The 21-year-old fast bowler burst onto the international scene in spectacular fashion this week with a man-of-the-match winning performance of 6-39 to sink India by 135 runs in the second Test in Centurion and help South Africa to an unassailable 2-0 lead with the final Test starting at the Wanderers next Wednesday.
Ngidi, whose father is a buildings caretaker and mother a domestic worker, was awarded a scholarship to Hilton but only started playing seriously at the age of 15 when he immediately caught the attention of 1st XI coach Neil Johnson, the former Zimbabwe, Hampshire and Leicestershire all-rounder who alerted the Titans to his potential.
He was reluctant to move to Pretoria after school having rarely travelled outside his native Durban and was only persuaded with the promise of a place at Tuks University where he enrolled in a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Industrial Sociology: “I wanted to further my education, not really knowing whether I could make a career in cricket,” he explained. “But they gave me the chance to do both.”
This story is from the January 19,2018 edition of The Cricket Paper.
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This story is from the January 19,2018 edition of The Cricket Paper.
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