Hello and welcome to the start of day 2. “A big booming beautiful morning in Durban. Murky conditions. Rain expected. And there was no surprise when Sri Lanka chose to bowl. The bowlers surely didn’t let their skipper down. Got rid of the openers cheaply and should have had Bavuma twice (dropped once and got caught off a no-ball) but not to be. After the brilliant opening hour from the Fernandos it was the turn of Lahiru Kumara in the second.
After conceding 17 (includes 4 leg byes) off his opening over Kumara removed a promising Stubbs and Bedingham in quick succession to push South Africa into further trouble. Unfortunately that was all the action we had. Two sessions wiped out due to rain but the radar looks promising for the rest of the Test. Remember there will be no early start tomorrow and we might have a couple of 135-minute sessions instead followed by an extra half-hour in the final session.
Brendon Kleynhans is a maths teacher at South African College School one of the country’s most prestigious alma maters. It luxuriates in the leafiness all around the most genteel part of Cape Town with Newlands a mere long boundary away. If that brings to your mind’s eye a slight chinless reticent bespectacled individual sporting a combover a pocket protector and – dread word – slacks who declines to step out of the safety of suburbia you need that eye tested.
As in kilometres per hour. Kleynhans is built like prop forwards used to be before rugby turned them into heaving cyborgs. He looks like he spends more time wrestling metal in the gym than he does squinting at a blackboard pinching a piece of chalk twixt thumb and forefinger. He has a chin. He does not have a combover.
The sidearm that dangled from the end of a properly muscled limb gleaming sweetly in its sleeveless glory told us why he had ventured out of the Cape’s gentility to the country’s most humid city at almost the hottest time of the year. Kleynhans is South Africa’s throwdown specialist. Other teams have had them; notably India who have been served in this capacity by Raghavendra Dwivedi since no less than Sachin Tendulkar brought him into the training environment in 2011.
But South Africa are not India with their bottomless resources and consequently burgeoning retinues of non-playing functionaries. It has been thus for a long time. South Africans were amazed when Royal Challengers Bangalore turned up for the 2009 IPL replete with a “chief blogger” and a “chief podcaster”. The locals knew those job titles because they were emblazoned in large letters across the shoulders of the team shirts the “chiefs” wore.
No such vacancies exist even 15 years later in South African Cricket. Indeed if national players want a throwdown session they pick on whichever coach looks less than busy. Before that is Kleynhans arrived. He takes his job seriously. Note that he didn’t say “145 or 150”. Those extra two kilometres at the lower end of his speedometer matter. Perhaps too much for some a team source said: “Not all of the guys use him – he’s a bit quick …”
Kleynhans’ presence is not as it might seem tangential to the bigger picture. It tells us South Africa are serious enough about trying to win the WTC to go where they have previously not by roping in people like throwdown specialists. For a team used to making do barely with must-haves to be bequeathed a nice-to-have serves a dual purpose.
Kleynhans does his job with more energy accuracy and efficiency than some put-upon member of the dressingroom which means his charges should be more sharply honed for their challenge. It also means the players know they are valued maybe more than they were or thought they were. When you’re four wins away from sealing a spot in the WTC final nuggets of recognition like that are worth more than they would have been had they been gold.
Sri Lanka tour of South Africa 2024 – Sri Lanka vs South Africa 1st Test Day 2 Live Streaming details and channel list
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