Roll your wrists, Thomas
Thomas Kaber started off as a prodigy and then turned into a poster boy for long road accomplishments
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Thomas Kaber smiled. It’s a sweet memory, one he can laugh about. He was grateful for it 17 years ago. He is thankful for it now.
He was 16, nervous and unsure if he would find a place in the Northerns dressing room. Then his mother saved the day in the most unconventional manner. She walked in waving a tube of sunscreen. He had forgotten it at home. She wasn’t about to let her son get burnt to a crisp by the highveld sun.
The team had a laugh about it. Older players wished they had mothers barging in with forgotten supplies. Everyone seemed to forget something at one point or another. The moment was the icebreaker the dressing room needed. With nerves settled, Kaber acquitted himself well by claiming seven wickets in the match, including a five-for in the second innings.
“I think I was too young to fully understand how special the occasion was at the time, but looking back now it’s definitely one of my best memories from early in my career,” Kaber reflected.
Kaber’s cricket journey started in the backyard in the late-90s. The early days had the standard fare of plastic bats, plastic balls, and plastic stumps. Then he graduated to old bats, tennis balls, and lots of arguing with friends in the backyard. In 1999, he got swept up by the whirlwind of the 1999 ICC World Cup excitement.
The parents at Kaber’s school were so excited that they believed that their seven, eight, and nine-year-olds were the next generation of Proteas stars that they organised matches against 11-year-olds. The bigger and stronger boys took their positions as pacers. Kaber, who wasn’t content with being a mere fielder, elected himself to be the team’s spinner.
He delivered ungainly off spinners. However, his career as an offie was short-lived, thanks to Shane Warne. Kaber watched the Australian star tie the Proteas down with his leggies in the middle overs of the semifinal and decided that wanted to learn that craft.
“My dad was devastated by the whole Klusener-Donald mix-up at the end, which is what most people remember, but what I remember is the spell Shane Warne bowled in the middle of the game. The way he suddenly changed the match completely fascinated me,” Kaber shared.
A broken window put Kaber on the fast track to leg spin mastery. He went into the backyard trying to bowl his version of Warne’s leggies the next day. A couple of windows suffered in the process. Kaber recalled anxiously waiting for his father’s return from work at the end of day. He expected to be in a world of trouble.
“Instead, he helped put up cricket nets in the garden so that I could keep trying,” Kaber shared.
The spinner also took ownership of his father’s copy of Peter Philpott’s The Art of Wrist-Spin Bowling. The backyard games with friends continued but Kaber dedicated the majority of his free time in his new nets following Philpott’s instructions. He was in there every morning and afternoon, before and after school, with a bag of bowling machine balls.
It was hours of bowl trying to bowl the perfect leg break or at least something close to one. Some balls missed the mark completely, some hit the spot. Kaber kept experimenting. The pay-off was that he developed a fairly consistent leg break and wrong’un when he got to u12 and u13 level.
Kaber bowled so much that he put in his 10,000 hours before he reached 16. That’s how he attended his first Coke Week at 16 and finished the tournament as one of the leading wicket-takers, and then making his debut for Northerns.
When you make your first-class debut at that age, the expectation is to be a first XI player in a Division 1 team in your mid-20s. Probably knocking on the door to the international cricket. Unfortunately, Kaber injured his ring finger in his matric year and didn’t bowl for two years.
“At first, we thought that the injury was minor and it would heal on it’s own. But it didn’t. Then I had to have an operation,” Kaber explained.
The road back was long and hard. However, one of leggies’ magical abilities is their ability to bounce back after setbacks. Kaber had struck the lottery at 16. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Northerns had Shaun von Berg and a second spinner. The only available spot was in the top six. Kaber had to show that he could contribute on both sides of the ball to be picked.
The southpaw announced his comeback with a bat. He scored a match-saving century in his first match back. He was included Northerns squad for the Africa T20 in 2016. He went on to finish the season as the leading wicket-taker in the domestic 1-day Cup with 21 scalps in 10 matches.
Unfortunately, he had a hard time nailing a first XI spot at the Titans. Tabraiz Shamsi and Aaron Phangiso had established themselves while he was fighting his way back. Around the country, a host of talented spinners had claimed all the available spots by the time he regained mastery.
His big break came when the Warriors signed him in 2019, unfortunately, Kaber was their fifth choice spinner, and he rode the pine more than he played. Division 2 was the only place he was guaranteed regular game time.
Three years ago, tennis superstar, Carlos Alcaraz had his grandfather’s motto tattooed on his arm. It’s the three Cs, cabeza, corazón y cojones. Head, heart and balls. That’s what it takes to be a world beater. It is also what it takes to keep going when your career is being limited by an invisible ceiling.
After more than 10 years of endless hours in the sun, playing or training in South Africa and the UK 12 months a year. After over a decade of twisting his body to deliver leggies, Kaber’s head was telling him that he was done. His heart still wanted to stick it out, cricket was his childhood dream, and he had the balls to compete against the best. But his head…
“What kept me from retiring was the fact that you’re always going to wonder whether you could compete at the top level. I told myself, ‘If you give up now, you won’t ever know if you could have made it,’” Kaber said.
Division 2 is fraught with problems. One team got ‘locked’ out of good training facilities because they couldn’t afford the R1m lease at a local college. So, they resorted to training on matting. There are transport issues here and there. The pay scale is significantly lower than Division 1. The list of distractions Division 2 players deal with is long.
The off-field hurdles notwithstanding, this is where Kaber rediscovered his love for the game and the hunger to succeed. According to Kaber, the two years he spent with Border were some of the best of his career. His arrival dovetailed with Paul Adams taking up the head coach position.
It was the first time in his career that he had a pedigree spinner as his coach. It was a breath of fresh air to finally have someone with whom he could discuss the craft and tactics with after a career of figuring things out on his own. Kaber revealed that he learned a lot from the former Proteas player.
Adams had the second-most wickets by a South African spinner when he gave up Test cricket in 2004. He was 31. He could have overtaken Hugh Tayfield’s record had he played on. But, South Africa didn’t understand spinners in the noughties. They either deployed them in a holding role or tried to turn everyone into a wrist-spinner because they are easier to coach.
He understood the frustrations players like Kaber faced, so he strove to make Kaber’s life on the field easier. The leggie repaid him by hauling in 87 wickets in 34 innings. After his stint with Border, Kaber joined South Western Districts, and this is where his life changed. Unexpectedly.
Kaber could have won the lotto of working with a spinner-understanding coach in 2019. Unfortunately, Robbie Peterson arrived at the Warriors several months after Kaber had moved to Eastern Province. However, Peterson, who is famously known for keeping tabs on talented players, kept an eye on Kaber and when he needed a back-up spinner for season 2 of the SA20, he signed the leggie.
It was an unexpected signing. Kaber had been hopeful when he entered the auction for the inaugural season. No one showed interest. He submitted his name for the second season with no expectation and didn’t follow the proceedings. He only got to know he had been signed by MICape Town when he arrived for a team meeting.
“I was about two minutes late for the meeting. The first thing the guys told me was that I had been picked. It’s safe to say that I didn’t pay attention to the rest of the meeting,” Kaber chuckled.
SA20 was a big change. It was a world away from playing in empty second division stadiums with the driver and the cleaner as the only audience. Kaber didn’t have much to do in his first outing for MICape Town. Kieron Pollard threw him the ball in the seventh over. Heinrich Klaasen smashed two sixes on his way to 15 runs in the over. Pollard didn’t use Kaber again in the match.
The spinner got his revenge against Klaasen 12 days later. He bowled two balls to Klaasen. One went for a single, and the second was a wicket. Those two matches bookended Kaber’s best performance for MICape Town.
Kaber dislodged David Miller with the second ball of his second over. He sent down a well-disguised googly that beat the Proteas star all hands up. Then he closed his spell with the dismissals of Andile Phelukwayo and Fabian Allen in his last over to finish with three wickets for 20 runs in four overs.
The proof was there. Kaber belonged at this level. Thankfully, Peterson realised it and retained him for the third season, and Kaber was part of MICape Town’s title-winning squad. Peterson finally offered Kaber a contract with the Warriors in 2025. Seventeen years after his debut, Thomas Kaber finally arrived to a place where he commanded a first XI spot in Division 1.
This time, he didn’t need his mother to save the day. His travails through the lower league and his few appearances at the top had left him older and wiser.
“I have used every match as a lesson from the time I started. That’s also how I approach many things, so what might look like sacrifices now did not look like sacrifices when I was living it. Everything was a learning moment,” Kaber revealed.
Thomas Kaber did a shortened version of his run-up and bowled a ball with backspin. He turned, revealed that this was one of the first deliveries he learned from Philpott’s book and smiled.
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