Sarel Erwee’s game of patience pays off after taking scenic route to the top

So there is a story about Sarel Erwee, and how he used to hang with the South African middle-distance runner Andre Olivier when they were kids. Their fathers had played Currie Cup rugby together for Natal back in the 1980s, but the kids’ game was cricket. They used to play it on the strip in front of the Erwees’ garage door, and they had three house rules. One was that if you hit it over the fence it was a six, another was that if you hit it into the flower beds it was a wicket, and the last was that before you started they both had to nominate who you they were going to be and then try and play like them too.

Olivier always used to choose Allan Donald, and Erwee, well, he used to want to be Gary Kirsten. “Many times I would not be able to get him out,” Olivier told the journalist CS Chiwanza, “in the end, he would just retire and give me a go.” It is a choice which raises all kinds of questions, the most obvious of them being: “Why?” He could have picked Herschelle Gibbs, Lance Klusener, even Jacques Kallis. But instead he went for Kirsten, the man who played some of the most bum-numbing innings in the history of the game, 275 off 642 balls at Durban in 1999, 210 off 525 at Old Trafford in 1998, 130 off 323 at Headingley in 2003.

Sign up to The Spin

Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week’s action

What kind of a child grows up wanting to bat like that? It is unnatural. Like choosing to do long division, or helping yourself to another plate of steamed vegetables.

Well, we found out all about it on the second day at Lord’s, which felt like one long lesson in the merits of GazBall. Erwee batted for four hours or so, faced 146 balls, and scored 73 runs,