Stubbsie: Enjoying The Game
Tristan Stubbs has been a revelation since 2021, but his focus has been on enjoying the game.
Tristan Stubbs burst on the scene in 2021, during the CSA T20 Challenge. He had no franchise cricket experience, but he performed like someone with a few seasons under his belt. In 2022, he came back faster, better and stronger. The 21-year-old has made a case for himself as a serious T20 player.
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On the patio at the Stubbs’ family home in Knysna, you will see stringed balls attached at different levels. Back in the day, this is where you were most likely going to find Tristan if he was home.
He would be out here with his assortment of bats. He had quite a few of them, ranging from middling bats to the small size three bats. Now and then he would ask his father to modify his bats and cut them thinner.
So, he would be out there with his assortment of bats coming up with challenges for himself with his stringed cricket balls. He had three of them, the stringed balls. He would challenge himself to hit 50 in a row, 100 in a row, 150 or 200 without messing up.
When not outside on the patio, you could count on finding Tristan inside the house in the passage. Indoors he mostly used the little bats, the ones that everyone tries to get autographs of players on at games. He started using that one when he was around five or six, and he never outgrew it.
It wasn’t just cricket that he played in the passage. The passage acted as his cricket and golfing nets and his hockey practice ground. It was hockey in the winter, cricket in the summer and golf whenever there was a major golfing event on television.
Wearing his Blue Bulls shirt most of the time.
The Blue Bulls shirt was from a different time. His parents got it for him before moving to Knysna, the Stubbs family lived in Honeydew, Johannesburg. Back then, Tristan harboured dreams of being a professional rugby player, a job he wanted to do with the Blue Bulls. Probably as a flyhalf, just like Derick Hougaard.
The shirt was adult-sized, way too big for a kid his age. Of course, Tristan didn't mind that, the shirt was his pride and joy. He wore it on weekends when he tagged along to watch his father play hockey. He wore it when he played backyard cricket. And he wore it when he imitated his heroes in the passage.
The Blue Bulls shirt was later replaced with his first Warriors 4-Day shirt. Like the Blue Bulls shirt, the long-sleeved Warriors shirt was too big for him. It was a gift from Robin Abbott, his coach at the Knysna Sports School, now called the Knysna Sports Academy.
Little has changed since his childhood days. Well, now he lives in Gqeberha, but when he is home, very little has changed. When he is in Knysna, you will find Tristan on the patio with his bats and balls. When his friends are around, you will find them in the backyard making up cricket, golf or hockey contests.
The other day Mandy Stubbs unearthed a bucketload of balls. Everything from cricket balls to golf and hockey balls stuck in the bedding and a few others were covered by the soil.
“It's always been like that. Tristan has always loved anything to do with any ball, from day one,” says Mandy Stubbs. “My flowerbeds have always suffered, fortunately, no windows. I can only remember one instance where a window broke.”
On weekends Tristan tagged along to watch his father play hockey in the local league. He didn’t understand the rules when he started, but he went anyway. Like any other kid at those matches, he didn't watch a lot. He spent most of his time at those games playing touch rugby, cricket or hockey.
Tristan's relationship with sports started because of his father. Some of his earliest memories of watching sports on TV are of him and his father sitting side-by-side on the couch. When he didn’t have work the next day, the duo would stay up late to catch, golf majors, and cricket matches played in Australia…
Chris Stubbs played hockey, and one of the first sticks that Tristan tried to manoeuvre with his spindly arms was his father's. It was too long and too heavy. Chris had to get him one that he could handle with no problems.
Chris Stubbs was the one who taught him how to hold a hockey stick properly. Place your right hand at the base of the grip and your left hand at the top. The “V” on both hands should face the toe edge of the stick. He is also the one who showed him how to hold a golf stick.
When Tristan needed someone to throw balls to him in the passage, his father did that. His sister had no interest in that. His mother helped out in the backyard, she was always happy to keep wicket when a keeper was needed. She never went as far as bowling to him, though. Chris Stubbs did anything and everything.
Mandy Stubbs laughs that Tristan gets his sports genes from his father. The young man is his father’s son. They are alike in so many other ways beyond sports. They are both quiet individuals. Chilled is the word that one could use. Tristan doesn’t talk a lot, but a few beers during a fines meeting have a way of loosening his tongue. But only very slightly. He might add a couple of sentences to what he has to say.
Like his father, Tristan also suffered from Sever’s disease as a youngster. The condition is a swelling and irritation of the growth plate in the heel. Chris Stubbs had to have surgery for the condition when he was in Grade 11, Standard Nine in his time. It is a hectic condition, very painful. Doctors advised Chris and Mandy Stubbs that if he stayed away from sports for a while, the condition would be resolved without any need for surgery.
Tristan stayed away from sports for almost a year.
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Tristan’s jogging route passed close to Robbie Petersen’s home. He was not the only one who used that route, quite a few joggers follow it. But Tristan is one of the bigger lads around, and thus hard to miss. Also, as one of the more consistent joggers, Robbie grew familiar with seeing the young man every morning. His timing was close to being right on the dot.
Tristan is conscious of his fitness. He has always been. He was one of the fittest players in his school team, he is currently one of the fittest batters at Warriors. During the lockdown, he ran around for hours in their tiny backyard. He also skipped a lot. After lockdown, he added gym work and a route that passed close to Robbie’s place. He has bulked up since his debut for the Warriors in 2021.
That’s not the only place that Robbie saw Tristan. He also saw him practising his batting in the nets. Tristan was an Eastern Province player at the time. Robbie liked what he saw. He had never seen the young man bat in a match, he didn’t need to. What he saw in the nets was enough to tell him that this boy was special. He had the height, the strength and showed the ability of many modern T20 players.
The hard-working kid that Robbie saw in the nets is the same hardworking kid that Richard Gilbert and Michael Smith worked with at Grey High School.
Tristan ended up at Grey High because he insisted on the school. His parents would have preferred Oakhill, which was closer to home. But Tristan was dead set on Grey High. He was in love with the institution. The hostels and the grounds were his favourite bits, he experienced these when he was 11.
He also scored his first 50 for South Western Districts Under-11s at Grey High. After the match, he asked for a little piece of the pitch to take home as memorabilia to remember his first 50. He still has it in his room in Knysna.
Anyway, during his time at Grey High, especially the last year, when Tristan was not in class he spent a lot of time in the nets training.
Tristan and his best friend LJ du Preez had a habit of collecting balls from Michael Smith. Smith was the Director of Cricket and the professional who worked with Grey High during Tristan’s time at the school. By the time Tristan left the school, the boys had a full bag of balls.
Every day, the boys would be in the nets, LJ doing most of the throwing of balls. On the days when they would have managed to get Mike Smith to come along, he would throw balls and operate the bowling machine for them. On the odd days that neither Mike nor LJ were available, Tristan would find a boy from the hostels to throw balls to him.
He didn’t hit the balls for sake of hitting them, as most boys are wont to do. He did enjoy hitting the balls, but most of the time he had something that he was working on.
“A lot of boys might go and just smash a few balls and sixes and then they're done. Tristan wanted a good practice,” says Richard Gilbert, the Grey High cricket head coach. “Sometimes Mike Smith and I would observe from a distance, and you could see he wasn't wasting his time on rubbish practice, there was always something that he was working on. Something that we would have discussed over the weekend.”
Tristan did this six days a week. The other one day was often spent playing hockey. That has not yet changed. Tristan still plays hockey once a week and focuses on cricket the rest of the time.
Another thing that Tristan used to do when he played cricket for Grey High School is this. On the field, he normally fielded at long-off. He knew that coaching was not allowed during the game, but he always had all these ideas swirling in his head that he needed to bounce off someone who knew better. So, while at long-off, he would stand still like a tree and call the coach over. He would engage him in conversation, not necessarily ask him what to do with tactics or the field, but share the ideas he has in his head.
He still bounces ideas on Michael Smith, who helps him with his batting. He also bounces ideas on Robbie Petersen and the rest of the Warriors coaching unit.
“What I saw in those days is what he still is now, he is hungry to learn and so much in love with training,” says Robbie Petersen. “I don’t have to ask him to train. A player like that is a coach’s dream.”
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Tristan Stubbs went on one knee, cleared his left leg and played the ball across the line. There was a pop and the ball flew long and high, clearing the long boundary to land in the stands.
In 2013, the IPL saw an explosion of posters that proclaimed: "When Gayle bats, fielders become spectators and spectators become fielders." One of the first of these posters was first seen in the stadium in a match between Bangalore and Pune. Gayle’s batting in that match was so brutal, that the quick-witted chap whose job it was to write clever stuff over the PA booth asked: "Declare?" in the 15th over.
Watching this innings from Tristan Stubbs brings back memories of that Chris Gayle innings. The young man was unstoppable. It was a remarkable shot.
Tristan has a knack for playing remarkable shots, in part because he does not have a traditional batting style. He is different. He sets up with an open bat, coaches who are particular about technique will tear their hair out watching Tristan at the crease. The MCC manual was not written for people like him. He is fortunate that his coaches down the years never tried to change his style.
Tristan Stubbs developed a style that is comfortable and works for him.
He is also incredibly fast for a guy his size. Tristan is around 6 foot 5 inches or thereabouts. His height is an asset when it comes to playing spin. When he plays spinners, he gets to balls that other guys can't get to, especially on the sweep, the reverse sweep and the slog sweep.
His size and his demeanour are in contrast with his batting speed. He is incredibly fast.
“You can teach a lot of things in cricket, but one of the things you can't teach is hand speed,” says Michael Smith. “Tristan has crazy acceleration through the hitting zone, you know, through his point of contact. He has that real different hand speed through the ball.”
Tristan also has this snap in his wrists, a hockey player’s snap. He also plays one of the drag flicks that anyone will ever see, a legacy from his hockey career.
In his book, A Clear Blue Sky, Jonny Bairstow talks about how hockey helped with his hand speed, built up his arms and strengthened his wrists, making them more flexible too. Bairstow has these things in common with Tristan Stubbs. It’s probably no surprise that they both do so well in white-ball cricket.
There are many transferable skills in sports, and not all of them have to do with physical attributes. Tristan developed a strong sense of teamwork from playing hockey. Playing in hockey teams helped him to develop a strong emotional IQ quickly as a youngster, which made him a good and effective leader as a young man.
According to studies, playing a myriad of sports helps young athletes with better overall fitness and longevity in their chosen future sports. At the Knysna Sports Academy, Tristan took part in every activity that involved a ball. He played hockey, rugby and cricket, and he also surfed and enjoyed wakeboarding. He still wakeboards, surfs and plays hockey and the odd game of touch rugby.
Anyway, Darryn Dupavillon, whose ball had been dispatched, could only watch. He had not bowled a bad ball, Tristan Stubbs had done something remarkable. The ball's trajectory was cheered by the few spectators who were at St. Georges Park.
Mandy Stubbs, Tristan's mother was one of the few in the stands. She has been to almost every match that her son has played.
“Mandy's one of Tristan’s best supporters,” says Michael Smith, who has worked with Tristan on his batting for a few years. “She is also probably one of the more nervous moms around.”
Mandy Stubbs has been by Tristan’s side from the first trials he attended as a nine-year-old. They were Under-13 trials with South Western Districts. Tristan passed them with very little trouble.
For the next few years, Mandy made the two-hour commute from Knysna to Oudtshoorn, sometimes three times a week, with Tristan for trials, matches or practice. After Tristan had made the Grey High School teams, Mandy would travel the three hours for home games, and she tried to make as many away games as she could.
“My life consisted of driving around, carting them from game to game or wherever they had to be,” Mandy laughs. “When he was at Grey, they played at home or went to George, Oudtshoorn or Mossel Bay for matches.”
Mandy has watched Tristan play more matches than she can remember. She has watched him play incredible and mature knocks for Grey High School. But this innings against the Dolphins is one of her favourites. It took her son 31 balls to score 80 runs. Tristan had the highest strike rate of the match.
“The other day, someone asked me where I see myself in 10 years. I think if I am still having fun, enjoying my cricket, then I will still be playing,” says Tristan. “I think that is a big thing, whether I am still enjoying it.”
He feels that it is easy for him to give his all when he is enjoying himself. He doesn’t want to do it if he cannot be motivated to give 100% to the game. His trip to the Netherlands was an eye-opener. His teammates at Excelsior Schiedam, a club in the Dutch Topklasse, had day jobs. Most of them could only afford three hours of practice a day, which they squeezed in just after work before they went home to be with their families.
Their dedication and the way they enjoyed playing during the weekends was a huge learning curve for him. For the first time, he learned how privileged he was to be an overseas player who only had to focus on his cricket.
He doesn’t take his position for granted and he doesn’t want to feel as if he is doing so.
He is still enjoying the sport right now. A day or two after the Warriors were knocked out of the 2022 CSA T20 Challenge, Tristan picked up the phone and called Richard Gilbert. He wanted to know if there was still space for one more player in the memorial game between Old Grey High students and the current first eleven side.
“He just turned up like he was the kid from next door,” Richard Gilbert says.
He was dismissed for seven. After going toe to toe with some of the best bowlers in franchise cricket, and hitting them for runs, he was dismissed by a kid in matric for seven.
Tristan also plays a lot of club cricket. Whenever he is free, he joins his mates for a weekend game. And of course, he tries to play hockey on most weekends. When he is not doing that, you will find him surfing. Like one of his heroes, Dale Steyn, he enjoys surfing a lot.
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