Launching it like Lance: Klusener, the "Zulu" warrior

“You have to learn to improvise and swipe – and be at peace with what you do.”

He took a “Huckleberry Finn” approach to life and so for Klusener, cricket was only a game and not life itself. Maybe that’s why he would often read a book or magazine before he went into bat and rescued his team time and again from improbable positions.

52 off 45 balls turned the game against Sri Lanka at Northampton; 48 off 40 balls conquered England at The Oval; 46 off 41 balls pulled South Africa out of the fire against Pakistan at Trent Bridge; a six off the last ball yorker at Napier off Dion Nash – slinging that three pounder weapon, did the impossible.

He would walk out, do all that, come back, and behave as if nothing much had happened.

That’s Lance Klusener for you – raw, blunt, honest yet devastatingly entertaining. He neither cared about anybody’s approval, nor wanted to emulate someone who he was not.

He grew up in the rawness of the farmlands and was never groomed for stardom, neither was he desperate to attain it. He never bothered much with appearances or speeches and endorsements. He did his bit on the field and then returned to his lands where he merrily fished or hunted.

That’s the reason why cricket never got to his head and the pressure that tagged along with success could never bog him down to a trembling wreck, because for him, pressure didn’t exist. Growing up among the Zulu kids, Klusener firmly believed in their philosophies and for him “a goat was better than a dollar”, because a goat can be cooked or milked.

His calm approach helped him to scale great heights in cricket, especially in the ODI format, where he was nothing less than a beast. After his ankle injury, his bowling drifted away to a military medium category but that mattered precious little in front of the carnage he went on to create.

In about 170 ODIs, “Zulu” averaged above 40 with a strike rate almost in the 90s and in the 1999 World Cup, he not only averaged a scary 134, but also chipped in with 14 wickets. However, more than the runs he scored, the utter disdain that he showed towards the bowlers in the death overs in that World Cup was a lesson in butchery and brutality on a cricket field.

Klusener deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the top all-rounders in the world. He had the skills and the ammunition, but his typical “gun-slinger” attitude didn’t let him attain the zenith of his abilities.

“We decided Lance as a team man can only cause hassles, and we want to move forward in SA cricket…To be honest Lance, as fantastic as he is…can sometimes ruin a team. His ability as a cricketer is very good, but his ability as a team man is not very good and he kind of can infect a team and bring down the youth…” – The 22-year-old Graeme Smith explained Klusener’s exclusion after he took over.

Klusener’s career coughed and limped from then on, but his legend had been created by then. The rise of Jacques Kallis, Albie Morkel and Justin Kemp saw the end of Lance Klusener, and he found himself out in the wilderness, out of favour in South African cricket.

He went around the world turning out for various counties and state teams, but he never made a serious case for a comeback. Maybe he was not interested in making one anymore, because for him,

“Cricket is not the be-all and end-all. When I’m on the field I’m trying my hardest, trying to win, but in the end it’s only a game.”

However, even now, when the South African lower order looks a tad shaky and there’s no one to break a long partnership during a tiring afternoon, “Zulu” is missed. But the cricket world misses him the most when the annoying trumpets announce the annual carnival’s arrival every April in India.

T20 and the IPL came too late for him. Klusener would have added a different dimension to the shortest format of the game because even with the Pollards, Gayles and Dhonis around, there is nothing more destructive than to see Lance Klusener launching an attack to knock the cover off the cricket ball.