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The rhythm is rhythm boet.
While the modern bowler is interested in developing a slower ball or learning the art of reverse swing, for Anrich Nortje, speed is the key to his skill.
“The pace, especially for me, is crucial,” says Nortje from his family farm in the Eastern Cape during the Covid-19 lockdown in South Africa. “When you don’t have the rhythm, you should focus a lot on the skill because it is very difficult to teach someone the rhythm at a later stage in their career.”
Therefore, the pace was always Nortje’s baseline, and the rest, like control and consistency, came later.
When he began to focus on technique, he had been bowling for several years, had played for provincial age group teams, and had suffered a large number of injuries. He was 17 years old when his collarbone was broken and he realized that “my body was not made for rugby.” At 1.88 meters tall and with a fibrous frame, Nortje had more fast-twitch fiber than big muscle, leading to bowling.
He made his first class debut in 2013 in Namibia, where he opened the bowling alley and took a wicket on his second lap. He was 19 years old, “quite shy and reserved,” according to teammate Jon-Jon Smuts, “but he had white fever.” He was also very proud of his Afrikaans background, a quality that was immediately apparent. “I think the most English music he ever heard was Jack Parow,” Smuts said.
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Afrikaans rapper Parow makes what he calls “dangerous” music that stings with satire, while wearing a leopard-print peak cap with a ridiculously long visor, a 1970s stud and a smile. What could someone like that have in common with Nortje? “It is an attitude of never saying, dying, never stopping fighting,” says Nortje, when asked what supports Afrikaans culture.
A self-styled “proper Dutch”, Nortje, like Parow, wants to be someone who stands out. “When times are tough, I want to raise my hand and try to make a change,” he said. “I want to be the player who stands up when he is 40 degrees and flat. This is how I see it.”
In his first full season as an international, Nortje accomplished exactly that. During one of the most difficult periods in South African cricket, in which they won only one of the five home series, it was one of the bright spots. Nortje was the highest wicket player in South Africa in the summer 2019-20, and has one of the best attack rates among ODI bowlers since January 2019. For the international cricket community, he appeared on the scene of the Overnight, but his bowling was a product that many years in the making.
Between November 2013 and November 2015, he walked through a revolving injury door and used the time to focus on his studies. Knowing that international sport can be a precarious career, he embarked on a bachelor’s degree in business and a graduate program in financial planning while returning to bowling.
Nortje needed to find a way to continue bowling quickly for extended periods while minimizing the risk of injury. That’s where Eastern Province coach (and later Warriors franchise coach) Piet Botha and Drikus Saaiman, the Warriors strength and conditioning coach, came in. They embarked on what turned out to be a three-year process to bring Nortje to good positions in the fold.
“The main thing in the last year was to have all the power in the fold, so we looked at everything from a reinforced front leg to a strong front arm and a good hip boost,” Nortje explained. “I did a lot of training with Drikus to understand how the body works and how certain things feel when you do certain movements, especially the hip drive.”
Being able to pull your hip back when landing on the crease is key to making a bowler action more frontal, which is easier on the body and more sustainable. Nortje started doing well in the 2017-18 season, when he was the The fastest bowler in South Africa’s first-class competition behind three spinners and a medium pacemaker. He had become a favorite of Smuts, who was now the captain of the Warriors. He “expressed himself by getting wickets,” and had earned a reputation for being the fastest bowler on the domestic scene, suffering somewhat from slow going.
Given his gas, Nortje knew it would stand out. “If you look back a few years, in domestic cricket, we had a couple of players on each team who could throw 140 or 150 km / h, but that changed a lot. There are hardly any players who play more than 140 now, and anyone you are always looking at yourself, “Nortje said.
Cobras coach Ashwell Prince was one of those who did the searching and picked Nortje up in the fifth round of the inaugural Mzansi Super League draw for R350,000 (approximately $ 19,400) for Cape Town Blitz. Technically, Nortje made almost R29,166 over, because he only delivered 12 of them before breaking an ankle bone and was discarded from the rest of the tournament.
And so it was, but not in the way Nortje might have thought it would be. He hurt his shoulder and never made it to the IPL. He had to wait until the South African tour in September 2019 to India before facing Kohli, at T20I’s debut in Mohali. Kohli faced six balls from him, including a short ball and a yorker, and scored no limit, but ended undefeated at 72 when India beat South Africa by seven wickets. Three weeks later, Nortje made his Test debut in Pune and Kohli scored 254 undefeated when India won by an inning and 137 runs. Nortje threw 25 overs and ran out of a fight, conceding a century of racing. Wow.
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By then Nortje had understood the roller coaster to be international cricket more than most rookies. He had been chosen for the World Cup team, but he broke his thumb shortly after recovering from the shoulder injury that kept him out of the IPL. That happened online a couple of weeks before the squad’s departure for England, but he managed to see the bright side. “I had just got married and would have had to go to the World Cup the day after my wedding, so it actually worked quite well. It was nice to be home right after the wedding and spend some quality time together.”
Micaela, a teacher, was the girlfriend of Nortje High School and became a popular item in the second edition of the MSL, where television cameras couldn’t get enough of her support in the stands. That tournament was a relief at a particularly dark time for South African cricket, when the administration collapsed and, over the course of ten crazy days in December, everything changed. A new coaching regimen was installed and they saw a big role for Nortje in the local summer.
With Lungi Ngidi out of the England tests, Nortje would be third in the pace package, and finished as the series-leading wicket taker. But it was his other job, that of night watchman, that gave him more joy. “My first five for (at the Wanderers) was really special, but my favorite moment was in the first game, when I helped the team with the bat,” he said.
Nortje hit for two hours and seven minutes in the first Test, at Centurion, scored 40 and starred in a match-winning partnership with Rassie van der Dussen, proving that his significant first-class scores were no accident. “At the provincial level he always liked to play a few shots, but he has about 60 and 70 in his name,” Smuts said. “It was really cool to see him do that for South Africa.”
Although South Africa won the Centurion test, they lost series 1-3 and are still in a rebuilding phase. “It is a culture of learning because everyone is fairly new to international cricket. There are many young boys and many young people in senior positions,” Nortje said. “It’s about trying to follow the basic principles of what the boys have done in the past and learning and understanding where we fit in now.”
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For Nortje, being the fast man is still his forte and he sees himself as the person who raises the heat when South Africa is out in the field. “When I try to put in extra effort and I see the speed gun and the ball flies, that just makes some blood flow again. It seems to do interesting things and you can do things you didn’t think we could do. And then you can work. on a few extra things when you have the rhythm. “
Those extras are what Nortje needs to develop to take his game to the next level, something Botha has generally oversaw, but is now the domain of bowling coach Charl Langeveldt. Botha remains a close confidant and mentor to Nortje. “Rhythm is the number one thing because it makes people feel and realize it,” he said, “but great players also have other skills. They can play as a team and when they smell something, they just intensify it.”
So the rhythm can be rhythm, boetBut Nortje is discovering that there is much more to bowling.
