One not out, twice

Lance Klusener’s line at Kingsmead reads: not out 1, from 8 balls, 16 minutes.

It is the least consequential entry on the scorecard and it belongs to the man standing closest to the most consequential thing on it.

Two and a half overs

Shaun Pollock was run out at 212 in the forty-third over.

Klusener walked in with eighteen needed from fifteen balls. Muralidaran and Jayasuriya bowling. The light going. A World Cup his country was hosting.

He faced eight deliveries and scored one run.

At the other end Mark Boucher hit a six, looked at the dressing room, and defended the last ball of the forty-fifth over believing South Africa were ahead. They were level. The rain came and the match was tied and South Africa were out of the tournament.

Full scorecard: South Africa v Sri Lanka, Kingsmead, Durban, 3 March 2003 →

The ledger of a man at the wrong end

Eight balls. One run. No dismissal. No decision to make.

The par score was on a printed sheet that had been sent to the middle. Whether Klusener saw it, whether he was shown it, whether he agreed with Boucher’s reading of it, is not recorded by anybody.

What is recorded is that he was fifteen paces away when a World Cup ended and had no part in it that any column can hold.

A tie split the points. Sri Lanka took two, South Africa took two, and two was not enough to go through.

Why that is a strange thing for him specifically

Four years earlier Klusener was the best one-day cricketer in the world. He was player of the 1999 World Cup. He went into the semi-final at Edgbaston with South Africa needing nine from the last over and hit the first two balls for four.

Then the run-out happened, with the scores level, and South Africa went out on a technicality about who had progressed further in a group stage.

He was at the crease for that one too.

The pattern the record cannot express

Twice in four years South Africa went out of a World Cup with the scores exactly level. Both times, Klusener was one of the two men at the wicket.

In 1999 he was the reason they got that close, and the run-out is filed under his name as much as anybody’s. In 2003 he had nothing to do with any of it and the scorecard gives him one run from eight balls.

There is no statistic for having been present. A batsman is measured by what he did, and what Klusener did at Kingsmead was stand still and watch somebody else misread a number.

What the innings needed

South Africa had made a proper job of the chase before it reached him. Herschelle Gibbs made 73 from 88 balls, Graeme Smith 35 from 34, and Boucher himself 45 from 50 having come in at 149 for four.

Sri Lanka had put 268 on the board. Marvan Atapattu batted 129 balls for 124 and Aravinda de Silva made 73 from 78.

None of that is what anybody remembers either.

What happened afterwards

He played eight more one-day internationals. He was thirty-one and had been the most feared finisher in the sport four years earlier, and by the end of the following year he was finished.

Nothing in the record connects those things. He was not dropped because of Durban and there is no account by any selector linking the two.

The card says not out 1. That is true, and it is the entire official version of what Klusener contributed to the night South African cricket has never stopped discussing.

••••••

No. 3 in The Other Guy, a series of 24.

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