Skipper Zondo comes full circle
TRANSFORMED: AFTER A POOR 2015/16 HE’S HIT HIS STRAPS Getting Dolphins captaincy has been the making of him.
An adherence to the age-old cricketing virtue of letting your runs speak for you has seen Khaya Zondo recover from a slump in form in 2015/16 to such good effect that he left this week for England as the captain of the SA A limited-overs team.
It is a richly deserved honour for the 27-year-old as he not only averaged 49.75 in the Momentum One-Day Cup last season and 67.27 in the Sunfoil Series, but also led the Dolphins with aplomb when the captaincy was thrust upon him in mid-season.
It was a far cry from the previous season, when he returned from a tour of India with the Proteas, where he did not play a match, and scored just 61 runs in his first 14 innings of the summer. He then scored a 65 against the Titans, but then made just one run in his next three innings.
“I was in the desert and no one wants to come into the desert with you, only God. But I was told by one of my mentors (Zondo wanted him to remain anonymous), who gives me lots of spiritual guidance, that the world owes me nothing, rightly or wrongly. What happened can’t be changed and it was up to me to make sure it helped me to grow as a cricketer.
“So that gave me a lot of comfort. What happened in India was unfortunate, but it was part of a bigger plan, a building block. It gave me a lot of confidence to know that I was strong enough to get out of that bad slump. Lance Klusener (former Dolphins coach) showed me a lot of love and told me that if I’m burning in the fire, then I must make sure I come out the other side as a roast chicken, I must be something a lot better, make sure I just get through it.
“I think I’ve learnt to be more resilient, to get through what I went through taught me that things can be taken from you, rightly or wrongly, that’s life. Maybe I unintentionally took things for granted a bit, I just relaxed a bit. Now I know never to relax,” Zondo said on Monday.
A greater focus in training and on every ball he faces has led to much better consistency for the Westville product, and he goes to England as one of the most inform batsmen in the country.