Last weekend’s match against the Kiwis will be remembered for Allan Donald’s 300th Test wicket and Makhaya Ntini’s coming of age Peter Robinson
On the day that The Star in Johannesburg chose to devote much of its front page to the changing hairstyles of Bobby Skinstad, the world’s best non-playing loose forward, Makhaya Ntini actually got out on to the field and did something this week.
Ntini’s 6/66 was a key element in South Africa’s five-wicket victory over New Zealand in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. It’s debatable, and it was debated, whether it was more or less significant than Jacques Kallis’s 160 in the South African first innings. It is possible that South Africa might still have won without Kallis’s innings, but another hour or so of New Zealand at the crease on the final afternoon, another 30 or 40 runs, and the tourists could well have taken the game away from South Africa.
Whatever the case, Ntini’s was a monumental effort as he ran in over after over on a pitch that had drawn the sting from the rest of the attack. Ntini does not, and might never have, the sheer class of Allan Donald or Shaun Pollock, but they are both exceptional bowlers and South Africa is fortunate to have them bowling in tandem.
What Ntini does have, however, is useful pace, strength, fitness and no little courage. The Goodyear Park pitch produced a result in the third session of the final day, so in one sense it served its purpose almost exactly. It was not a surface to gladden the heart of a fast bowler, though, and there was a feeling at times on the fourth and fifth days that even Donald and Pollock were going through the motions, waiting for another new ball.
But Ntini was having none of this. He is only 23 and not yet burdened by experience. Remarkably, after more than 20 overs, he was still jogging back to his mark. This is not a man to hide behind the heavy roller while the rest of the field are lapping the boundary during pre-season training. Ntini first played for South Africa in Perth during early 1998. With Hansie Cronje’s tourists already having qualified for the World Series final, he and Mark Boucher were given their one-day debuts against New Zealand.
He bowled in that match, and there were immediate calls for him to be given an extended run in the side. It was overlooked in many quarters that young and old fast bowlers alike spend their idle moments dreaming of bowling downwind on that Perth pitch, the quickest in the world. In a sense, South Africa had created an albatross for themselves by giving the youngster a run in the most favourable conditions imaginable.
Just two months later he was in the Test side. Pakistan were in South
Africa and political pressure had mounted on the United Cricket Board to “transform” the national team. It all came to a head in Port Elizabeth.
Pat Symcox and Fanie de Villiers had been led to believe that change was inevitable and that they were expendable. Symcox toyed with the idea of retirement, but was persuaded he still had a one-day career ahead of him.
De Villiers went ahead, announced the end of his career on a rainy Saturday and then went out and took 6/23 in the Pakistan first innings.
Ntini had been deliberately kept away from Pakistan, but he was in the side for the first Test against Sri Lanka, regarded as softer touches than the streetwise Pakistanis.
He did well enough in the two Tests, twice accounting for Aravinda de Silva, but his control was sporadic. He sprayed it both sides of the wicket as he sought for pace, and in a team that prided itself on its discipline his inexperience stuck out. The frustration of Cronje, who kept on having to alter his field, was obvious.
Later that year Ntini was ineffective on a good batting pitch at Old Trafford, but the watershed of his career came back at home when he was charged, and convicted, of rape. He was subsequently acquitted on appeal, but just as his advocates had stubbornly refused to acknowledge his rawness at the start of his international career, there were those who stubbornly refused to accept his innocence. Through very little fault of his own, Ntini had once again polarised opinion.
It was a traumatic period for the young man, but, paradoxically, it gave him a season out of the spotlight with Border last year during which some of his rough edges as a bowler were smoothed out.
He now has the control he lacked two years ago and where Cronje had to cosset him, Pollock can set a field and expect him to bowl to it. His strength and fitness now give something to the attack, especially when the ball is old and the batsmen well set.
There is still a guilelessness about him. He was asked in Bloemfontein whether he thought he had grown up as a bowler during the Test and his response was to look puzzled and point out that it wasn’t his first Test match.
But six wickets in an innings speak for themselves, and lest you should wonder about it, he took seven in the match, Donald took six (to take his tally to 303), Pollock four, Kallis two and Lance Klusener none. More than two-and-a-half years after his Test debut, Ntini is now a Test match bowler.