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Former South African fast bowler Morne Morkel has fond memories of living with Proteas legend AB de Villiers early on in his cricketing career.
Morne Morkel, his brother Albie and De Villiers stayed together for three years after the tall pacer won a rookie contract with the Titans franchise.
In a YouTube interaction on the channel The Grade Cricketer, Morne Morkel looked back at the fun times he had with De Villiers.
“Living with AB (de Villiers). He was the Prince of Pretoria. It was nice to live with the king. To drive with him in the car and go to restaurants and pubs and stuff like that, it was a great experience. Although we are of the same age, to be under his wing and sort of start my journey, was great.”
Reminiscing about the time spent with Albie and AB, the retired cricketer revealed that it was great fun because all of them were mad about sports.
“Back then, I was assigned a rookie contract to play with the Titans and we had a class team. AB de Villiers was there, Faf du Plessis was there. So me, my brother Albie and AB, we moved in together. So you can just imagine. It was good fun. I won’t be able to share a lot of the stories. But, the thing about the three years we stayed together was that we live, breathe and sleep sports. So on the weekends, it was either the Springboks playing the All Blacks or the Wallabies or we went and played golf or went for a run in the morning. That was a nice environment for me as a youngster to grow up. It was sports crazy.”
When Morne Morkel impressed Jacques Kallis
During the interaction, 36-year-old Morne Morkel also confirmed the famous anecdote of how he made an impression on the legendary Jacques Kallis while bowling to him as a net bowler.
“The first first-class team I played for was Easterns. And Ray Jennings was the coach at the time. He eventually became the national team coach. England were touring South Africa and they wanted some tall bowlers to bowl at the nets because (Steve) Harmison and Andrew (Flintoff) and all those guys were coming to South Africa. I bowled in the net that afternoon to Jacques (Kallis) and it clicked. He walked over to Ray and say that I must play in the next Test match. So I ended up being the 15th man in the Test match, helping out the guys.”
Morne Morkel retired from international cricket in 2018 with 309 wickets from 86 Tests, 188 scalps in 117 ODIs and 47 victims from 44 T20Is.
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