Ken Borland

For the South African Women’s team, their first bit of post-Covid action may well only come in September, but their leading wicket-taker, Shabnim Ismail, says she is champing at the bit to get back on the field with her Proteas team-mates.

And the thing she misses most about playing for the Proteas is the family atmosphere.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) revealed earlier this week that they are making “positive progress” on scheduling a tri-series with India and South Africa and how they can best host it in the safest way possible. The Women’s Proteas were originally scheduled to play two T20s against England in the first week of September and then move on to a four-match ODI series also featuring India. The ECB have said they are committed to still having those fixtures and they may yet be able to play them in their original slot.

“Coming back from the T20 World Cup, where I still believe we would have made the final if the rain hadn’t come against Australia, we were looking forward to hosting the Aussies in our own backyard. Instead we had to spend three months at home, which is really tough as a cricketer. I miss our family, which is the Proteas women’s team. Soon hopefully we will be able to start training.

“Those fortunate enough to have a gym at home were able to still train and having Trisha Chetty with me, I have a wicketkeeper to at least bowl to every day, but it’s still not the same as nets. I really miss it and the team environment, for the last couple of years we have seen each other every month. It’s all very different from when I started playing for the Proteas in 2007 when I was still very young [18],” Ismail, who was named CSA’s Women’s T20 Cricketer of the Year at the weekend, said in a teleconference.

Ismail is one of the fastest bowlers in the global women’s game, getting into the 120s in terms of speed, and has a phenomenal record with 136 wickets in 98 ODIs and 99 scalps in 92 T20s. Now heading for her 32^nd birthday, she is confident that her career is far from done. As befits someone who always looks really ready for a scrap on the field, the Cape Town product says she modelled herself on Andre Nel’s aggression, if not the occasional red mist that used to descend on the fiery fast bowler from the East Rand.

“I chose the same No.89 on my Proteas shirt because I loved Andre Nel’s aggression and passion. Dale Steyn is also a role-model because he is a fighting character as I am. To be a fighter is just in a fast bowler’s character. I’m turning 32 but I still believe I have a good couple of years left, if I keep fit and nobody sees what you do behind the scenes. But I believe in my skill and ability,” Ismail said.

Lungi Ngidi is not just simply a fitter bowler these days, but a more skilful and canny one as well, and he said on Monday that he will go into the new season with confidence based on how he ended the 2019/20 campaign.

Having burst on to the scene in 2017, Ngidi has endured some frustrating injuries over the last couple of years. He has played just two Tests in the last two years and was only able to play four World Cup matches last year before breaking down again. But the 24-year-old came storming back in limited-overs cricket this year, taking 12 wickets in four ODIs and 13 wickets in six T20 Internationals, winning both the 50-over and 20-over Cricketer of the Year honours at the CSA Awards at the weekend.

“I put a lot of hard work in and I felt I had a point to prove. In ODI cricket I really backed myself and in white-ball cricket I was used as an impact player, trying to take wickets or defend runs, just be versatile and able to bowl in any situation. That has given me a lot of confidence. I know some guys are quicker than me, so I look to produce other skills at certain stages of the game.

“But I was very disappointed not to play more Test cricket and I definitely want to get back into that team. I believe I’ve improved my skills and the mental side of the game. I’m always striving to do well in all three formats, so doing well in Test cricket again is definitely a personal goal of mine. You have to be much more patient in Test cricket though,” Ngidi said in a teleconference on Monday.

While the towering, well-built Durbanite has always been an impressive physical specimen, there have been times when Ngidi has not exactly been a finely-honed athlete, which has also made him more injury-prone and more of a risk for five-day cricket. But he spent much of the second half of 2019 getting into peak physical shape and is certain that his conditioning will now stay at that level, the enforced Covid-19 break helping him to solidify that work over the last three months.

“I just need to continue the work we started last year, it’s about being consistent in training and eating healthily, it’s nothing extraordinary. Going forward, I feel like I’m now in a better position to do well in Test cricket. I feel now that with the conditioning block I’ve done, injury is something that’s now right at the back of the mind, it’s no longer a big deal. If I do happen to get injured again then so be it, I’ll just have to come back again,” Ngidi said.

In the meantime, Ngidi admits that it has been difficult to get his head around some of the protocols required for the return to training.

“It’s been different and difficult. You have to book sessions, train in small groups of no more than five and the bowlers have their own net and balls, gyms have to be sanitized before and after use. It feels weird as a team sport to be doing everything by yourself. We’re being tested regularly, temperatures taken, hand sanitizers everywhere and we have to fill out forms. It’s a whole process before you even bowl a ball but very necessary.”

The monotony of Lockdown has sent many people out to lunch but for Quinton de Kock the same simple ‘see ball, hit ball’ approach that makes him such a great cricketer has seen him get through the winter so far in typically phlegmatic fashion.

Named CSA’s Men’s Cricketer of the Year at the weekend, De Kock said he has not hit a single ball since the end of last season, but is comfortable that there is plenty of time for him to launch a reinvigorated assault on the bowlers of the world.

In 2019/20, De Kock scored 536 runs in seven Tests at an average of 38.28, with one century and four fifties, while he has also averaged 38, with one century and four half-centuries, in 15 ODIs in the last year. He also reached fifty four times in eight T20 Internationals, averaging a remarkable 48.42 at a strike rate of 167.

The left-handed wicketkeeper/batsman scored more Test runs in 2019 than any other Protea (713, 216 more than Faf du Plessis), but has set his sights on scoring more hundreds in the coming season.

“I’ve had the world’s best Lockdown, I’ve been very busy doing nothing. I’ve kept up with my fitness and training in the gym, but I’m based in a very remote place [Garden Route] and there’s not much cricket around here. But practice is mostly muscle memory and there’s still so much time before our next game, you could end up hitting balls for no reason. I needed the break and tried to stay away from cricket.

“But in terms of fulfilling my potential, I would only rank myself about 6.5 out of 10. I had too many starts without progressing, I’m tough on myself and to be honest I’d love to convert those starts into even bigger runs. I wanted to come up the order, I’m happy at five for now and I feel that I can score big hundreds there,” De Kock said after also being named Test Cricketer of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year.

One thing De Kock was adamant about is that he is not going to try and take on the Test captaincy as well as his role as white-ball skipper, wicketkeeper and key batsman.

“Mark Boucher and I had an informal chat and I said I wasn’t sure about the Test captaincy. It would be too much to handle, I realise that now, to be wicketkeeper and captain, I don’t need all that stress, I could see that a mile away,” De Kock said.

Laura Wolvaardt was named the Women’s Cricketer of the Year, largely on the back of her superb performances in steering South Africa to the semi-finals of the ICC World T20 in Australia, and the 21-year-old said the Proteas will try their utmost to do even better in their 50-over World Cup scheduled for January.

“Our main focus has been that ODI World Cup for the last three-and-a-bit years and once we start playing again it will be full steam ahead towards that. The T20 World Cup in Australia will always have a special place in my heart, just the way the team played and the brand of cricket we produced was very special. It was incredible how we performed.

“I definitely did not see all this success coming at all at the start of the season, especially my role at five in the T20s, and I’m very glad it went well. It was the magical idea of the selectors to move me there because I’d had struggles in the powerplay up front. It gave me more freedom once the field was spread, I could rotate the strike a bit more while getting set,” Wolvaardt said.

The Proteas high performance squad have completed their first week of training since their season ended in mid-March and probably the first conclusion to be drawn is that it is just as well the return to play scheduled for June 27 in the new 3TCricket Solidarity Cup was postponed to July 18.

That’s because the players are nowhere near peak match-fitness yet and Proteas physiotherapist Craig Govender is ensuring they do not do too much too quickly in order to prevent injuries.

“The players have been in Lockdown for months and although quite a lot of work was put in in terms of exercise, we’ve had to put injury-prevention measures in place. As the guys return to training, the special instruction has been for them to do it progressively, to not take things too fast. Very good warm-ups are essential after such a long time out.

“Running, bowling and strength work must all be done in progression. We had good systems put in place and we trusted the players to follow the programmes we gave them since the beginning of Lockdown and it’s been nice to find out all the guys have been doing what was required. Now we have to put a rope around the guys and make sure they don’t go too hard,” Govender said on Friday.

After a tough summer that saw them travel to India and then take on both England and Australia at home, there were a bunch of players carrying niggles and the one good thing about the enforced break is that it has allowed those players to get over those issues.

“We looked at all the players with niggles and chronic problems and gave each one a programme for during Lockdown. The good news is they are all a lot better now, they’ve allowed their bodies to rest, something which they dd not have time for in the past. We have a phased approach to returning to action and we’ve had core stability sessions every week via Zoom during Lockdown, as well as running and strength programmes.

“But cabin fever from staying indoors has been quite difficult for the players and a lot of them weren’t able to do weights for strength work because they don’t have a gym at home. But now that we’re back into training, it’s about the skills aspect, that’s very important now. It’s really nice for the guys to be out in the sun and the endorphins are kicking in,” Govender said.