With A Reach Exceeding His Grasp

Morne Morkel belongs to the very tiniest minority of players who leave international cricket while they are still improving. In his last 15 Tests the South African fast bowler took 67 wickets at 22, but in his last seven he collected 37 at just 17.75. It wasn’t just a case of doing what he had always done, but doing it very well.

- Neil Manthorp

He was “slothing” on the sofa in the fam­ily home watching television one day when Albie was gathering his kit for afternoon nets with Easterns in Benoni. “Why don’t you come along — you’re not doing anything else,” the big brother said to ‘little’ Morne. Coach Ray Jennings liked what he saw — a lot — and that was how it started, with a junior contract a year later.

Morne had a lot to learn, but at least his future was decided — it would be in cricket. Jennings loved the early rawness and en­ couraged it — at the same time instilling an old­school discipline in his old­style fash­ ion that players either loved or hated. Ice baths and extra laps didn’t scare the Morkels.

The rise was rapid — he wondered whether it was too rapid. “It was the Boxing Day Test in Durban and I was standing on a field with Sachin Tendulkar. Not only that, I had to bowl my first ball to him. I couldn’t breathe properly, I didn’t know how I was going to bowl it…”

There was a sense of that innocence which remained with Morne throughout his career. Various coaches, notably Jennings when he got the national job, tried to ‘toughen him up’. Graeme Smith, too, be­ came frustrated from time­to­time with Morne’s lack of aggression.

“We would be desperately trying to gain an edge in a Test match and Morne was all over the batsmen, on the verge of striking— then he’d apologise for hitting one of them, or smile, and the pressure was gone!” Smith says, laughing. “But I made the mistake of wanting him to be something he wasn’t and soon learned that he was at his best when he was himself.”