Up in Centurion Park this week the man who may yet come to solve the quota dilemma that currently preoccupies South African cricket has been working quietly with the new national coach, Eric Simons.
It might be lumping a lot on the young (and quite possibly fragile) shoulders of Mfuneko Ngam, but in many respects the 23-year-old fast bowler from the Eastern Province (which remains a hotbed of intrigue, back-stabbing and disgruntlement) is a signpost to the future of South African cricket.
Ngam has played in just three Test matches during which he has taken 11 wickets (he might have had a couple more but for at least two dropped catches in his maiden Test at the Wanderers). He has been sidelined by a cruel succession of injuries and there will always be some concern about his ability to get through a match, let alone a series, without breaking down.
If he can get on the field for South Africa he may well still be seen (in fast-bowling terms) as pretty raw. But if he is fully fit, none of this will matter all that much because Ngam is the genuine article — a born fast bowler.
Old cricketers like to bang on endlessly about the subtleties and intricacies of the game — in itself this might explain why Americans remain mystified by cricket — but in all sport there is little to compare with the visceral excitement of a very quick bowler in full flight.
In these instances, the game comes down to its fundamentals where everything is measured in milli- metres and milliseconds; where courage and reaction-time and effort eclipse technique and composure.
Ngam played his first Test match — on the back of fewer than 20 first-class games — against New Zealand at the Wanderers in December 2000. He should have had a wicket with his fourth ball when Adam Parore was missed at slip and he should have had Parore again in his third over when another chance was spilled. No matter, Ngam was electrifying in the manner of a young Mike Procter or a young Allan Donald.
The real point, though, is that not a word was mentioned about the circumstances of his selection. Those who watched his first day at the Wanderers went there amid a buzz of anticipation and although the match itself fizzled out into a soggy draw after the third and fourth days were washed out, Ngam had announced himself.
Two matches later and he was out of action with one of the several stress fractures that have plagued him, but by then he had already demonstrated that South Africa had someone to put up against the express pace of Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar.
It has never been fully established whether the frailty of Ngam’s skeleton is the result of genetics or inadequate diet as a youngster or overwork. Possibly the reason lies in a combination of factors coupled with wretchedly bad luck, but there is optimism that he might be able to bowl again this summer.
There is an almost irresistible urge to wonder what might have happened if Ngam had been able to play last season. Would South Africa have capitulated so meekly against Australia? Would the selection row in Sydney have taken place? Would Rushdi Magiet and Graham Ford still have their jobs? Would the United Cricket Board and the sports ministry, not to mention the African National Congress Youth League, be at odds over the issue of quotas?
It is tempting to believe that had Ngam been available, much of the wind might have been taken out of the arguments about transformation and quotas and merit and trust simply because Ngam seemed to render much of the debate irrelevant. When he was flying in, Ngam stirred everyone’s blood and when he and Makhaya Ntini bowled in tandem against Sri Lanka at Kingsmead and Newlands early last year, South African cricket seemed to have arrived at a new dawn.
It’s a dawn, though, that has been delayed for the moment, but Ngam still represents something that South African cricket desperately needs — international players whose skin colour is not so much irrelevant as barely noticed.
This is not to dismiss contributions made by Ntini and Herschelle Gibbs and Paul Adams and the other black players to have represented South Africa, but the fact is that Ngam did not have to deal with a whispering campaign when he was first chosen. In this respect he broke new ground and perhaps paved the way for Ashwell Prince whose selection against Australia this past season also aroused little debate. If anything, Prince was viewed as a better bet against Australia than Justin Ontong, the man he replaced for the Wanderers Test, simply because he had a couple of first-class seasons on Ontong and appeared to be better equipped temperamentally to cope with the pressures.
There’s going to be enormous pressure to pick Ngam this summer if he appears to be fit. No one can dispute the fact that he is a black African and, like it or not, he has symbolic significance. But there will also be pressure from another perspective: South Africa desperately needs fast bowlers capable of scaring the bejesus out of opposing batsmen. Ngam would fit the bill very nicely, thank you.