Andy Capostagno: Cricket
I first saw him bowl at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, England. He ran in like a boulder rolling down a mountainside and bowled too short. He was cut and pulled to all parts and retired to the outfield, visibly frustrated.
A year later I was on tour with the Durham Eagles when I heard his name again. He was playing for Torquay in the Devon League, bowling quick and making friends.
Another year on, I was on my way to South Africa with a present for him. He had taken a liking to the Durham Eagles sweater and was willing to swap a Northern Transvaal sweater for one. And so it was that the first ground I visited in South Africa was Centurion Park, the first team I saw was Northerns, and the first Afrikaans name I learned to pronounce was ”Vinnige” Fanie de Villiers.
He wasn’t the same bowler I remembered. He didn’t sprint to the crease anymore, he’d cut down his pace, he swung the ball consistently away from the right-handers, and he cut the odd one back as well. He had, quite obviously, learnt his trade.
But there were so many good pace bowlers in South Africa in those days that De Villiers was not an automatic choice for the national side. Who, now, remembers that he was regarded as a one-day bowler not good enough to play in a test match? Sydney changed all that.
There must be many people who believe that they saw the final morning heroics live. M-Net has shown the footage so many times since that it has seeped into the national consciousness. The truth is that most of the cricket-loving population were either at work or in bed. But not me. I was trapped inside Kruger Park without a radio or a television set, trying manfully to conceal my anxiety for information, feigning all the while an interest in the scenes of magnificent natural beauty all around me.
When I entered the park, Australia were 62 for four, chasing 116 to win. When I left 48 hours later, they were still 62 for four. I gunned the car through the Eastern Transvaal (as it then was) looking for a newsagent like a man searching for water in the desert. I finally found a general store, where not much English was spoken, and begged for information.
”I know we lost,” I stammered, ”but I need to know by how many wickets.”
”We didn’t lose,” said the shopkeeper, ”we won! It was Fanie!” He produced a day-old copy of The Citizen and pressed it on me, all smiles.
Moments like that stick in the memory like jam on a newspaper. Long after I’ve forgotten the countless unimpressive spells I saw from the old warhorse towards the end of his career, I’ll remember the smile he brought to the face of a shopkeeper in the Eastern Transvaal.
De Villiers got where he did through an unshakeable belief in his ability to change things. He came up to the Wanderers press box during a Currie Cup (as it then was) game and, looking at the electronic scoreboard, I noticed he was down to bat at number eight. ”Who did you bribe to get that high in the order?” I said.
”And just where do you think I should bat, China!” he replied, sticking out his chin and poking a hole in my chest with his finger.
A year later, at the same ground, he scored 66 not out in a test match against Pakistan, reverse sweeping Salim Malik for four along the way. In the same game he got 10 wickets, ”and I should have got more because the ball was swinging nicely”, he told me on the golf course one day. ”It was the high point of my career because we went into the game and everybody said we were going to get a huge klap because Pakistan were good, and we just humiliated them.”
So, in a way, it was fitting that De Villiers finished his career against Pakistan. In the Durban Test, he was left high and dry by Boucher and Donald, and he clearly believed that fate had decreed a South African victory with De Villiers 65 not out at the end. He seemed to have those words which he made famous in Sydney tattooed on his forehead – ”South Africans never give up”.
In Durban the team fell short of De Villiers’s expectations. In Port Elizabeth he helped them to raise their game, and history will remember his last delivery in Test cricket, a leg stump yorker as perfect as anything Leonardo da Vinci ever painted.
Briefly in the 1950s, England were led by the lion-hearted all-rounder Freddie Brown. A green-grocer who plied his trade around the corner from the Oval advertised the quality of his produce thus: ”Luv’ly lettisses. ‘Arts like Freddie Brahn’s.”
Think of Fanie de Villiers the next time you buy a lettuce, and wish the boykie with the big heart a happy retirement.