Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
MORNE Morkel has been known to hold out water bottles to people of his acquaintance on their morning run along the Port Elizabeth beachfront. Once, in a bar in Durban years ago, when a woman not of his acquaintance suddenly sat on his lap, he was wide-eyed and clueless.
This is not fast bowler behaviour. But what Morkel delivered in the second test against West Indies at St George’s Park this week was.
He huffed, he puffed, he came round the wicket with a short leg, a leg gully and fine leg twitching in anticipation. He hit Devon Smith and Marlon Samuels on the helmet, and he cleared out the whole top order on his way to figures of 4/69.
This Morkel would have thrown bottles at runners for kicks, and his lap would have been fitted with landing lights.
At 1.96 metres tall, Morkel challenges batsmen with bounce. But he does not scare them like skiddy, stormy Dale Steyn does. However, at St George’s Park, Morkel was the villain. Was it a glimpse of what might yet be, or an aberration?
“I’m not sure if you can connect someone’s personality with their bowling,” Lions and SA fast bowler Chris Morris said. “I’m like (former SA quick) Andre Nel - I get white line fever. When I step across the boundary, I’m not the same person I am when I’m not on the field.”
It is a long way in every sense from the articulate, straightforward, mentally sharp Morris to gormless galumpher Nel.
Nel planned his wedding to Deanne Weitz for the middle of a test in which he was playing because he thought he was not in the selectors’ plans. The test was in Centurion but the wedding was in Johannesburg and had to be delayed for two hours while he came screaming down the highway, police escort and all.
Morris used money he earned playing in the Indian Premier League to pay off his parents’ mortgage. Then he bought a bakkie and built a house for himself and his then fiancé, Lisa Oosthuizen. They married in August, when no-one in SA thinks of playing cricket.
Spot the difference. But there is no denying that Morris and Nel are both aggressive fast bowlers, hair-triggered and ready to be as nasty as they need to be to take wickets. In Morris’ case, that means a hiss and a glare to go with his gas. Nel’s method - or madness - included sticking out his tongue at batsmen and an alter-ego called Gunther.
But, according to former test fast bowler Brett Schultz, there’s aggression ... and then there’s aggression.
“For guys like Morne Morkel, it’s not natural,” Schultz said. ”They have to get a bee in their bonnet about something before they get pissed off.”
Schultz did not have that problem: “In my case, it was more of a competitive aggression. And, from a very young age, I had a teacher - Kepler Wessels (who captained the Eastern Province and SA teams Schultz played for). For him, aggressive fast bowling was the way, the truth and the light.”
That said, Morkel still had the chance to fake it with the best of them.
“He’s maturing; he’s leaning towards what he should have been a couple of years ago,” Schultz said
“He knows he’s let too many batsmen off the hook. He’s been the one teams hate facing - no batsman wants to deal with bounce - but Steyn has been the one to get them out.”
The comparison is unfair in the sense that Steyn is the finest fast bowler of his generation. But there is no arguing with the facts going into the third test at Newlands. Morkel has taken 213 wickets in his 61 tests. Steyn has 389 scalps from 77 tests.
But if Morkel picks up in Cape Town where he left off in PE, he will close that gap.
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