Sliding into place
Things are finally falling into place for Ryan Rickelton
Ryan Rickelton dances down the pitch and meets the ball on the up. He returns to the popping crease, takes a big step forward and stops as if considering his next move. He considers his backlift for a moment, then backtracks. Rickelton is working on the step-out shot. He is good at it, but not as good as he envisions. Today, he is focused on that shot and the pickup. They are the only two he is working on this week. The plan is to master them till he executes them fluently.
Rickelton has always been the face of dedication and focus. When he was six, Rickelton woke up to hit balls at 5 am. The dull sound of a lightweight bat making contact with a tennis ball brought the Rickelton household to life on weekends. He spent hours and hours hitting the ball. A year later, Rickelton was monopolising his father’s time, asking him to shoot 100s of deliveries from the bowling machine.
More than 20 years later, he spends less time hitting the ball compared to back then. A net session can last about 20 minutes, but the training is now more intense - he engages in deliberate practice. "It's more focused. I work on specific details of my game," he says.
The pause halfway through the shot is as if he is breaking the move down to its parts—this, this, and that. Rickelton retreats and takes guard again, on middle stump. Done properly, the step-out shot is glorious, the batter can play drives or clear the boundary with ease.
Rickelton faces a couple of deliveries, he middles one and edges the second, but that doesn’t bother him, he is more concerned that his mechanics are on point. He faces another one and makes clean contact, the ball is smothered by the net. In a match situation, it would have raced to the boundary. It is the first of consecutive deliveries where the 26-year-old looks like poetry in motion. The mechanics, the timing, everything clicks into place. He faces delivery after delivery on different lines and lengths and executes the shot with panache.
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He is now inhabiting the same plane he was on on 11 January 2024. MI Cape Town was playing against Durban Super Giants at Kingsmead. Before the match, Robbie Petersen had reminded him of the talks they had had before. “The only way I can explain it is to say Coach Robbie P gave me the license to get out,” he says.
He got out after facing 51 deliveries. Rickelton was dismissed after carving six fours and six sixes on his way to a brilliant 87, his first half-ton of SA20. It was a sign of things to come. Rickelton finished the season with 530 runs, a new benchmark in the league. He was the first batter to score 500 or more runs in a season. He scored the most half-centuries and had the highest average among batters with 400 or more runs and the second-highest compared to the top 10 run scorers.
His strike rate of 173.77 was number two on the top 10 run-scorers list. If you take a microscope to look beyond the surface of those figures, Rickelton’s SA20 numbers are even more impressive. His average of 58.88 and astronomical strike rate is 30.7 and 37.75 points higher than the average opener facing the same deliveries. No other opening batter had such an impact on their team.
Rickelton’s SA20 performance was not a one-off. After scything bowlers in the 2024 edition of the SA20, Rickelton turned his blade on domestic attacks. He added four more half-centuries for a total of nine 50s in just under four months of T20 cricket. Only five batters scored 400 or more runs in the CSA T20 Challenge. Rickelton was in second place with 441 runs for an average of 40 at 144.1. No other batter from that list had a higher average and only one had a better strike rate.
In 2021, Prasanna Agoram matter-of-factly told Mushtaq Ahmed, the Deccan Challengers coach, that Rickelton was going to open for them that season. The analyst had watched enough video footage to be certain that he was looking at a future star. Unfortunately, that move didn't work out for both parties because Rickelton was called up to Proteas duty just before leaving for the UAE. The matches he had been called up for were cancelled.
His Proteas debut was delayed by a few months and he missed out on what could have been his gateway into the franchise circuit. Nothing was working as it was supposed to. However, things are clicking into place three years later - just like his batting. He was awarded a national contract, was selected for the T20 World Cup squad and signed his first franchise contract with a non-South African team, the Seattle Orcas in the MLC.
They are developments he didn’t envision in January 2023. Rickelton went through the 2022-23 season batting and keeping wicket with an injured ankle. His ATFL ligament was torn and there was a bone spur on his heel pushing on his Achilles. It was so bad that he might as well have batted on crutches. Rickelton received PRP and cortisone injections for him to be able to take to the field.
The move was driven by his love for the game, he did all he could to delay the operation till the off-season, and he was also trying to save his international career. He hadn’t performed as well as he would have liked and was aware that other players were vying for the same position as him. The train of international cricket moves on quickly, one day you are a starter and the next you find yourself as a fifth choice.
Batting on one and a half legs, Rickelton peeled off three centuries in three First Class appearances for the Lions on his way to 365 for an average of 121.66 at 60.33. Rickelton also topped the List A run-scorers list with 452 runs for an average of 64.57 at 103.
However, he had a dismal showing in T20 cricket, he scored 146 runs in seven SA20 matches for an average of 20.85 at a strike rate of 113.17. He was 30th on the top run-scorers list and numbers were in the negative, compared to other openers facing the same deliveries.
“Six months ago I wouldn’t have put my name in the hat of potential picks. I wouldn’t have even considered the idea that I could be one of the travelling reserves. I am super stoked and can’t put it into words,” says Rickelton as he picks up his keeping gloves. He will put in 20 minutes of working on his wicketkeeping.
He crouches on the line of fourth stump, head above gloves. The first delivery is drifting to his right. Rickelton keeps his eyes trained on the ball as it slides into his gloves. He drops it, anticipating the next one. Like his batting, this session is also going to be good.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS