The Shorter Wisden 2013

by John Wisden

  “I found I was trying to impress the other batsmen, which made me feel pressurised,” he says. “After three months, I changed my whole mindset, concentrating more on occupying the crease, and my form improved.” In the winter, he played first-class and Twenty20 cricket in Zimbabwe, enjoying success in both formats before returning to Taunton intent on forging a regular first-team place. A solid summer brought 1,010 Championship runs – only Trescothick made more for Somerset – including a top score of 254 not out against Durham at Chester-le-Street. “I was proud of that season. I felt I had put down a marker, and that only fine-tuning was necessary to bring further improvement.”

  That fine-tuning involved hours of the most arduous practice, both at Taunton and with his batting coach Neil Burns, the former wicketkeeper. Compton makes a habit of facing bowling machines set at 99mph for two- or three-hour sessions, having dimmed the lights in the indoor nets. “The aim is to make conditions as uncomfortable as possible and see how long I can maintain concentration. There is a fear factor, and it’s often very cold too. You get hit and there are times when you just want to walk away, but I figure if I can handle that, nothing in games is going to intimidate me.”

  While Compton is immensely proud of his grandfather’s achievements, he is very much his own man. Coming from a cricketing family, he had a bat in his hand from as early as he can remember, but he never received coaching from Denis. “He did offer me one piece of advice when I was playing in his back garden one day. My dad was giving me some underarm throwdowns, and my grandfather was sitting on his porch, probably sipping a port or brandy. I was tapping the ball back with a high elbow and he yelled out: ‘For God’s sake, hit the bloody thing!’”

  Jacques Kallis

  CHRISTOPHER MARTIN-JENKINS

  The best, most classical and most durable all-rounder of his generation, and arguably of all time, was the mighty difference between South Africa and England in the summer of 2012. His presence gave the tourists an enviable balance, leaving England – who dared not bat their wicketkeeper Matt Prior at No. 6 to accommodate an extra bowler – outgunned.

  Kallis’s implacable alliance with Hashim Amla made possible England’s humiliation at The Oval, where his unbeaten 182 was as easy to miss as any such score could be. He also bowled with shrewdness and calculated venom, undermining England’s first innings with the vital wickets of Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell, and swallowed fast, flying catches at second slip.

  Only a Lord’s century remained out of reach, though last summer he was not helped by two contentious decisions. Overall, he was for South Africa what he had been for at least 15 years: a pillar and a rock. At last, the claim in 2012 that he had never quite received the credit he deserved felt wrong; but the comparisons with Garfield Sobers did not.

  Born in Cape Town on October 16, 1975, JACQUES HENRY KALLIS was quickly recognised as a special talent at his school, Wynberg Boys’ High, a couple of miles from Newlands, his spiritual home. Indeed, the school’s cricket field was renamed “The Jacques Kallis Oval” in 2009. He first played for his country, against England in the Durban Test of 1995-96, at the age of 20. Batting at No. 6, he made a single in a rain-ruined draw, and did not get a bowl, but his bit part proved misleading: other than a spell out of the Twenty20 side, he has been an essential selection ever since. That Oval hundred was the 43rd of his Test career (only Sachin Tendulkar has more), to go with 17 in one-day internationals. Injuries have been rare, perhaps because of a bowling action reminiscent of Alec Bedser: sideways on, with the left arm leading, a full turn of a strong frame, and a surging follow-through.

  Like Jack Nicklaus, the greatest of golfers, he has kept extraordinary command of his emotions, his expression inscrutable until he takes another wicket or reaches another century. Then a wide smile lights his even wider face. He has been a model not just of batting and bowling technique, but of the game’s chivalrous spirit: England recall Kallis walking at a crucial moment in a World Cup game at Chennai in 2011, having accepted the fielder’s word that a potentially contentious slip catch had carried. Yet he is as intensively competitive as anyone. He is, in fact, driven by his will to succeed.

  Massive strength and a temperament as cool as an igloo have made him the most consistently formidable all-round cricketer since the era of Botham, Imran, Hadlee and Kapil – and, like them, Kallis has done things his own way. He ascribes his longevity to managing his fitness: “I’ve always tried to listen to my body and pick up early warning signs. In the early days I trained all day and bowled in the nets. I was in my mid-twenties when I realised I had to change.”

  As a batsman he quickly learned to switch off between deliveries; a monumental calm has always pervaded his cricket. Once set, often from the first ball, he looks unmovable, as he confirmed during his unbroken stand of 377 with Amla. Impressive rather than exciting, and utterly orthodox, he rarely looks hurried; his bat appears broader than the Laws allow. Only his strike-rate has drawn criticism: just occasionally, he has seemed wrapped up in personal battles, and once or twice in mid-career he failed to produce the gear-change his team needed.

  His omission from the 2007 World Twenty20 may have focused the mind, for barely a week after the tournament he dominated Pakistan’s Test bowlers on their notoriously slow pitches, scoring 155 and 100 not out at Karachi, then 59 and 107 not out at Lahore. Soon after, at home to New Zealand, he scored 186 and 131 in successive innings.

  To select from his achievements feels invidious, but a few feats capture him best. In 2001-02, he went 1,241 minutes – nearly 21 hours – between Test dismissals. Two years later, he made centuries in five successive Tests, one short of Don Bradman’s record. Depicted by some, at times fairly, as a reluctant bowler, he finished the England tour with 555 international wickets, to say nothing of 319 catches.

  Short but intensive preparation has been vital to these insatiable performances. “The key,” he explains, “is to treat every ball you bowl or face as if it’s the real thing. With that intensity you can do your preparation in 20 balls rather than an hour or two. I learned a long time ago that physical preparation for international cricket takes place a long time before the match. It’s mental preparation that counts on the eve of the match.

  “I’ve never had to question my motivation, never questioned the reason I go to work every day. I stay fresh by getting as far away from cricket as possible between tours and games. I don’t watch any cricket and I certainly don’t talk about it.”

  His escape to private life is easier in Cape Town than it would be if home were Kolkata or Mumbai. “I prefer to play golf than watch cricket,” he admits. “I do whatever I can to make the game feel fresh again the next time I play.” And his willingness to muck in was exemplified when, as part of a team-bonding exercise before the England tour, Kallis – who loathes heights – jumped ten feet into an Alpine lake.

  How much longer Kallis will devote to the game is, inevitably, uncertain. The calamitous ending to the career of Mark Boucher, his close friend, gave him reason to consider his future early in the England tour. But Gary Kirsten, long a team-mate and now the national coach, has a plan. After managing Sachin Tendulkar’s cricketing autumn while coaching India, Kirsten hoped he could persuade Kallis to play at the 2015 World Cup. It would be a record-equalling sixth, and he would be 39. Whenever he does decide to call it a day, cricket will have lost a true phenomenon.

  Marlon Samuels

  TONY COZIER

  The transformation of Marlon Samuels from troubled underachiever to elite performer read like a Hollywood script. The steady improvement of West Indies after years of similar frustration was no coincidence. Together they served as a reminder that, for all the headlines gathered by Samuels’s fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt and the other Caribbean medallists at the London Olympics, it was cricket that first established the region’s reputation for sporting excellence.

  The performances of Samuels in England surprised many, if not the man himself. In three Tests, he failed to pass 5
0 only once in five innings, averaged more than 96, and made the stump mike essential listening with his ice-cool rejoinders to the sledging. More runs at home to New Zealand soon after confirmed this was no fluke and, by the time he was winning the World Twenty20 final almost on his own, he had established himself in the upper echelons of global batsmanship. A maiden Test double-hundred followed in Bangladesh. It was some turnaround – and only a little of the sheen was removed when he became involved in a petty altercation with Shane Warne in Australia’s Big Bash League early in 2013.

  Fast-tracked into the Test team at the age of 19 after only seven first-class matches, Samuels was restricted to 29 caps and an average of 29 over the next eight years because of his cavalier approach. He was also forced to remedy his flawed off-spinner’s action. When he was found guilty of links with a Dubai-based bookmaker ahead of a one-day international at Nagpur in January 2007, and banned for two years, even from club cricket, the feeling was that Samuels – who protested his innocence – might have been swayed towards another profession. His good looks and lithe physique had already earned him work as a male model. Instead, the affair stiffened his resolve.

  “All I ever wanted to do was play international cricket and make a name for myself,” he says. “The two years that were taken away enabled me to look at myself. I never thought of quitting. I made up my mind that I was going to come back and show them that nothing could break me that easily.”

  He adopted a rigorous routine. Morning work in the gym from eight to 11 was followed by afternoon sessions in the nets against the bowling machine or willing friends, then yoga in the evening. Though never a heavy drinker, he gave up alcohol altogether. His suspension ended in May 2010, and his form in the Caribbean’s regional four-day competition the following year (853 runs at 65) guaranteed a swift recall to international cricket. He inevitably took time to readapt, and even turned down the chance to play at the 2011 World Cup, telling the selectors he was “not 100% ready”. And there were further problems when he signed belatedly for Pune Warriors ahead of the 2012 Indian Premier League, knowing the tournament clashed with a home Test series against Australia.

  But the West Indies Cricket Board agreed to his suggested compromise – skip Australia, play the first half of the IPL, then rejoin his international team-mates in England. His reason for preferring the chill of a northern spring to the challenge of facing Australia on home territory revealed an ambition not previously obvious: “England, not Australia, were the No. 1 team at the time, and I felt that, if I could dominate against them, it would push me closer to being No. 1 in the world.”

  Immediately, it became clear this was no braggadocio. Scores of 31 and 86 at Lord’s, 117 and 76 not out at Trent Bridge, and 76 at Edgbaston were compiled with the effortless elegance that had always typified his batting; now he came with diligence too. Two months later in the Caribbean, on the 50th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence he made 123 in a first-innings total of 209 against New Zealand in his native Kingston, then carried West Indies to a 2–0 triumph with a second-innings 52. In October in Colombo, his breathtaking 78 off 56 balls paved the way for victory over Sri Lanka in the final of the World Twenty20. No one – not even Chris Gayle and his Gangnam Style dancing – embodied their renaissance better than Samuels.

  Those who remembered him as a boy prodigy were surprised only that his talents had taken so long to bear fruit. MARLON NATHANIEL SAMUELS, born in Kingston to Philip and Daphne on January 5, 1981, was nurtured at Melbourne, one of Jamaica’s most renowned clubs, and Kingston College – a school with a rich sporting tradition and a cricket coach, Roy McLean, whom Samuels credits with first recognising, then shaping, his rare ability. He hoped one of the first initiatives of his new Marlon Samuels Foundation would be to renovate Kingston College’s facilities.

  His parents had no special love for cricket, but he and his four brothers (plus three sisters) enjoyed the advantage of living within walking distance of Melbourne, where they could rub shoulders with Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh. Robert, the eldest, and ten years Marlon’s senior, was a solid left-handed opener who went on to captain Jamaica and play six Tests, against New Zealand and Australia in the late 1990s. Twins David and Daniel were useful club players. But Marlon was the special one.

  By the age of 15, he had reeled off 16 hundreds for college and club, and Jamaica included him in their Red Stripe Cup side a year later, with Walsh captain and Robert an opener. But dismissed for two and one on debut, Marlon was immediately consigned to the youth team. The West Indies selectors were more convinced, though, picking him for two successive Under-19 World Cups, and two matches against the touring Pakistanis in 1999-2000. When Shivnarine Chanderpaul succumbed to injury on the tour of Australia later that year, Samuels was summoned. They might as well have tossed him to the saltwater crocs.

  But their hunch was justified: in his second Test, at the MCG, he made an unbeaten 60 out of 165, then 46 out of 109. He would beat even Brian Lara to the top of West Indies’ series averages. Wisden remarked on his “impressive cool”. But in the years ahead there was too much cool and not enough substance. Viv Richards, then the travelling chief selector, wanted to send him home from a tour of India in 2002-03 for breaking the team curfew. The board disagreed, and at Eden Gardens he scored his maiden Test hundred in his only innings of the series. His first one-day international century quickly followed, at Vijayawada. Yet Samuels soon dissolved into irritating inconsistency. And he was perplexed and unsettled by it all.

  “I never knew when I’d be playing from one match to the next, so I couldn’t plan my game as I wanted,” he says. “I kept hearing I was left out for some attitude problem, but they never explained to me what it supposedly was. I just kept on hearing that I was too cool, too laid back.”

  It was no coincidence that he approached his best in South Africa, in 2007-08, almost as soon as Gayle, a compatriot and trusted friend, took over the captaincy. Samuels compiled his second Test hundred, at Durban, and averaged 52. Then in quick succession came the problem with his action and the ICC ban. His future was in obvious doubt. Yet his spirited resurrection ensures it no longer is.

  Dale Steyn

  TELFORD VICE

  It took a girl of no more than ten years old to cut to the chase of what it means to be Dale Steyn. “How do you manage to have fun and look so angry at the same time?” she asked him earnestly at a sponsor’s farewell before South Africa flew to Australia late in 2012 to defend the No. 1 ranking earned so emphatically in England a couple of months previously.

  How indeed? Not for Steyn the despising sneer of Allan Donald, Makhaya Ntini’s brooding brow or Shaun Pollock’s cool detachment from the blood-in-the-boots business of fast bowling. Instead, like some demented cartoon elf, Steyn’s eyes flash frequently with dark wonder at the fact that he is armed with a skill that could kill.

  Everyone who faced him in South Africa’s Test series in England survived to tell the tale, but only in a manner of speaking. Fifteen times he dismissed his quarry. And he did so as he always has, with deliveries that seemed almost unfair. How could they swing so sharply at such extreme pace? Their violence was clinical, just like his career strike-rate of 41 balls per wicket – bettered only by four men, including team-mate Vernon Philander, in Test history.

  Two other factors played a part as well. One was the almost other-worldly experience undergone by Steyn and the rest of the squad before the tour, with South African explorer Mike Horn in the Swiss Alps. Clambering over mountains and glaciers, they appeared to stumble across aspects of their characters they never knew existed. The other was the cruel fate of Mark Boucher, whose career was ended when a bail hit him in the eye on the first day of the trip, at Taunton.

  “Going to Switzerland was a revelation for us, and the Mark Boucher incident left a deep impression,” says Steyn. “I probably realised things aren’t as bad on the cricket field as I sometimes make them out to be.”

  In short, reality bit like it had rarely
bitten before. They stopped being a mere team, becoming instead a band of men united in a cause. “Something changed,” he says. “I definitely saw that. There’s great bonding and camaraderie between the guys, and it showed in England. We can handle those tough times because we can overcome them.”

  It was earlier on that fateful day at Taunton that Steyn laid down his marker for the bigger battle to come. He took the new ball, and his first delivery hooked away wickedly from Arul Suppiah’s bat. Steyn completed his follow-through with a forlorn raise of the hand, as if to say: “If only he was good enough to get an edge.”

  Several of those who tangled with Steyn in the summer were indeed good enough – and they paid the price. After crucially halting England’s serene progress on the second morning of the series, at The Oval, he took five wickets in the second innings on a pitch still lacking demons, as South Africa dispelled bumptious English doubts about whether they belonged on the same field. Another four crashed in the first innings at Lord’s, among them the linchpin wickets of Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott; between them, the pair fell seven times to Steyn in the series.

  To see him slay another victim with what seemed an utter lack of effort was to see a man live up to his billing. Quite simply, he looked like the world’s best fast bowler, and performed accordingly. More than that, he looked as if he had been doing so for most of his life. He is, it has been said before and will be said again, a natural – a bundle of fast-twitch fibres and aggressive intent lurking in a body perfect for its role.

  It’s hard to imagine that DALE WILLEM STEYN was not already a fast-bowler-in-waiting when he was born on June 27, 1983, in Phalaborwa, a town of fewer than 13,000 souls, in the rural north-east of South Africa. But much needed to be done if he was to fulfil that destiny as spectacularly as he has. Throughout his career, he has been among the best conditioned of South Africa’s players; happily, serious injury has left him alone. But the confident, wisecracking athlete he would become is a far cry from the unsure young bowler he once was.