Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Ngidi always wanted to be like Ntini
Humble and hard-working, determined Proteas pace sensation goes from strength to strength 11
AS AN eight-year-old Kloof Junior Primary School pupil, cricket star Lungi Ngidi used to be so keen to get his dad out of bed to take him to weekend “dads and sons” cricket practices, he would pull off his father’s blankets.
“If I said I was tired, he would then force my eyes open,” proud Jerome Ngidi told Independent Media after watching Lungi’s amazing bowling feats during his Proteas Test debut against India this week.
Young Lungi didn’t have to drag his dad too far to the field. They lived on the school grounds.
Jerome and his wife, Bongi, still live there as they have ever since Lungi was two years old.
That’s when they took up jobs as part of the maintenance and housekeeping staff, positions once held by Bongi’s father and grandfather. Jerome had previously been a petrol attendant, Bongi a domestic worker.
When they got their new jobs, they were worried about leaving little Lungi at their township home in Mariannhill, alone with only siblings. But Kloof Junior Primary was happy to have him there.
“Before he started preschool, he came into the classroom where I was holding a readiness programme and completed it, aged two-and-ahalf,” said Grade 1 teacher, Sharon Moffat.
“That’s the kind of kid he was, determined and pushing himself hard, all through self-motivation.”
Music teacher Debbie Noakes and after-care teachers “Granny Pat” Casten and Marlene Muir all took turns being babysitters to the young Lungi.
Bursar Jane Wilks organised that Lungi go to nearby pre- primary school attended by her son and Lungi’s friend, Christopher. After that Lungi acquired bursary after bursary, scholarship after scholarship, as one institution after the next each picked up that he was exactly the kind of person they wanted.
Kloof Senior Primary followed Kloof Junior. Then came Highbury Preparatory and, after that, Hilton College and the University of Pretoria.
When Lungi started as a pupil at Kloof Junior Primary, he could hardly hold of Newnham House.
His parents credited former Zimbabwe international player and Hilton College coach Neil Johnson and Shane Gaffney, the former director of sport, for much of his high school cricket development.
Gaffney, now headmaster at St Dominic’s College in Welkom, said Lungi was multitalented, arriving at Hilton having represented the province in swimming, cricket, rugby and athletics.
Part of his coaching involved advising the schoolboy what sport to pursue: “Cricket was the obvious one.”
Gaffney said: “I don’t think I’ve met anyone as humble and modest as him, which is awesome.”
Lungi’s parents said Hilton College had made sure they would be there to support him at many matches, both home and away.
“They would send a car to fetch us. Sometimes it would be a metro cab,” said Bongi.
His father, Jerome, played soccer in rural Kranskop, while Bongi was a long-distance runner at primary school in KwaDabeka.
Pierre de Bruyn, director of cricket and head coach at the University of Pretoria, steered Lungi into the next chapter of his life, making a number of trips to KwaZulu-Natal to recruit him for Tukkies.
“I sat him down and explained to him the journey and the outcome of the journey that we could put together.
“At first he was a reluctant young man. He wasn’t really sure how to leave home, what it would be like to be away from his family, which I understood,” said De Bruyn.
“But it was my duty to convince him that where I would take him would be comfortable and that he would be looked after. That’s why I went back, sat with him again and asked him to trust me.”
Lungi then enrolled to study industrial sociology and labour studies and took up a coaching job at Southdowns College in Centurion.
“At the Varsity Cup he announced himself on television and people started to see who this kid was and what kind of bowler he is,” said De Bruyn.
“They say you can take someone to water but you can’t make him drink. Lungs (as I called him) drank.”
Lungi said it was his parents who motivated him.
Speaking to Independent Media by phone from Gauteng yesterday, he said his life right now was “a very happy moment” and he hoped to “keep the form”in the national team.
Later in life, he hopes to remain involved in cricket, taking it to other people who haven’t experienced it.