Connecting the dots between Schultz and Rabada

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

A young SA fast bowler goes off to the sub-continent expecting about as much help from the heat and the pitches as turkeys expect from Christmas. But he confounds the odds and takes a slew of wickets.

Twenty-two years ago he was Brett Schultz. Weeks from now he may be Kagiso Rabada.

How would Schultz handle soaring humidity and cadaver surfaces? Well enough to take 20 wickets at 16.30 in the three tests SA played in Sri Lanka in August and September, 1993. That, Schultz said on Wednesday, was no accident.

“For us, ignorance was bliss. That was SA’s first test tour to the sub-continent and we didn’t now what we were getting into. But we refined our skills to what would be required.

“We knew there wouldn’t be much bounce after the ball lost its newness, that there would be no swing through the air, and that you couldn’t bombard people with bouncers.

“But we also knew we could get reverse swing with the older ball and that we would need to keep our discipline. So, before we went, we practised hitting bottle tops on a length.”

Schultz went to Sri Lanka aged 22 and with two tests worth of experience, both against India in SA. Rabada, 20, does not yet have a test cap. But he does not need to imagine the conditions because he played 10 limited overs games for SA’s under-19 team in India and the United Arab Emirates between September, 2013 and March last year, taking 24 wickets at 14.08.

Little would seem to connect Kagiso to Schultz beyond the facts that they are South African fast bowlers, and that they bat left-handed. For one thing, Schultz unleashed his left arm on his prey while Rabada does so with his right.

For another, Schultz was a thundering behemoth fuelled by pace and aggression and possessed of an action that swore at the laws of physics. His mates called him ‘Bear’. Batsmen daren’t call him anything. He measured his success in pain inflicted as much as he did in wickets taken.

Rabada glides to the wicket with the manner of someone who has taken a break from spending the afternoon with a good book. He delivers in an elegant unfurling of arms, shoulders, torso and legs. A broad smile melts his open face with generous frequency, even while Chris Gayle smacked 30 runs off 12 of his deliveries in a T20 at Newlands in January.

But that Sri Lankan venture was Schultz’ first tour as part of a test squad - as is Rabada’s current visit to Bangladesh. Interest in Schultz was heightened because not only was he vicious and quick, he was also left-handed at a time when SA struggled for variation. Interest in Kagiso is huge not only because he is a quality quick but also because he is that demographic godsend: black African.

“He’s got the talent,” Schultz said. “But it’s the mental strength that matters. In the sub-continent that makes you or breaks you.”

Under-19 cricket is not the real thing, but Rabada would seem to have made a good start to passing the mental test.

And another thing, what Schultz called wistfully “the dream of what was compared to what is”. Injuries limited him to nine tests, a similarity Rabada will not want to share.

“Take good care of yourself,” Schultz said as if a smiling young man thousands of kilometres away could hear him. “You have a long career ahead of you.”