They say that ‘talent always
gets its due’ .Morne Van Wyk would believe in that saying after what happened
in yesterday’s T20 match between South Africa and West Indies. The 35-year old
wicketkeeper would have wondered a few times over the last couple of years that
he might never play for his country again. The emergence of younger
wicketkeepers had made Van Wyk go down the pecking order. But, De Kock’s injury
brought him in the mix for this T20 series and boy, did he make use of the
opportunity? He failed in the first two games, but, in the last game, he
smashed the ‘White little thing’ to each and every part of Kingsmead.
The size of the boundary
there in Durban was embarrassing, that’s true. But, the sixes that Van Wyk hit,
well, they would have been sixes even if the game had been played at Melbourne
Cricket Ground. Yes, they were that big especially the one that he hit off
Dwayne Bravo in the last over of the game. That went well over the roof, out of
the stadium. It was clean hitting. It was not as if the mistimed shots were
going for sixes.
Van Wyk peppered the square
boundaries on both sides. With a low back lift and a bat speed of knots, he
took a liking to the West Indies bowlers, especially the quicker ones. He
slowed down when the pace was taken off the ball by West Indies from 10th
to 15th over, but, he finished with a blaze, taking South Africa’s
score very close to 200, which despite those small boundaries and the giant
sized Caribbean batting line up, was a challenging number.
South Africa won hands down
in the end though. The series, however, went to West Indies.
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