Family Time

On the face of it there doesn’t seem much that Gary Kirsten and Quinton de Kock could claim to share in common, apart from cricket. Both left-handed batters who have kept wicket for South Africa but few shared interests off the field. Don’t say you’ve forgotten Kirsten’s ODI stumping?

You wouldn’t if you’d seen it. Unsure of which hand to ‘lead’ with in his new role for the highly controversial one-off ODI against India in Mumbai in 1996, and having sat in the team meeting beforehand in which Hansie Cronje relayed the message that the team had been offered $350k to throw the match, Kirsten chose neither hand to dismiss Sachin Tendulkar for 114 instead skillfully using his chest to deflect the delivery from Nicky Boje onto the stumps. It was his last appearance behind the stumps.

But I digress. What Kirsten and de Kock share most prominently is a desire to spend as much time as possible with their families, even before he has one in de Kock’s case. During Kirsten’s time as a player and international coach after he married Deborah and they started their family, he obeyed a strict family rule that they would never spend more than 30 days apart. Even to the extent of flying home from Australia to Cape Town for just five days between the second and third Tests in Adelaide and Perth during the 2012 tour when he was head coach.

The family rule is less strict these days now that his three children are almost grown up, but it did play a part in him being ruled out of contention for the England head coach position just three years ago. Now he has put his name forward again – albeit only when asked if he would be available – if and when Chris Silverwood is asked to step aside following the Ashes debacle.

Kirsten also said that he would only be prepared to take charge of England’s Test team, not just because of family time but because, in his opinion, the biggest cricket-playing countries around the world need to realise that one coach for three formats has become technically and emotionally impossible, if not logistically.

The point is, there are ways to manage a playing schedule, even for multi-format cricketers, which allow them sufficient time to be with their families. The days of the ‘hard line’ taken by CSA’s then CEO, Haroon Lorgat, over AB de Villiers’s desire to miss a tour to Sri Lanka to be with his family after a punishing decade of international cricket, are over.

De Kock is so important to South African cricket that he would have found sympathy from the CSA executive for a request to have a reduced schedule. It had already happened with permission to complete the inaugural ‘Hundred’ tournament in England and skip the ODI World Cup Super League qualifiers against Sri Lanka, which South Africa lost.

It might require a quantity surveyor with knowledge of actuarial science and cricket schedules to reach a definitive answer on how much more time de Kock will have at home following his decision to retire from Test cricket, but I’d suggest the answer might be ‘not much’.

He will be required to play more domestic cricket than ever before since his international career started almost eight years ago at the age of just 21 and, given how many more limited overs games South Africa play compared to Test matches, he probably won’t escape more than a half a dozen weeks on tour for the Proteas each year – assuming he’s available for every tour. He is probably aware of that given his comment that “there were a lot of things to consider.”

When a miner can no longer do six 12-hour shifts per week underground, either his workload changes or his career as a miner comes to an end. Chefs and bar-tenders accustomed to working 16-hour days reach a point where they can’t do it anymore. Or don’t want to. Often they carry on because they have no choice, but they cannot control the quality of their service, which declines.

De Kock is extremely fortunate that, having just turned 29, his financial future – with good management and another few years of IPL and international white-ball cricket – should be extremely secure.

Quinton de Kock lost his infatuation with cricket many years ago. He fell out of love with it more recently. For the last couple he may been battling not to lose his respect for it. It is a journey billions of people have made with their careers, but in professional sport you dare not speak of it. Especially in the sporting world of ‘take a dose of cement and toughen up’ South Africa.

The only certain confirmation about de Kock’s shock announcement is that Test cricket is bloody hard. Its physical challenges are superceded by it’s mental and emotional ones. It doesn’t require de Kock to say: “I’m just not up for the stress and grind anymore. There is an easier way to make a living and I’m choosing that path.” We really should see his passion for the outdoor life, fishing, hiking, camping, as a positive rather than a weakness. Those who love watching Test cricket dip in and out. Those who play it have their lives consumed by it. It shouldn’t make any difference if you are 29 or 39 when you decide you’ve had enough.

Happy New Year to everyone!