The Comeback Trail
For Janneman Malan, it's not just about making a comeback, it's about coming back better and improved.
The crack of a bat sounds different from place to place. Different grounds and stadiums offer different sounds, as do different players. Sometimes, it's like a gunshot or echo sound of an axe on a piece of willow in the woods. Sometimes the echo cannot be likened to anything, there’s no other sound like leather coming off the willow. It's just unique to cricket. Like now.
Janneman Malan doesn’t look at the ball. The contact is good and he knows the shot is clean. He walks over to his brother Andre. Andre has dropped the dog-stick and has the camera in his hands. Malan has always depended on feel and rhythm and only uses a camera when working on his technique. That's why he is at the teamFuture grounds in Durbanville, he is making technical adjustments.
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Malan prefers to spend the South African offseason playing overseas, but 2023 is different. He only left Paarl to join a two-week training camp in Durban. Needs must. In February 2022, Malan was celebrating being named ICC Emerging Player of The Year, and when February 2023 came around, he had lost his national contract and place in the Proteas.
“It has been very tough mentally for me. I needed to take time to rediscover myself because I just lost confidence in my batting ability and didn’t know how to fix it,” says Malan, reflecting on the 2022-23 season.
The inaugural SA20 season capped off a dismal domestic season. Malan managed 23 runs in 3 innings in SA20 at a strike rate of 62.16. In the four-day series, Malan scored 242 runs that featured one century and one half-century for an average of 24.20 in 10 innings. His One-Day Cup campaign was no better. Malan scored one century and two 50s on his way to 260 runs in seven innings for an average of 37.14. This is poor, by his standards. He knows it and is actively working to address the cause.
Andre has seen this steely determination in Malan before. When Andre was 11, and Malan six, the two brothers were out with their bicycles, racing. Their father was recording the boys. Malan Snr loved to record his children doing things. “Janneman fell off his bike and grazed his hands and knees. His eyes were filled with tears. My father said, ‘Now that you have fallen, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay down and cry or are you going to get up?’ You dust yourself up and keep going,” Andre recalls.
According to Andre, two things you can be sure of are; Malan will start his day with a cup of Boeretroos coffee, a few pieces of Ouma rusks and a piece of wet biltong, and he will dust himself up after a fall just as he did when he was six.
Malan arrived at North-West University on the back of a successful tour to England with the SA Under-19 team. Everyone expected him to be picked for the Varsity Cup team that year. He wasn't. Everyone was shocked. Malan was crestfallen. "We were raised to understand that life isn't fair and grumbling about it isn't helpful," says Andre.
After an appropriate period of sulking, Malan put his head down and got to work in the nets. That year's Varsity Cup tournament was held at North-West University. A hostel tournament was held in Potchefstroom. Malan dominated the event with the bat. North-West University was forced to call him in as a replacement player after Andre suffered an injury. In his first match, a semi-final encounter against Stellenbosch University (Matties), he scored an unbeaten 99 to lead his team to victory.
The 2015 Varsity Cup was neither the first nor last time he had to dust himself up. He was not about to change his ways in 2023. The problem was, he had forgotten how he did it in the past. He decided that the best way forward was to strip his batting down and go back to the basics. "There was some bad habits that crept into my batting. So it is hard work getting back to solid basics again. At the moment, I am rediscovering the basics and building on that," says Malan.
It's difficult not to feel hard done by. Malan had a bright start to his international career. He has amassed three centuries and four half-centuries in 22 ODIs at a strike rate of 83.3 for an average of 47.5. He didn’t shoot the lights out, but he didn’t do too badly. He did what was asked of him, and then he faltered. He went on a bad five-match run and found himself on the curb.
But, he can't mop around and blame the coaches. The good and bad performances are his because the path he is walking is his. In all instances, the good and the bad, he could have done more. He could have done better. Malan didn’t help himself with the floggings he self-administered after each outing. The severity increased with each low score. With his mind getting in the way, Malan's ability to access peak performance was significantly reduced. It was like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on.
Malan’s overall international statistics straddle that awkward spot between great and not-so-good. In the matches he played, the overall match strike rate is 88.29, while the overall average is 33.04. Other openers in the matches he played averaged 36.84 at a strike rate of 86.85. He outscored all of them but at a slightly lower strike rate. That -3.5% matters to Malan and he is working to rectify that. That will get him back into the Proteas side.
“Our philosophy is to assess where the game is at and take the most positive option relative to the match situation,” says Rob Walter.
In his book The Book of Five Rings, the seventeenth-century swordsmith Miyamoto Musashi wrote, “You can only fight the way you practice.” During practice, Malan is adopting a positive approach, getting into stronger positions and looking to score off every ball. The goal is to consistently do the right things and think the right thoughts until they both become his default setting. “It is still a work in progress and I am trying not to put too much pressure on myself,” he says.
Malan is at his best when he plays like no one is watching. As he takes guard to face more deliveries from Andre, he seems oblivious to everything around him, save for Andre, the ball and the dog-stick. The first ball he faces is on the line between middle and off. Malan opens his front foot and dispatches it into the netting. It's a cover drive, but it goes square. "He is in good form when his cover drive does that," says Andre as he picks up another ball.
Janneman Malan is on the comeback trail.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS
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