got nothing to do with your body action. It’s do with your wrist and it all depends on the position of your wrist behind the ball. Otherwise, I’ve added a lot to my bowling repertoire and I know that the grey area between my ears is definitely my most potent weapon!”
ENDS