The Return of Roscoe
Rilee Rossouw has watched cricket and how T20 has evolved, he has evolved with it and tried to put his own spin on it.
“The only special thing that I do for my T20 is that I will train specifically for the role that the coach wants me to play. Whether it's batting up front, in the middle overs or at the death. But at net time I just bat normally,” says Rilee Rossouw.
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It is a moment that will always be special to Rilee Rossouw. Talking about it gives him goosebumps and brings tears to his eyes. It was that special.
“I will never never forget it,” says Rossouw.
South Africa was in trouble. The Proteas had lost three quick wickets. They were on 52 for three after 11 overs. The Australians were on top. JP Duminy joined Rossouw at the crease and the pair mounted a 178-run match-winning partnership.
Before October 2016, Rossouw had played better knocks and scored more runs for the Proteas, but that century (122) meant a lot to him because he was not sure if he would ever get another chance to represent his country. It was a bittersweet moment. A new chapter awaited.
Before the match, Rilee had said a prayer, “I said, 'Father, please seed blessing on my life today. This is the last time and we never know if it will happen again.’
“I remember after I got caught and I was walking off the field, I just told myself and I said, ‘Rilee, suck in this moment. Remember it forever.’”
Rossouw left on a high. He was Man of The Series in the final series that he played for the Proteas.
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Rilee Rossouw likes to play his shots. That is what he is known for, playing shots and scoring a boatload of runs. That is what got him noticed as a youngster. It got him noticed for the Proteas the first time. It also got him noticed for the Proteas after a six-year absence.
Playing shots comes easily to Rossouw because he was born into cricket. His father was a club cricketer and probably is the one person who knows his son’s batting better than anyone.
“He was the one who sacrificed his time and effort to throw balls to me after hours when no one was watching. He probably took my career to the next level,” Rossouw says of his father.
Rossouw senior introduced young Rilee to cricket by taking him along to matches on weekends. At the matches, Rossouw had no desire to watch his father play, he just wanted to play shots.
“At the matches, I used to run around with my bat and everyone pretty much got annoyed with me because I asked everyone to throw balls to me,” says Rossouw.
After Rossouw played his last match for the Proteas, he scored 4320 runs at an average of 34.01 and a strike rate of 149.42 on the T20 circuit. 61.94% of his runs came off boundaries (396 fours and 182 sixes). He played his shots, and he flourished.
The T20 circuit had its own struggles, but it did not have Brett Pelser.
Pelser never played higher than domestic cricket. He had spells with the Lions and North West Dragons. Pelser averaged 45.84 and 34.14 with the bat in First Class and List A cricket, respectively. He was a decent batter. He was also a part-time bowler.
Pelser always came on as a 6th or 7th bowler. He was a dibbler dobbler medium-slow pace bowler. Rossouw did not like facing him. When he bowled to Rossouw, Pelser dismissed him 85% of the time.
"Pelser always came in to bowl when I was in the 90s. He got me out six out the seven times that he bowled to me," says Rossouw.
A few years ago, Faf du Plessis shared that he used to have nightmares that had Saeed Ajmal in them. “Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and Ajmal would be bowling at me,” du Plessis told reporters.
“I remember very well that every single time I went out to bat Saeed Ajmal was warming up,” du Plessis continued.
Pelser was Rossouw's Ajmal.
Pelser is the reason why Rossouw does not have more List A centuries. Pelser took 36 List A wickets, 16% of those were Rossouw dismissals.
Marchant de Lange once bowled Rossouw a jaffa when they faced each other on the T20 circuit. Rossouw contends that it is the best delivery he has ever faced. Other than that, he can hold his own against de Lange's pace just as much as he can hold his own against offspinners on a turning pitch, though he has struggled against them in the past.
No bowler on the T20 circuit is Brett Pelser, though. So he lost no sleep over them. On the T20 circuit, Rossouw enacted Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe celebration poses. In a Vitality Blast match, after he reached a milestone, Rossouw went on one knee with his bat on his shoulder as one would hold a grenade launcher.
At one point, Rossouw plundered five sixes and a four in a single over from Derbyshire’s Mattie McKiernan as he led Somerset to the highest Vitality Blast total in history. He had launched grenades into the stands. That knock will stick on Rossouw’s mind for years to come. It’s one of his great innings. His greatest innings came when he was younger.
“I was at Grey College and I hit three sixes in a row with my favourite bat,” says Rossouw. “I still have it to this day, it's in my cupboard.”
The bat was an SS Zulu. It was his first bat. It was also his favourite bat. It still has the black and red stickers it came with.
In the Pakistan Premier League, Rossouw danced for his daughter after he reached a milestone.
"I asked her, 'How should I celebrate if I make a 50?' And she said, ‘Shake your booty.’ So I kept that promise," says Rossouw.
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Rossouw did these things because that's what he does. He has fun. He jokes around. He is also very happy fielding at long-off, long-on, cow corner, deep cover, long leg… basically, any position at the boundary.
“Put me there, let me chill. Let me have a chat with the crowd, let me keep them entertained. They are coming to watch us, let me keep them entertained,” says Rossouw.
Rossouw feels that sometimes he jokes around a little too much and that sometimes leads to his batting partner losing focus.
“I found that what best works for me is that I just go out and enjoy myself. Whether it be cracking a joke with my partner or just looking at how funny the guys look like in the ground, or what songs people are singing in the stands,” says Rossouw.
Rossouw is an entertainer. He is like a modern-day Denis Compton mixed with a bit of Keith Miller. Rossouw behaves as if he sat through black-and-white footage of cricket's post-WW2 cricket heroes and drafted his blueprint. Of course, he hasn't. He doesn't know about them. Rossouw is not a cricket history buff. He would rather spend time on online gaming, golfing or target shooting than trawling through the game’s history.
Compton played for Arsenal and scored the opening goal in his first game for them. Rossouw did not play professional football, but, like Compton, he had considerable talent in the sport.
“I was particularly good at football, soccer",” says Rossouw. “I played for the Celtics’ Under-19 when I was 16. I stopped a year later because I knew if I carried on playing soccer I would end up playing professionally. My love was for cricket.”
Compton was also a showman. So is Rossouw.
Like Miller, Rossouw is flamboyant and quite easygoing. Aggressive and worry-free. '...Miller and Compton were exactly sports at its best: not war minus the shooting, but glorious escapism from normal life.’ Jarrod Kimber wrote in Test Cricket, The Unauthorised Biography. Kimber could have been describing Rilee Rossouw.
When you Google Rilee Rossouw, one of the top images that pop up shows him in mid-air. Defying gravity. Floating. The West Indies players are transfixed. Jerome Taylor, the bowler, didn’t understand. The ball is flying into the stands. Not many batters have reached their half-centuries in style like that. Rossouw did.
The picture was taken in 2015. Rossouw smashed 61 from 39 that day.
In his natural element, Rossouw is relentless against bowlers. Sometimes he is so relentless he hits the ball in a way only a person having a net session can. There is that one season (2009-10) when he scored 1189 runs in a single season. He was having a lot of fun then. He was also having a lot of fun when he scored the fastest century in the Pakistan Super League in 2020. It is still unbeaten.
The IPL, PSL, BPL, and sometimes the Blast and BBL attract capacity crowds to matches. Rossouw was a hero for hire in all these leagues, including The Hundred. After Covid hit, for months each year, Rilee lived in bubbles and played before in empty stadiums. Fans tuned in to the matches on TV, laptops and phones in their thousands. He knew they were there.
With things now back to pre-Covid settings, fans descend on matches. The stands are a sea of bootleg shirts, hats and flags. They are shoulder-to-shoulder with those who can afford the real thing. Painted faces and placard-wielding fans with all manner of messages from the humorous to the hero-worshipping.
This is the cricket experience on the T20 circuit.
Back home, in South Africa, this scene is expected only when the Proteas are playing. When franchises/provinces play, one is often reminded of day one of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket match. 'There seemed more heads in the VIP area than in the stands,' Gideon Haigh wrote in The Cricket War.
There are no fans to chant his name when he plays for the Knights.
In South Africa, franchise matches attracted a sprinkling of fans. They still do. A few hundred watch the few matches that are streamed and televised. Despite the lack of atmosphere or occasion that fans bring to matches, Rossouw missed playing in South Africa. He missed playing at the Mangaung Oval.
“I have played in some really amazing stadiums, played before some really amazing crowds. But, for me, the most magical place is playing here at my home ground in Bloemfontein, where it all started. I would love to go back and back and back there every single time. It's where everything started for me. It's very special for me here,” says Rossouw.
So, when Allan Donald reached out to him after the cancellation of Kolpak contracts, Rossouw didn't hesitate. He just said 'I would love to come back and play for the team again.' Upon return, he was the batter of the 2021 CSA T20 Challenge. His effort was part of the reason why the Knights lifted the trophy.
Rossouw is on the Knights’ books for the upcoming season, as a white-ball player.
Coming back to the Knights has done something else for Rossouw, it has forced the national selectors to stop ignoring him. Allan Donald went out to bat for him when anyone asked about Rossouw.
'Rilee has all the shots in the book,' Donald has said. Johan de Jager believes Rossouw is one of the few with natural ability. He puts Rossouw in the same class as AB DeVilliers, Herschelle Gibbs and Morne Van Wyk. A ‘rare breed of batters,’ according to de Jager. Their faith is not misplaced. Rossouw has played shots all over the world.
Rossouw has also learned a lot in the various dressing rooms he has been in and those that he continues to be a part of. As he told journalists recently, he is 'now 100% better as a player than in 2016.'
Rossouw's return will feel like a debut all over again. Rossouw made his Proteas debut in 2014. According to him, that was the most trying season he has ever endured. The step up to international cricket was not as easy as he had imagined. A pair of ducks against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo and Harare was not the ideal start.
“The fastest I needed to learn was when I made my international debut,” says Rossouw.
The only learning he has to do now is how to be a part of this team. That will not be difficult for Rossouw, one of the reasons why he keeps getting gigs on the T20 circuit is that he adapts himself to his teams.
Only three players he played with in 2016 are still in the T20 side: Quinton De Kock, David Miller and Kagiso Rabada. He left Faf du Plessis' team, he has come back to Temba Bavuma's team, under the temporary care of David Miller. Maybe Miller or Bavuma when he recovers, will be adventurous enough to throw him the ball one day.
“If you look at my stats, I have very good stats in regards with my bowling, so I am still waiting for that skipper to trust me and really unfold my potential when it comes to bowling,” says Rossouw.
If they don't give him a bowl, Rossouw will not be upset. He is in the team to score runs, not concede them.