When Duanne Olivier walked off the field with the rest of the Proteas on Boxing Day after the side had dismissed Pakistan in less than two sessions in their first innings, he sought out one person in the crowd.
High in the main grandstand at SuperSport Park, trying to get the balance right between filming Olivier coming off the field, and applauding him for his six wickets in the Pakistan innings, was his wife Casey-Leigh.
She had cropped up in discussion with Olivier two days before the match. Asked who inspired him, Olivier didn’t go for the usual set of cricketers most young men would. Sure, he has cricket heroes – Mitchell Johnson, Allan Donald and Jacques Kallis, among others – but his inspiration was sat in the grandstand on Boxing Day, taking pictures, then not, then just applauding, a huge smile on her face.
“I could see she enjoyed it, and that made me happy. If I can make her happy, if I can make her proud, that’s the biggest thing,” said Olivier.
At this point it’s alright to go “awww”.
Tough South African sportsmen aren’t in the habit of dishing compliments so publicly about their nearest and dearest, but Olivier, otherwise very shy and softly spoken, has been honest about the role his wife has played in helping him reaching what is hitherto the pinnacle of his career.
In his time at English County Derbyshire last year, Mrs Olivier’s support was invaluable in helping her husband achieve emotional balance.
“I enjoyed my cricket at Derbyshire, but I struggled with my bowling action and needed to tweak some things, which I managed to do,” said Duanne.
“I spoke a lot to my wife, and she helped to find ways to improve myself, especially to just grow as a person and get more mature.”
The start of Olivier’s international career was a blur. It actually also involved a tale with his wife.
The pair were due to head off to Zanzibar, where Duanne was planning to propose until he was called up to an SA Invitation side to face Sri Lanka in a tour match at the back end of 2016. The trip was cancelled and Olivier, then the leading wicket-taker in the Sunfoil Series, took four wickets for the Invitation side and on the strength of that performance got a start in the last Test at the Wanderers, in January 2017.
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A post shared by Duanne Olivier(@duanneolivier74) on Aug 8, 2018 at 11:54pm PDT
The wedding proposal took place in a helicopter a week later over Port Elizabeth instead.
When he said recently that everything happened so fast at the time, it wasn’t just his international debut.
He toured New Zealand thereafter, and played two of the four Tests in the difficult series against England in 2017, but admits he rarely executed in the manner he or his captain wished.
“I was thinking too far ahead and wasn’t committing 100% to every ball I was bowling, which you need to do in Test cricket.”
Whatever shortcomings he had at Test level, Olivier was constantly learning from them, applying those lessons at domestic level where he continued to take wickets, so when there were injuries at Proteas level, he could step up as he has done this summer, with Lungi Ngidi and initially Vernon Philander out injured.
Nevertheless, neither he, the selectors, Ottis Gibson or Faf du Plessis could have anticipated how the series with Pakistan would unfold.
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A post shared by Duanne Olivier(@duanneolivier74) on Jun 14, 2018 at 8:59am PDT
By the series end at the Wanderers last Monday, one journalist was asking Gibson to draw comparisons with the West Indies’ “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” from the early 1980s – Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft.
The variety contained in the South Africa attack is certainly scary, although because Philander only operates in the lower 130s at best, the overall pace is not the same as the Windies quartet.
Olivier certainly, in the manner he bowled against Pakistan, bears comparison to the violent manner employed by Croft, who didn’t mind deliberately inflicting physical pain.
In character, of course, Olivier is different; it’s hard to think that Croft would express sympathy for any of his victims in the manner Olivier did of Azhar Ali, who he dismissed four times.
Quite where this series performance against the Pakistanis will leave Olivier in the pecking order of the country’s ever-growing list of fast bowlers remains to be seen. As much as Gibson would love to play four quicks every time, it’s just not possible because it wouldn’t be tactically prudent, especially in the subcontinent.
Even in South Africa’s next series against Sri Lanka in Durban and Port Elizabeth, where pitches are lower and slower, Keshav Maharaj needs to come back, and playing five bowlers is probably a bit much, particularly when the Proteas’ batting is shaky.
Of course, Ngidi is also due to return, so where would that leave Olivier?
Regardless of the country’s divided past, fast bowling has always been central to the way cricket is played here. And the depth of this current era of bowlers is arguably among the richest in South Africa’s cricket history.
Olivier came within one wicket of matching a more than 100-year-old record for the most wickets taken in a three-match Test series to illustrate that.
Yet he might not, should everyone be fit, get a starting spot in South Africa’s next Test series. Whether that leads to him chasing stability and wealth as a Kolpak player, like Kyle Abbott did when he was a valuable back-up for the national side a few years ago, remains to be seen.
Olivier’s impact these past few weeks has been enormous. His aggression (the result of a simplified game-plan), his fitness (the result of just bowling a whole lot), and his maturity (thanks to his wife) have been exemplary.
Speaking once more of Casey-Leigh, Duanne said: “She keeps me level-headed, calm, she’s my inspiration. She knows quite a bit of cricket. When we met, she knew nothing about it, so I’m quite happy with that.”
As are his teammates and the Proteas’ supporters.