The Making of Ryan Rickelton
Nature or nurture? Ryan Rickelton is a result of both.
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“My dad said, I've been out sweeping 20 times.”
“Well, have you scored 2500 runs in that period of time while you're sweeping?”
“I haven't.”
“I think you need to review what you're doing.”
This was the exchange between Ryan Rickelton and Neil McKenzie. McKenzie is Ryan’s mentor, whenever the young Proteas player has a problem, he reaches out to the former Proteas player. The two had the conversation after Ryan had played his last match of the 2021/2022 season.
It was unlike Ryan to doubt Ian Rickelton’s views. Ryan became a wicketkeeper because his father felt that keeping wicket would make him a better and more well-rounded player.
“I said to him, ‘You know what, if you want to be a cricketer, and you're serious about it, then you need to open the batting. And you need to keep wicket. When you are a keeper, you're always in the game. You're seeing the ball all the time and you're involved in the game,’” says Ian.
Ryan took that advice and became exactly that, an opening batter who keeps wicket.
But, when his father criticised his sweeping, a part of him felt that it might have been unfair criticism. So, he went to consult with Niel McKenzie. After his talk with McKenzie, Ryan Rickelton did act on his sweeping. He did not shelve the stroke, he decided to use it less and went back to the basics.
The result has been a successful season of county cricket. This is not where his path to greatness starts, it started some 20 or so years ago.
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Dean is the antithesis of Ryan.
Their parents, Ian and Penny Rickelton have the sports gene. In a way, Dean and Ryan had a genetic headstart after their parents endowed them with it too. As a youngster, Ian took to cricket like a duck to water. During his formative years, Ian played school and club cricket with relative success. Penny is an avid runner and was a provincial squash champion in her younger years.
“Ryan's probably got her genes, quite honestly. But so both of us are active, but Penny is the more complete sportsperson,” says Ian Rickelton.
Like Penny Rickelton, Ryan also plays squash. He also played provincial squash during his school years.
Ian might be onto something if Penny’s visual acuity and depth perception are better than his. Squash certainly requires both. People with good depth perception have high trainability in sports based on intercepting fast-moving objects. Louis J. Rosenbaum, who did a study on the visual function of baseball players, predicted two consecutive NL Rookies of the Year by doing eye tests.
Dean also has the genes. He played cricket and rugby at school. He was a natural, but, he did not take sports seriously. Dean only played for fun, to hang out with his friends. He never possessed the competitive drive that leads to the making of an elite athlete. Dean’s drive was in other things, just not sports. Cricket was always going to be secondary, he never had goals to be an elite sportsman. He pursued a career in IT and is based in London.
Dean does enjoy running, like their parents he is an avid runner. He also gives Ryan a good run for his money whenever they face-off on the squash court.
“Dean is far more happy-go-lucky. He has that ‘I'll sort that out later’ attitude about him. ” says Ian Rickelton.
Dean did not sweat the small things, while Ryan loathed leaving for later anything that he can do immediately. He has always been like that. When they were young, Dean’s clothes and toys could be haphazard or hastily put away. Ryan’s things were always meticulously put away, everything was always in its intended place.
“Ryan liked to know everything was. He liked to be organized,“ says his father.
That desire for organisation has spilt over into his batting. He is very organised as a batter. Like every cricketer, Ryan has tried new things and explored new ideas. Every time he did, he circled back to his ‘natural’ self.
“They are very different individuals,” says Ian. The brothers are like chalk and cheese. They chose different paths, but Dean remains Ryan's role model. He admires the way Dean conducts himself and his accomplishments.
When Ryan stayed up late or woke up around 1 am to catch Ashes matches played in Australia, he did so alone. Dean would be fast asleep. Unlike his younger brother, Dean never went out of his way to see a cricket match. He certainly did not sacrifice sleep to watch Matthew Hayden and company. He enjoyed his sleep too much to be bothered. He would only watch when he had the time.
Ryan was around six or seven years old at the time and could never watch enough of Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist. He was drawn to Gilchrist’s fearless batting and Hayden had a commanding presence. Hayden was very close to being a modern Viv Richards in the manner that he intimidated bowlers.
Ryan’s midnight cricket viewing coincided with Hayden’s peak years. Hayden did not walk out to bat, he walked out to hit the cricket ball and bludgeon it everywhere. That is what got him going. A bit of that rubbed on to Ryan and is apparent in his batting, that is the template upon which his batting is built on.
“Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden used to have the bat low or used to tap and so I used to try that stuff like that when I was at school,” says Ryan.
His mechanics have since moved away from Gilchrist and Hayden, but their aggression has not. When Prasanna Agoram was describing Ryan Rickelton to Mushtaq Ahmed, the Deccan Gladiators coach, he described the young man as the player who will show you what hitting is all about. It is just what Gilchrist and Hayden showed many people from their era.
“Half the time we didn't know he was doing it, because he was up on his own time,” says Ian. “You know, we would go to bed and Ryan would get up and go watch TV and then come back to bed and then wake up with everyone in the morning.”
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A tennis ball being hit by a lightweight bat, one of those flimsy bats that come in a pack, makes a dull sound. It does not make the cracking sound that a cricket ball makes when it makes contact with a proper bat. That dull sound, the sound of a flimsy bat hitting a tennis ball, is the sound that brought the Rickelton household to life. It was six-year-old Ryan.
“I hung a ball on a tree just outside the garage. Ryan would be up at five in the morning hitting the ball,” says Ian.
In their paper, Genetic influence on athletic performance, Lisa M. Guth and Stephen M. Roth wrote, ‘A favourable genetic profile, when combined with an optimal training environment, is important for elite athletic performance.’ The hardware needs good software.
In 2005, when Erling Haaland - the son of a footballer and a heptathlete - turned five, his local club, Bryne FK, built a grass-covered indoor soccer pitch that was always open during the weekends. Before then, children had not been able to train during the cold winters; now, they could. The indoor pitch meant that Haaland had all-year-round access to coaching and facilities, which they could even use for informal play. A privilege that children born earlier did not have.
It was a special environment, as Haaland puts it. A number of Haaland’s agemates have also gone on to become professionals.
Ryan Rickelton grew up in environments where he was surrounded by sporting equipment and facilities. He took his first steps on a cricket outfield. As soon as he could walk, Ryan was always at Ian’s heels as he conducted his coaching duties. When Ian felt that Ryan might get in the way of his job, Leon took over.
Leon was Ian’s assistant coach and had an understanding with Ryan. He always found ways of engaging the toddler with rugby balls.
“He would have Ryan arranging the balls and setting up,” says Ian.
Ryan loved balls. He loved cricket balls, squash balls, soccer balls, and rugby balls. Throughout his school career, Ryan participated in all sports available at the schools he attended. All sports except swimming. Maybe because there were no balls involved in swimming.
“He wasn't particularly fond of swimming. He sort of would do it when he had to,” says Ian.
What he missed out on informal sports competition against Dean - the boys never had backyard duels. Ryan made up for that by making up games and competitions with school students of his age.
When Ryan had his first net session, an adult bat was taller than him. Ian rolled the ball to him, underarm. Ian was teaching and coaching at St. John’s College at the time. When he faced the bowling machine for the first time, he was in batting pads handed down from Dean. They were junior-sized pads.
Ryan was around six or seven years old when he faced a bowling machine for the first time. Ian had just taken up a post as St. Stithians’ director of sports. Ryan had fallen in love with the machine long before he faced it for the first time. Being on the other end of the machine as Ian shot balls at him was heaven as far as Ryan was concerned. Ian adjusted the machine to suit Ryan’s age and ability as a youngster.
“I never said no to him,” says Ian. “When I was free, if he asked me to go to the nets or to the bowling machine, we would go. He was driven, even as a youngster. Sometimes we would do three to 400 balls in a session. You know, even as a youngster, as a little guy, he just wanted to hit balls, so we just hit balls.”
A bag of 60 balls did not last long.
Ian taught Ryan the basics of batting. He did not want to rush the boy, so he stuck to the rudimentary aspects of foot movement, head and shoulder positions, and how to execute drives. When Ryan was around 12 or 13, Ian took Ryan to Trinity House to see Peter Stringer. When Peter Stringer took up a coaching post at St. Stithians later, Ryan would spend a lot of time with the Yorkshireman.
It was Stringer who developed Ryan Rickelton the batter that he grew up to be.
Peter Stringer is a Yorkshire man. A Yorkshireman from the same generation as Geoffrey Boycott. Stringer played with Boycott between 1967 and 1972. For Stringer and his generation, having a proper cricketing technique is important. You either do it right or you don’t do it at all.
Ian Rickelton knew Stringer from his schoolboy days. Peter Stringer had been his cricket coach. Stringer also coached Ian when he played for the Wanderers Club in the 1980s. He knew and trusted the former County cricketer’s methods.
“Peter Stringer challenged Ryan a lot,” says Ian. “He would challenge Ryan to face up to 300 balls without hitting a single aerial shot. He taught Ryan to value his wicket and pick his shots.”
Ian Rickelton and Peter Stringer often told Ryan about earning the right to score big runs. They felt that once a player reached 30 or 40, or 60, they had earned the right to reach a milestone.
“I always stressed to him the difference between getting yourself out versus bowlers getting you out,” says Ian Rickelton.
In the Rickelton household, Test cricket is the pinnacle of cricket. From an early age, Ryan wanted to play Test cricket - he even naively dreamt of wearing the Australian baggy green during his childhood years. The training that Ryan received from Peter Stringer was aimed at making him a Test cricketer.
Stringer asked and expected Ryan to treat net sessions like a match. There was no time to fiddle around.
“Peter just helped me to build the foundation,” says Ryan. “In cricket everyone has got all the shots and all the ideas, but have lost the fundamentals. In the longer formats, it’s those who can keep it simple for longer and do the basics better than the opposition who come out on top.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it.” The famous five words that Ryan Rickelton told his weightlifting coach, Ndjike Steve Franck Kafang. After two failed attempts, Kafang had been concerned that Ryan would fall short of his goal. The teenager, on the hand, felt confident. He was focused.
Ryan broke the record on the third attempt. He lifted 61kg to set a new Gauteng Under-14 weightlifting snatch record. The record would stand for the next few years. He had been weightlifting for about six years when he made history. The journey began on the day that he just, sort of, stumbled into the strength and conditioning centre at St. Stithians.
Ryan stumbled into the gym because he is a busy guy, even as a youngster.
“I hate doing nothing, really. I’ll tear my hair out if I had nothing to do,” says Ryan.
Steve Kafang and Rodney Anthony, the strength and conditioning coaches, did not have the heart to turn the youngster away. Before long, Ryan was as much a part of the centre as Kafang and Anthony.
He started with an unweighted broomstick. The broomstick helped him to learn the movement patterns involved in Olympic weightlifting. From there he graduated to an unweighted metal rod. Over time, Kafang and Anthony slowly added resistance, added weight and changed the bars.
“If you look at his flexibility in the field and wicketkeeping, a lot of it comes from so being able to perform the full body movements of Olympic weightlifting,” says Ian.
Ryan still does his weight training. He has a reputation for being one of the fittest players on teams that he is a part of.
“In my drills, I work on contact points and rotation of shoulders,” says Ryan. “I normally do snatches up to 100 kgs and clean and jerks up to 110 kgs.”
Ryan is very close to Julian Wood’s idea of the ideal cricketer. Wood is a power-hitting coach - he specialises in helping players hit boundaries. On several occasions, the ECB asked him to work with the England Lions, which included players like Sam Billings. He has also worked with a litany of power-hitters from the Caribbean, one of whom is Carlos Brathwaite. He is also a part of the Punjab Kings coaching staff in the IPL.
Julian Wood developed his ideas about batting and strength after a visit to the USA in 2008. He saw an incredible disparity in size between baseball and cricket batters. Cricket batters were smaller than their baseball counterparts. It came as no surprise to Wood why baseball batters had been hitting the ball further than cricket batters.
The stronger a batter is, the easier they are going to find it to clear the ropes. Brute strength allows them to hit boundaries off balls that others will struggle with.
But, Wood is not all about just building muscle, even though that underpins his philosophy. Being technically sound is a requirement. With a solid foundation of technique, batters don’t just hit the ball very far, they also become adaptable.
“Rickelton adapts to situations better than most batters,” says Prasanna Agoram.
“Batters who score more boundaries at the death are very good batters, they adapt better to situations because they are technically sound. Look at AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli, Jos Buttler and others,” says Wood. “White ball cricket has a greater emphasis on clearing the boundary because it is shorter than red ball. But that doesn’t mean a batter is going to hit a six off every ball. They will have to block and hit ones and twos. The bowlers are also good. Out of 20 balls, you might clear the ropes five or six times.”
Ryan Rickelton is technically sound. Peter Stringer and Ian Rickelton equipped him with the skills to open the batting in red ball cricket. That is the position that Ryan Rickelton has spent more time at, so far in his career, though he has been transforming himself into a number three and four batter.
He is taking the same path as Rassie van der Dussen. Van der Dussen also started out as an opener. That is not the only influence van der Dussen has had on Ryan. Ryan Rickelton has also sat at the feet of van der Dussen to learn about the game and mindset.
“If I was going to build a T20 player, Dre Russ. Andre Russell. He bowls quick, serious athlete in the field and whacks the ball far,” says Julian Wood.
Ryan is a serious athlete in the field and he whacks the ball a long way - that is the reason why the Deccan Gladiators, a UAE T10 team, signed him in 2021. But, he doesn’t bowl. Instead, Ryan is a wicketkeeper, which should be good enough for Wood.
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