Makhaya Ntini: from cattle herder to youth icon

The South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini will have inspired a generation of underprivileged children to believe.

Makhaya Ntini was given a standing ovation after the fast bowler played his last game for South Africa in Durban yesterday.

In the end, Makhaya Ntini's last act as an international cricketer came with the bat and not the ball.

When he walked out to a standing ovation from the biggest crowd ever assembled for a cricket match on the African continent, South Africa needed 25 from four balls.

He faced two of them, an airy waft and an inside-edged single as India won the Krish Mackerdhuj Trophy by 21 runs. Not that anyone cared. This Twenty20 international was all about saying goodbye to an icon, to a player whose 662 international wickets are like the Pole Star for young black children finding their way into the game.

Ntini knows as well as anyone that he reached the end of the road a little over a year ago, after a wicketless outing in his 101st Test, an innings defeat to England at Kingsmead, the famous cricket ground just up the road from the Moses Mabhida football stadium where this game was played.

It meant that he would fall 10 short of 400 Test wickets, but there was little trace of regret when he spoke on the eve of the game.

"I don't want to be remembered as a person who did A, B, C, D," he said. "All I want to be remembered as is Makhaya Ntini, who played for South Africa. A guy who always cheered the boys up."

That he took so many wickets was a story in itself. He lacked the fearsome pace of Allan Donald, the guile and variations of Shaun Pollock and the wondrous outswing of his last new-ball partner, Dale Steyn. Malcolm Marshall was his hero, but there was little of Macko in Ntini, apart from his determination to prove people wrong.

For a long time, he was deeply uncomfortable in his role as trailblazer. "[Herschelle] Gibbs and [Paul] Adams are also coloured cricketers," he told me. "They played for South Africa before I did."

Perhaps it was the nature of his story that made him so special.

Ntini was 14 and used to herding cattle and goats when he stopped to watch some boys play at a ground near his home in Mdingi in the Eastern Cape. Raymond Booi, one of the coaches entrusted with spotting young talent in the area, called him over, gave him a ball and asked him to have a bowl.

Six years later, he was running in for South Africa in a Test match. But even before he could prove that he wasn't just a "quota" selection, he was embroiled in a rape case that dragged his name through the newspapers and cost him a chance of playing in the 1999 World Cup.

Years later, when I asked him whether he viewed the matches he played afterwards as his chance at redemption, his response was an angry one.

"I was given back what I had earned," he said. "You're given a second chance if you have done something. That was not the case. It was like they had stolen my car and then given the keys back. I made full use of it."

He certainly did, running in tirelessly day after day, getting batsmen out through sheer persistence as much as skill.

In 2003, he made it to the Honours Board at Lord's, alongside his hero, Marshall, and two years later, he had the best match figures for a South Africa, 13 for 132 in Barbados, a game that he started after a rocket from Ray Jennings, the coach, for being late for practice.

Towards the end, especially the forgettable last two Tests against England, the Mdingi Express had become a passenger. The outing here, against a young Indian side showed why. The pace had gone and despite the enthusiasm and the cheers, he went for 46 from his four overs. Once the hurrahs have died down, he will devote a lot of his time to the academy named after him in Mdantsane outside East London.

Given his infectious enthusiasm, it might not be long before we see another like him taking the new ball for the Proteas.