Donald eyes new ball once again

September 28, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp 28/09/2000

Allan, Tina, Han­nah and Oliv­er Don­ald returned to South Africa a cou­ple of days ago and the fam­i­ly are delight­ed to be back.

The prospect of inter­na­tion­al crick­et has not been more excit­ing for Dad since ‘the return’ itself nine years ago and Bloem­fontein feels as much a home to Mum and the kids as Birm­ing­ham does back in England.

There is still plen­ty of con­fu­sion amongst South Africans as to why Allan chose to play for War­wick­shire this win­ter rather than tour with South Africa so let’s set one thing straight: it was­n’t about money.

The truth is, the Eng­lish coun­ty were extreme­ly wary of sign­ing Don­ald after his injury-wrecked Ben­e­fit Year with them in 1999 and the fast bowler agreed to take a ‘per­for­mance-based’ salary this win­ter to insure the coun­ty against pay­ing out huge sums of mon­ey for a man to lie on the phys­io­ther­a­pist’s table.

So why did he do it? The answer, apart from the sta­bil­i­ty and valu­able time it gave his two chil­dren, was loy­al­ty. Don­ald felt guilty about being injured dur­ing the 1999 sea­son and he want­ed to repay the coun­ty and it’s sup­port­ers this sea­son. Iron­i­cal­ly, and sad­ly, the rhythm of the entire sea­son was dis­rupt­ed in the first fort­night when he dived to take a catch on the bound­ary and frac­tured a cou­ple of ribs. It put him out of action for almost two months and he nev­er real­ly recov­ered in time.

“Heck it was frus­trat­ing,” he said on Wednes­day. “I was in my best form and rhythm for atleast six months, too. I was feel­ing fan­tas­tic. But, you know, some­times I feel it was ‘meant to be’, that maybe it was sup­posed to keep me fresh and hun­gry for the rest of my inter­na­tion­al career…”

And he cer­tain­ly is fresh and hun­gry! Sev­en months ago he was talk­ing about join­ing the ‘300 Club’ in test match­es. Now his talk is of the ‘400 Club’ after see­ing Court­ny Walsh and Curt­ly Ambrose join that elite!

“I had a prob­lem with my ankle briefly but it’s fine now and I’ve been bowl­ing in the Free State nets for the last cou­ple of days — and feel­ing good, too.” So, any change of role for SA’s great­est fast bowler — like bowl­ing first-change in Tests, for example?

“Ha Ha…actually, I’ve been par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with my con­trol of the new, white ball in the nets. Fordy has asked me to prac­tise with the new ball because he thinks I might need to take it in a cou­ple of one-day match­es this sum­mer. My con­trol has been real­ly good.” Just as it should be, too. A team’s best bowler should be used to strike ear­ly as often as possible.

As for the future, well, tomor­row Allan will attend a press con­fer­ence in Jo’burg at which he will re-con­firm his com­mit­ment to every South African fix­ture up to and includ­ing the 2003 World Cup. On cur­rent lev­els of deter­mi­na­tion and enjoy­ment, he’d hap­pi­ly say ‘yes’ to the 2007 ver­sion as well.