CSA AWARDS
Dane Paterson (centre) was instrumental in South Africa reaching the WTC final, which they went on to win © Getty
Thirty-six awards were handed out at CSA’s annual function in Johannesburg on Thursday night in the professional categories alone. In the morning session, 25 other winners were named in the “pathways” sections.
Of all the 61 who were garlanded – everyone from curators, scorers and umpires to coaches and players; girls and boys, women and men – one name rose from the glitz.
It wasn’t that of Keshav Maharaj, the men’s player of the year, nor Nonkululeko Mlaba, the female equivalent who won two other major trophies on the night. Not even of the names of the great and the good nor of the next big thing – players like Kagiso Rabada, Temba Bavuma, Marco Jansen, Dewald Brevis, Lhuan-dre Pretorius and Annerie Dercksen, who were also accoladed – could steal the spotlight from him.
Instead, the name that shone brighter than all the others belonged to someone who has earned only seven Test caps, a dozen in both white-ball formats at international level. In his 215 first-class innings he has reached 50 just once. But, even though he doesn’t generate noticeable pace, swing or movement, he has taken 625 first-class wickets at 24.13. And all those wickets isn’t why we’re talking him up. Who the hell is he?
Dane Paterson.
The Makhaya Ntini Power of Cricket Award didn’t exist before 2021. It was instituted to recognise people whose lives have taken a positive turn because of their involvement in the game. Ottneil Baartman, Mlaba, Mondli Khumalo and Masabata Klaas are the previous winners. All of them were worthy. Like Ntini himself, who rose from the humble beginnings of an Eastern Cape village to cricket’s highest heights.
Paterson joined this elite club on Thursday night, and he is at least as deserving as the other members. To labour him with that faded label – a servant of the game – is laziness. As is calling him a cult hero.
What Paterson really is is a damn fine bowler. Cricket has clearly improved his lot in life. But it can never be forgotten that he has improved South African cricket.
Paterson’s 5/71 against Sri Lanka at St George’s Park and 5/61 against Pakistan in Centurion, both in December, had much to do with South Africa reaching the WTC final against Australia at Lord’s in June.
So much so that there was disappointment all round that he wasn’t named in the XI for the final, which South Africa won by five wickets to claim their first senior ICC trophy since 1998.
Paterson turned 36 in April, and physically he isn’t in that league of feline fast bowlers filled by Rabada and Mitchell Starc.
It would be unkind to describe Paterson as the poor man’s paceman, yet understandable. He is built to a human scale and he comes at the world from the ground up. See him out and about, and he will cross the floor to say hello. There’s a comfortable pleasantness about him that rubs off easily. He is that rarest of cricketers: the humble fast bowler.
And there his name was up in lights at CSA’s glamorous awards evening, about as un-Paterson an event as you might be able to imagine. So there was something apt about the fact that the man himself wasn’t on hand to collect his prize. Instead, and utterly believably, he apparently had a family matter to attend to instead.
Just like he wasn’t there at Lord’s, he wasn’t there in a Johannesburg ballroom. But all present knew that without his bowling at St George’s Park and in Centurion – even though those matches came too late to form part of the judges’ deliberations – South Africa might never have made it to the WTC final. And that, if they hadn’t, there would have been much less to celebrate on Thursday.
Selected CSA professional award winners:
Men’s T20I player of the year:Anrich Nortje
Men’s ODI player of the year: Heinrich Klaasen
Men’s Test player of the year: Temba Bavuma
Men’s players’ player of the year:Kagiso Rabada
Men’s player of the year: Keshav Maharaj
Women’s T20I player of the year: Nonkululeko Mlaba
Women’s ODI player of the year: Annerie Dercksen
Women’s players’ player of the year: Nonkululeko Mlaba
Women’s player of the year: Nonkululeko Mlaba
Fans’ player of the year:Temba Bavuma
Makhaya Ntini power of cricket award:Dane Paterson
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