From English county to Chennai, Faf du Plessis is a South African at heart

Having spent three years in England, Du Plessis was yet to play his first game for Proteas when he was bought by Chennai Super Kings ahead of the 2011 IPL season, and has done well.

When he got his chance to bat for Chennai Super Kings, Faf du Plessis was the second-highest scorer for the team in 2012. Ravindranath K / The National

Ahmed Rizvi

What if you are 21, drawing a meagre salary at work and barely getting noticed, when a rival comes along, offering 10 times the remuneration and a chance of pursuing your dreams? Just too good to turn down, right?

Faf du Plessis had a similar choice to make nine years ago. His best friend and schoolmate, a man he had known from the age of 13, AB De Villiers, had already made his Test debut for South Africa in 2004.

Du Plessis, on the other hand, was playing “a bit here and there” for domestic team Titans, without getting a permanent slot, and was still looking for ways to make a living from cricket when he headed to England to ply his trade.

He ended up in the Nottingham league and Greg Smith, his teammate at the Titans who played for Nottinghamshire, managed to arrange a game for him with the county’s second team.

Du Plessis scored a double-century for them in that first game and then followed up with three successive tons in the next three matches. The impressed Nottinghamshire bosses offered him a three-year deal, but with the condition he qualify for England.

“Notts were offering eight or ten times more than I was earning at home,” Du Plessis said last week, speaking to The National during a promotional visit to the Puma store in Dubai Mall.

“But I was too young then for me just to say, ‘I want to give up playing for South Africa’. It was too much of a burning desire in my heart and I couldn’t let up on that.”

So Du Plessis turned the offer down, without knowing if he would ever play for his motherland. He continued to play club cricket and eventually landed a six-month deal with Lancashire in 2008, which was later extended for three more years.

Now the South Africa Twenty20 captain, Du Plessis credits those years in England for fast-tracking his journey to a South Africa cap. He turned into a good cook as well, reading up on celebrity television chef Jamie Oliver’s many recipes.

“I got a good experience playing in different conditions,” the 29 year old said. “And also then, the English system was a really strong one because there was no IPL. All the overseas players went to play in the county system. So I’ve played against really good cricketers and it helped me.

“I grew my game hugely. So I owe a lot to playing over there. I probably played a bit later for South Africa then I would have liked, but it worked out pretty well because you learn about your game a little bit more.”

Du Plessis first made it to the Proteas one-day international team, getting his first game against India in January 2011, and then made a sensational Test debut against Australia at Adelaide in November 2012.

He scored 78 in the first innings and then helped saved the Test with a marathon 466-minute, unbeaten 110 in the second innings.

He was cramping and his back ached, but Du Plessis, urged on by his good mate De Villiers, refused to give up.

He recalls: “I asked the physiotherapist for some pain tablets and AB de Villiers came to me and said, ‘Keep fighting because you don’t understand how much this means for the people back home. If you get through this, your career will be changed.’”

His career did change after that; it has soared, like he often does in the field. A month later, he was named captain of the Proteas Twenty20 team for a series against New Zealand and he has not looked back since. But he was already a star in India before that mammoth innings.

Du Plessis had yet to play his first game for South Africa when he was bought for US$120,000 (Dh440,759), from a base price of $20,000, at the 2011 Indian Premier League auctions by the then defending champions Chennai Super Kings.

He failed to get a single game in his first season, but the South Africa was a sensation in 2012, scoring 398 runs. Only Suresh Raina scored more for the team with 441.

Those runs, however, seemed like a bonus, his fielding was probably the bigger asset. To rephrase a quote from his coach at Lancashire, Mike Watkinson, “If there’s a better fielder in cricket, I’ve not seen him”.

Du Plessis has taken some sensational catches through the years, and the two he took against the Delhi Daredevils in Abu Dhabi last week would make that list.

“I really enjoy fielding,” he said, though he went on to claim he was not as good now as he was in his younger days, when he “was buzzing around like an energiser bunny”.

“I want to make an impact on the game and I believe fielding is just as important as batting and bowling because it has the same affect to change a game,” he said.

“I want to take brilliant catches; I want them to come my way. I want to take catches that seem impossible. So hopefully in this IPL, there’s going to be a really nice one to remember.”

Du Plessis fascination with fielding started early, as he grew up watching Jonty Rhodes in action. Rhodes was his idol and Faf wanted to play his “cricket like him”, but to use a cliche, athleticism is in his genes.

His father, also Francois, played centre for the Northern Transvaal rugby team in the 1980s. His cousin, Marcel du Plessis, plays rugby for Namibia.

“I actually started with rugby because my dad wanted me to play rugby, but he quickly saw that I was much better at cricket,” he said.

“In rugby, I was getting hurt every second time, so I decided at about 16 or 17 that cricket’s a passion of mine and the career I would like to pursue, and then rugby took a backseat. That’s when I started to take things seriously.

“But not all of us in the family is sporty. My brother has got the brains. He’s the clever one. I didn’t get that part, I am just on the sports side.”

Pushed by his parents, though, Du Plessis did try to pursue his studies. AB De Villiers had registered for a degree in sports science and Du Plessis decided to follow his school friend to university.

“I went to the university, but that day there was a long queue that day, so I just decided I didn’t want to do it,” Du Plessis said.

“Three months later, AB also stopped studying because he said it was a waste of time. We both wanted to play cricket full time.”

And the way they play their cricket, fans of the sport must be glad the two friends made that decision.

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