Stiaan van Zyl waited a whole day for his turn to bat, survived a few scary moments early on and methodically pushed past them to become the fifth South African to score a century on Test debut
Firdose Moonda in Centurion18-Dec-2014In any match that he plays, Stiaan van Zyl is usually padded up when the first ball is bowled. As a No.3 he needs to be. But on Test debut, he did not. Pencilled in at No.6, van Zyl was ready for a morning off when West Indies put South Africa in. But an hour later, the top-order tumbled and van Zyl found himself on the verge of an early entrance onto the international stage. He sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.”Sitting there all day was quite mentally draining,” he said. “I walked around a bit to focus on other stuff.”By tea, the pad rash was no longer a concern. Russell Domingo, South Africa’s coach, said van Zyl had joked that he was happy to keep waiting when Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers returned at the interval.He may not have expected to be waiting overnight but when he was, the anxiety kept him up. “I woke up at 1 and then 2:30 and 3:30 but then I had a decent sleep after that,” van Zyl said. “By the morning I was good to go.” And good to wait, luckily not for that long.Little over half-an-hour into the second day, de Villiers was dismissed and van Zyl’s big moment had arrived. His mom, dad and two of his friends from the Cape who had made the trip for the full five days had reason to sit up straighter and look a little closer. What they saw would have stressed them.The first ball van Zyl faced was from Sulieman Benn. There was not much menacing about it, perhaps a tinge of extra bounce and he almost played it to leg gully.”I was very nervous. Before I faced my first ball, my gloves were wet and I was shaking,” van Zyl said.Van Zyl kept his posse waiting for 10 deliveries before he finally managed to clip Benn away for his first international run. However, he had just barely avoided the short leg fielder.”It’s the best run I’ve got in my career. Just to get off that zero, it’s a different feeling, it’s like a house of bricks off your back,” he said. His captain could see the importance of the moment and celebrated the run with his debutant. “I said something like ‘I know it’s just one run but really well done,’ Amla said.Those well-wishes may have seemed premature when 14 balls later, van Zyl’s debut could have ended forgetfully. He turned Benn to leg gully, but Kraigg Brathwaite could not hold on. The let-off shook van Zyl, who realised the magnitude of the challenge he was facing, literally.”Benn is a bit taller than the normal spinners that I face in South Africa. There was a bit of bounce and bit of turn,” he said. “But as the innings went on, it became easier. It’s on the big stage but it’s still a cricket ball that comes to me and I actually just said to myself, if get past 10, I can take it from there and feel my way in.”A few short balls, some width, an invitation to bring out van Zyl’s cover drive and the introduction of Jermaine Blackwood all took him to a half-century before tea and that was when van Zyl began believing. “When I got to fifty, I realised maybe a hundred is on the cards. We chatted at lunch and the guys said we’re looking to bat a certain amount of overs.”Van Zyl had the motivation to score quickly and the right man at the other end – an aggressive South Africa captain with his eye on the big picture – to usher him through. His second fifty came off only 55 balls, as West Indies’ bowlers ran out of ideas and energy. Lethargic fielding even made rotating strike easy.Van Zyl still felt the novelty of seeing numbers change on the scoreboard and admitted that when his partnership with his captain began to blossom, he only cherished it more. “When I saw it get to 150, I wanted to take it to 200,” he said. “We recognise that stuff and it inspires me to go on.”The fifth-wicket stand did not grow to 200, but South Africa’s total scaled 550 and van Zyl became only the fifth person to score a century on debut for this team. He joins Andrew Hudson, Jacques Rudolph, Faf du Plessis and the man he may replace at the top of the order, Alviro Petersen, in that club and he hopes it is the start of something specialBut he knows his chances may be limited in future. “Scoring 100 on debut is a perfect start, a dream,” he said. “If there are changes to be made in the next few matches, maybe I’ve got to be the one that sits out. But if I get opportunity again, I’ll try my best.”
