Lance Klusener’s turbulent international career began explosively at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens in November 1996 as he took 8/64 on debut to bowl South Africa to a resounding 329-run victory over India.
His omission from the squads named this week to tour England suggests that this career might have ended damply, on a drizzly night at Kingsmead as South Africa got their sums wrong and bowed meekly out of the 2003 World Cup.
In between, of course, Klusener reinvented himself as one-day cricket’s most feared and most effective lower-order batsman. For a few weeks in May and June of 1999 Klusener blasted South Africa out of a succession of precarious, if not impossible, positions during the seventh World Cup.
Then came that infamous run-out at Edgbaston. South Africa tied their semifinal against Australia, but failed to qualify for the final. Klusener, a central figure in one-day cricket’s most dramatic moment, was never quite the same player again.
Perhaps only Klusener and his immediate family will ever really know what effect Edgbaston had on him. A number of his teammates, past and present, have been unable to explain what happened to the man, why shyness became truculence and indifference. Why, in fact, he withdrew so much inside himself that gradually the press, followed by the administrators and, finally, the selectors lost patience with him.
Shortly after South Africa’s exit from the World Cup a story trickled out of the Kingsmead dressing rooms to the effect that at the moment of failure, with several of the South African players in tears, Klusener stepped out of the showers and announced that he planned to go fishing.
This may or may not be true. Like rumours, these things swell and shift along the way. But, as with Steve Waugh’s apocryphal aside to Herschelle Gibbs at Headingley in 1999 — ”Well done, mate. You’ve just dropped the World Cup” — sometimes they seem to capture the man and the moment.
It, or rather Klusener, was not ever thus. He was brought into the side at Eden Gardens in 1996 to replace Fanie de Villiers who, it was felt, had lost his swing. It was not a case of swopping like for like. Klusener had no pretensions as a swing bowler, but for Natal he had shown energy, enthusiasm and a willingness to go back to his mark and charge in over and over again.
One of the tricks about playing at Eden Gardens is to silence the crowd. The ground is one of cricket’s greatest temples, but when the place is packed it crushes in on the players. Each Indian boundary is greeted with ferocious baying; any achievements by the opposition, on the other hand, are met with stony silence.
In the Indian first innings, Mohammad Azharuddin took Klusener apart on his way to a 78-ball 109. Klusener’s figures were a wretched 0/75 in 14 overs. He couldn’t find his length and he lacked the zip and aggression that characterised his bowling when he played for Natal at Kingsmead.
In the second innings, however, with Allan Donald unable to bowl, Klusener shared the new ball with Brian McMillan and tore through the Indians. Of his eight wickets, five were snapped up in the cordon behind the wicket and the remaining three were bowled. India were blasted out for 137. Klusener’s return was the third-best of all time by a South African bowler.
Two Tests later, now at Newlands, Klusener carved up the Indian bowling for a 100-ball century. His innings was overshadowed, to a degree, by the batting of Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar, who put on 222 in less than 40 overs later
in the day. Nevertheless, an eight-wicket haul and a run-a-ball century inside his first three Test matches wasn’t a bad way for Klusener to kick off his career.
At the time Clive Rice was reported to have told him to enjoy it, because it wasn’t always going to come quite so easy.
Klusener had established himself both as a Test and one-day player, but during the 1998 tour of England, he turned an ankle in the third Test at Old Trafford. He bowled only three overs in the second innings as England saved the match and went on to win the series.
Klusener was never able to recapture his pace after the injury, eventually converting himself to a medium-pace off-cutter. Ironically, in his new
incarnation he was most effective on low, slow pitches, the surfaces on which he least enjoyed batting.
The pace had gone, but the big-match temperament remained. In the build-up to the 1999 World Cup, he scored a century against New Zealand as a one-day opener, but the real indication of what was to come came in Napier, when he smashed the last ball of the game off Dion Nash over long-on for six to give South Africa a two-wicket victory.
And then there came the 1999 World Cup. There had always been debate over where best to bat Klusener, but South Africa thought him the most effective in the last 15 overs of the innings, when he had enough time to pat back a few of his first deliveries before launching. The ploy worked a treat for South Africa. He scored 12 off four balls against India, 52 off 45 against Sri Lanka, 48 off 40 against England and 52 off 58 against Zimbabwe. No one could get him out. To add to this, he had also took five wickets against Kenya.
More was to come, including a 46 off 41 balls in a thrilling victory over Pakistan before he finally got out for four against New Zealand, batting at number three. In the first meeting against Australia in Leeds, he crunched 36 off 21 balls. And then came Edgbaston.
During the tournament Klusener scared bowlers witless. He knew what he could hit, where he could hit it and had the confidence to stare bowlers down.
It was a straightforward form of intimidation. Effectively, Klusener told bowlers that if they got it wrong, he was going to murder them. And he did. Even in the semifinal when he thrashed Damien Fleming for successive, ferocious boundaries off the first two balls of the final over. Then a scuffed drive and another scuff, a scamper, a run-out and South Africa were out of the World Cup.
That night Klusener stood alone in the bar of the South Africans’ Birmingham hotel, nursing a beer and keeping his thoughts to himself. He had to stay on in England for the final to receive his man of the tournament award, and this was the part he clearly hated most. He could chat happily on the phone to Nelson Mandela, but faced with a microphone and a press conference, he muttered and mumbled and looked desperately about for escape.
No one blamed Klusener particularly for South Africa’s exit and, a few months later he appeared in a television advertisement with Allan Donald, singing ”Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile”.
But something had changed. When he made 174 to hold the South African first innings together at St George’s Park against England later in the year, he simply refused to attend the obligatory press conference after the match, establishing a pattern that was to follow for the next few years.
He stopped greeting, or even acknowledging people, and seemed only comfortable in the company of certain of his teammates. Finding yourself in a lift with him became an unpleasant experience as he stared fixedly and ostentatiously at the door. He looked through people.
When he scored another Test century against India in Bloemfontein a year later he again snubbed the press, marching past them, in near-darkness, to the nets. The South African management — Graham Ford, Shaun Pollock and Goolam Rajah — raised their hands helplessly. ”Well, that’s just Lance, you know.”
He also decided he knew best how to practise, getting someone to throw down half-volleys which he hammered into the far distance. The problem was his form had fallen away and it wasn’t the half-volleys that were doing the damage. He was uneasy against spin, and off-spinners started targetting his leg stump, cramping him and making him look awkward. He also, it began to emerge, wasn’t too happy against the quick stuff.
During the unofficial Centurion ”Test” against India whispers came out of the South African dressing room of a row between Pollock and Klusener over the latter’s unwillingness to go in against the second new ball. He dropped catches at slip and was banished to the outfield. His off-cutters, while accurate, seldom threatened. But every now and again, he’d get hold of the ball and hit the leather off it.
He had no real form going into this year’s World Cup, but his record in 1999 pretty much forced his inclusion in the squad. How could you leave someone out who might, on his day, win a crucial game for you. And he nearly did, in the opening match against the West Indies before a massive clout off Vasbert Drakes held up in the Newlands wind and he was caught at deep midwicket.
He had also failed to cross during the shot, sitting back in his crease and watching the ball sail away. Mark Boucher was stranded at the non-striker’s end and Makhaya Ntini and Allan Donald were not up to getting the three runs South Africa needed for victory.
In a sense, this seems to sum up Klusener’s apparent indifference to the team cause. He just doesn’t seem to care any more and the real tragedy is that, at 31, he surely still has much to offer, both to his team and to himself.
He won’t tour England and, with South Africa looking to rebuild, it is hard to see how and when he might be recalled. Or even whether he cares about it.
Klusener came out of the Natal country district leagues to play first-class and international cricket. He lacked the technique, the finesse and the natural grace of players like Pollock and Jacques Kallis, but at his best he was perhaps a more effective match-winner than either of the world’s two top all-rounders.
In a sense Klusener was an anachronism, a throwback to the burly, village-green blacksmith, but this enhanced, rather than detracted from, his popularity among crowds all over the world.
Those who love the game, but lack the talent to play at a high level, adopted him as their own. Somewhere along the way Klusener seems to have forgotten this.