In a chat with Sportstar, former South African allrounder Lance Klusener speaks about
the coronavirus pandemic, the proposed ban on the use of saliva by bowlers and his idol Clive Rice, among other things.
From a sensational debut in Test cricket, with matchwinning gures of ■ for 64 against India in Calcutta in 1996, to heartbreak in the World Cup seminal in 1999 – Lance Klusener has experienced many ups and downs in his long and illustrious career.
But the 4■yearold cannot imagine when was the last time he had such a long break from cricket.
As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, there hasn’t been any cricketing activities for nearly three months, and Klusener — who is now head coach of the Afghanistan cricket team — admits it will take some time for things to get back on track.
The pandemic has also impacted nances. With funding drying up fast, Klusener and his colleagues at the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) had to take a 25 percent salary cut.
However, Klusener
is optimistic that once things ease out, the Afghanistan players will be able to bounce back.
In a chat with Sportstar, the former South African allrounder opened up on a range of issues.
Cricket has been hit hard by the pandemic. As the coach of Afghanistan, how do you see the way forward?
It’s tough to say. If we are not going to have the T20 (Twenty20) World Cup or the Asia Cup, then we will have to look for quite a few bilateral series. The team will try and arrange xtures against oppositions which weren’t scheduled.
How has the lockdown impacted the Afghanistan team?
We did not have a lot of xtures planned. Our biggest thing was the Asia Cup and the T20 World Cup. In terms of that, it has aected us. It has basically cancelled all our xtures... We need to be proactive in trying
“We grew up in the apartheid era when South Africa was banned and our biggest goal, I guess, would have been to play for our states,” says Lance Klusener.
to organise bilateral series or other xtures, which were not scheduled originally. So yeah, in terms of xtures, it has wiped up our whole year.
Some of the teams have already resumed practice while maintaining health guidelines. What’s the status with Afghanistan?
We have tried to keep them going, on online platforms, showing them videos of opposition and trying to stimulate their minds. We can’t get on to the eld, and there is only so much you can do online without being interactive. That’s being really limited. We have challenged them physically to keep up in terms of tness. There have been tness videos posted online.
There was Ramadan in between, so it was a challenge for the boys as well. Afghanistan has been hit hard by the virus as well like other countries. It has been a challenge. If we are permitted by the government, we will try and get some camps going in June. However, our focus – from the administration’s point of view – is to try and pick as many xtures as we can.
How do you plan to go about it?
The boys have been inactive for close to two months, so they will have to slowly get into the swing of things. We have to monitor the bowlers’ workloads, build up tness levels again.
And then, in terms of xtures, everybody is trying to jump in and get involved in the process. Friends, other coaches, other administrators — who you have relations with — could be reached and see whether we can t in a few xtures.
The pandemic has also had an impact on the finances. Your thoughts?
It’s extremely dicult. You mentioned nances, we all had to take pay cuts, which I guess is the norm these days. We need to be playing games, we need to be selling TV rights to fund our cricket. We really are hoping to bring Afghanistan on TV. That’s where comes the support of bigger nations. They should come to the party and host us for a few games, if none of the two big tournaments (Asia Cup and T20 World Cup) take place.
Afghanistan will be playing a lone daynight Test against Australia this year... It will be a big opportunity for players and they will be tested at the highest level. So that’s a challenge for players, coaches and everybody to make sure that they are prepared. It only being roughly our fourth Test match (fth), it’s going to be a big, big challenge and a learning opportunity as well. We need to thank Australia for accommodating us.
When the action resumes, there will be
a lot of rule changes. What are your thoughts on the proposed ban on the use of saliva for ball shining?
Saliva will make a little bit of a dierence. It won’t be a huge dierence. There are various substances which invariably will nd their way on to a cricket ball somehow. If we can’t use saliva, then there might be something that we can use like a certain wax product or whatever, which is available to all teams for a limited amount, in each innings. That will certainly help and it will certainly be something that will help people stay away from the habit of using saliva to shine the ball. That will also take away having to do anything with the wicket.
With so many changes coming in after the pandemic, do you think it will be a challenge for the coaches as well? How do you plan to address it?
It’s a learning curve all around. There are a lot of habits that just come naturally, like putting saliva on the ball, celebrating with hugs, shaking hands, to name a few. So we might just need to be wary of that for a while.
Hopefully, down the line, we can nd a vaccine or something that can take care of it. But we need to be extremely careful, certainly getting back into the sport. Players have got a lot of learning too and coaches too need to get a little bit innovative. We might need to train in smaller groups. For example, we might need to have groups of batters in the morning — it might make longer days for coaches as well if that’s the way training needs to go.
Everybody is just waiting to get back into the park in any shape or form they can — even if it means no spectators, or whatever it is. It’s going to be a real shame but we gotta make do with what we are allowed to do at the time.
But yeah, it’s gonna be dierent, not just cricket, but all sports are gonna be very dierent for a certain amount of time, going forward. We can just hope and pray and that the smart people can nd us a vaccine or something like it that will take care of it. But it will be dierent, there will be challenges – for umpires and administrators as well.
Do you think in international cricket,
where calendars are chock-a-block, a “bio-secure bubble” is a sustainable model?
Yes, it will be dicult. There will be quarantines as well. Can we train during quarantine? You know people then returning to their countries, will we have to remain in twoweek quarantine before we are released to our families? Yeah, quite dicult and testing times. Some countries can’t travel, some can, some borders are closed.
Just really envisage longer time on the road. With quarantine, you might have a situation where you have three T20 games but you might have to quarantine in that country where you are going to for two weeks, then quarantine when you get back home for another two weeks. That means four weeks of quarantine potentially if that’s the way things go.
That could be quite testing. No one really knows. So I guess not just the cricketers, the general public are going to accept, embrace the sport and love sport in any way they can. I don’t think there are many people — whether they play sport or watch sport — will take it for granted in the near future.
Let’s talk a bit about South African cricket. The Proteas have been blessed with fast bowling all-rounders over the years. After Clive Rice, Brian Mcmillan, you and Shaun Pollock carried forward the legacy. Do you think the current squad lacks that?
I think I saw some decent allrounders. I just speak from a South African point of view. They are there, but the dierence is I think — small dierences — you’ve got Dwaine Pretorius, Andile Phehlukwayo. The dierence is that they are bowling in the mid120s, whereas allrounders such as Shaun Pollock, Jacques Kallis were all bowling in the mid140s — that does elevate you
certainly from a bowling point of view into a dierent space.
So, I don’t think there is a lack of quality. I think that on any given day, those are seriously good allrounders. But the small dierences is that 20km per hour in bowling speed – that sets those allrounders apart.
Do you think Clive Rice would have been as successful and well known as Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev or Imran Khan if he had a full international career?
I had the privilege of being at the National Academy with Clive Rice as the head coach, so even my batting style — I took quite a bit from Clive. I had the privilege of spending a lot of time with him, playing with him back in Kuazulunatal, when he played there as well. So, Clive denitely played a big part in my career. Unfortunately, I got him towards the very end of his career. But denitely, given the opportunity at the international level, he was a phenomenal allrounder. His record speaks for itself, in county cricket as well.
Apartheid did rob the world of not just cricketers, but many other sportsmen too who didn’t get that opportunity.
But that’s just the way life is. It is important for us who are given that opportunity we make the very best of it. You are regarded as one of the nest allrounders from South Africa. But as a youngster, what was your biggest dream?
Growing up in South Africa, the dream wasn’t certainly to play cricket for a living. We grew up in the apartheid era when South Africa was banned and our biggest goal, I guess, would have been to play for our states. Dreams of playing for our states (came after seeing) icons like Graeme Pollock, Clive Rice — we used to idolise them and try and emulate.
For us, growing up in those years, it was more of a dream to be like somebody you had seen in the newspapers. Because we did not have television sets those days. But the dream of playing for the country nally materialised in the early 1990s, when it did become possible. And then I did nally realise that maybe I was good enough to have some sort of career on the cricket eld. We dreamed very dierently in those days.