One of the Special Ones: Janneman Malan
Janneman wants to go Kakgroot.
‘Janneman is one of the special ones,’ Andre Malan once wrote. ‘When he gets his chance he will make the hairs on the back of whoever is fortunate enough to watch him go about his work stand up.’
When he goes about his work, he does so with a song in his head. Often it’s random, and sometimes it’s the tune Kakgroot by Van Pletzen. As the song says, he will go big.
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Janneman Malan lowered himself into the bathtub in most of his batting gear, in shock and in disbelief. He had tears in his eyes.
At Paarl cricket ground, there is a bathroom right behind the dressing-room. And after his dismissal by Mitch Starc in his debut ODI - via a 143km/h toe-cruncher - Janneman walked straight to that bathroom. With Janneman Malan’s dismissal, Mitch Starc became the third bowler to dismiss three debutant batters for a first-ball duck. Only Chaminda Vaas has done it five times.
On his way to the bathroom, which is just behind the dressing-room at Paarl, Janneman didn’t even linger to chat with anyone. He had done enough lingering on the field when the Australians were reviewing the umpire’s decision.
“I was just thinking that I just ruined my international career,” says Janneman. “At that moment, I felt everything very heavily. It was quite tough.”
Watching Aaron Finch review Umpire Nigel Llong’s decision had felt like watching someone reviewing his international career. Maybe someone would think that he had debuted a little too early and might suggest that maybe he needed more time to grow.
As he sat in that tub, all Janneman needed was a hug and some reassurance. He was doing a very good job of being hard on himself.
It’s a memory that will live on in Janneman’s mind. One moment he and Kyle Verreyne were excited to be making ODI debuts and the next moment he felt his world collapse.
“I can still clearly remember exactly what happened. Maybe it was a bit traumatic,” he says.
Since then, Janneman has blazed a trail. In the next match, he scored 129*. His numbers make good reading, three centuries in his young career. He has only played 11 ODIs. The ton against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka has been the toughest one he has scored so far.
“Sri Lanka one was special, especially with the amount of spin I faced,” Janneman says. “In terms of fitness, I hadn't been pushed like that in a long time. It was just so hot it was like an oven there. I was cramping a bit. So it was also a mental battle.”
Janneman Malan crawled his way into cricket.
When he was born, Pieter and Andre were already keen competitors. Pieter was seven and Andre was five. They had already identified their heroes, and did their best impressions of Ricky Ponting, for Pieter, and Jacques Kallis, for Andre, when they played their backyard international matches.
This is the world Janneman crawled into. His parents, though never having played at any recognizable level, had a passable knowledge of the sport. Just enough to help them have fun with their kids. Mother was the referee, medic and scorekeeper. Dad was the change bowler, umpire, sponsor, groundsman and videographer.
“There are home videos of me crawling with a bat in my hand,” says Janneman. “In the background is like 12 bats and 20 cricket balls on the ground. I was about two or three years old then.”
There are hundreds of hours of backyard cricket footage in the Malan household. A lot of it now makes great holiday viewing for the Malans when they get together.
The footage has hours of Pieter and Andre doing their best Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis impressions. During the early years, Janneman was always fielding at extra-cover. That is where his mother preferred him to be. (23 years later Janneman Malan prefers to field in the cover region, especially when seamers are in action.)
There was a huge tree at the extra-cover region of number 64 Suiderkruis Street. Janneman’s field placing was directly behind that tree.
“I just stood behind the tree and waited till they hit the ball,” says Janneman. “And then I could go fetch the ball. My mom made me stand behind the tree because she was scared I was gonna get hit.”
Barely a couple of years later Janneman wasn’t hiding behind the tree anymore.
Andre Malan remembers the time when Janneman was just barely taller than standard batting pads. Janneman was around 4 years old at the time. He would pad up, and would bravely and enthusiastically strut to the stumps when it was his turn to bat.
“Barely able to look over his pads he asked for middle,” says Andre.
Janneman still asks for middle a lot of times.
He insisted on wearing pads like his brothers because if they wore them, he had to do so too. What was good for the others had to be good for him too. Janneman was that competitive little brother. He had to be, otherwise, he would have been buried by his older siblings.
“I was kind of forced to compete with my older brothers, which maybe gave me something that helped me to compete in the future,” says Janneman.
When four-year-old Janneman Malan was not struggling to walk in oversized batting pads at home, he was playing Bakers Mini Cricket with six-year-olds in Mbombela, Nelspruit. He has always been an overachiever.
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To compete with their older siblings, younger siblings have to punch above their weight. To do that they have to work a little harder than everyone else around them. Older siblings provide stronger, faster and better-skilled competition. They bowl faster and bat harder than their smaller or younger counterparts.
“Essentially the challenge of ‘playing up’ - playing with older siblings who tend to be bigger and stronger and so on - accelerates their skill acquisition,” says Tim Wigmore.
Tim Wigmore and Mark Williams co-authored the book The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made. One of the things that they speak of in the book is the ‘little sibling effect.’ Elite athletes are likely more than to be later born.
According to a study of 700 pairs of athletes who have played Major League Baseball, younger brothers were 2.5 times more likely to have a superior career than their older siblings. Another study, an analysis of 33 sports in Australia and Canada found that the majority of elite athletes had older siblings.
“They are challenged more playing with their siblings,” says Tim. “They also get more experience of dealing with adversity, which can toughen them up. AB de Villiers, for instance, has partly credited his toughness with brutal backyard games of cricket.”
AB de Villiers just happens to be one of the batters that Janneman liked to watch and imitate as a youngster.
“It was nice to kind of pretend to be AB when I used to bat. I sometimes still do it,” he says.
Older siblings also cast a long shadow, so it is not enough for younger siblings to be as good as their older siblings. When Janneman went to Hoerskool Waterkloof for his high school education Andre was already there and already established as a sportsman. There was no shortage of people commenting that he was in Andre’s shadow.
“It was a challenge to create your own path and to just not be compared to him all the time. And just try and do your thing,” says Janneman. “Luckily, I think I did it from a young age.”
So it wasn’t too difficult for him to carve his own identity at the school.
“I had to work it out my way, to work out what my way was,” says Gary Kirsten. “I think it helped me because it gave me a resilience and determination to say, ‘I can do equally well in this game, but I am going to do it my way.’”
It is not enough for younger siblings to be as good as their older siblings. They have to be better. To be better, they have to be creative. They have to be daring to colour outside the lines because they are born into an environment where others have had a head start in the discipline and has the technique nailed. Being as technically proficient as the others will not get them ahead.
Like Gary, Janneman had to find his own way. Pieter Malan is one of the most technically sound batters in South Africa at the moment. Andre’s batting and bowling techniques are not too shabby either. Janneman is the least technical of the three. He is not textbook.
It was helpful that their parents did not lord over them fussing over techniques. Janneman’s parents were just happy to play cricket with their kids. When they attended school or age-group matches, they didn’t coach from the stands.
“They weren't very vocal parents and in your face, kind of, next to the field,” says Janneman. “They were just there. Not too close, not too far. And they were just, they supported us all the way we can't, couldn't, ask for better.”
When Janneman signed with Cobras, Monty Jacobs, his coach at North West picked up the phone to have a chat with Ashwell Prince at Cobras.
“Janneman is good, he is a good batter,” Monty told Prince. “Just don't look too much as to how he bats in the nets. Just let him play. Don’t pick him on his on the nets he has.”
It’s a call that probably saved his career. Three years earlier Janneman had failed to make the North West University side that was picked to play in a T20 tournament at Stellenbosch University. This despite that he had just scored 129 runs in a cubs franchise match three weeks before then.
He eventually made the team after one of the batters got injured. He was one of the top performers for North West at the tournament. In one match he had a 140-run partnership with Wihan Lubbe. Janneman was out of 99, with one ball in the match.
“I wasn't backed a lot because I also looked a bit different,” says Janneman. “I don't think I'm a coach's perfect example of textbook batter.”
As a youngster, Janneman Malan was an allrounder. He opened the batting and could bowl ‘nice and quick.’ Andre Malan currently bats at number three and bowls fast-medium pace. Janneman could have developed into a similar type of player.
Then in Grade 8 he slipped and tore something in his groin while competing in a javelin contest. Janneman was a decent javelinist growing up. He competed at national meets before his injury. Participating in javelin might have helped him with his pace bowling. It also destroyed his pace bowling ambitions.
Unwilling to completely give up on his allrounder dreams, Janneman converted himself into a spin bowler with the help of former Northerns allrounder Maurice Aronstam. Aromstam has a First Class high score of 201* and a List A best of 120*. He also has career-best bowling figures of 5/10 and 3/43 in First Class and List A respectively. Aronstam bowled legbreak.
Then for some reason, Janneman just stopped working on his spin bowling and he ceased to be an allrounder.
Janneman now has his eye on becoming a utility player.
“I'm now working on being a part-time spinner,” he says. “It's something I'm trying to work on on the side.”
If he can get this going, the value of his stocks would go high, especially in T20. Players proficient in two disciplines get more attention from recruiters. The benefits are also obvious for Proteas.
“It's good if you can open the batting and bowl a couple of overs of spin,” says Janneman. “Maybe I can become a mystery spinner. But, yeah, that's definitely part of my goals for the next couple of years.”