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THE IPL BENCHWARMERS

Till the IPL do us part

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'I mean, that guy invented cricket! I couldn't believe it' -- du Preez on getting Sachin Tendulkar out on his IPL debut. ©AFP

Latest on The IPL Benchwarmers is Dillon du Preez, the medium pace bowling allrounder from South Africa who was with the Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2009 and 2010. He played two matches, and had to deal with Shane Warne's sledges in addition to advancing his own wedding.

You've sat in the dugout in three different cities watching your teammates play the first seven matches of the tournament. You're finally given a game. You bowl eight balls without anyone taking a run off you. By then you've claimed three wickets. Not just any wickets: Sachin Tendulkar, Ajinkya Rahane - with consecutive deliveries - and JP Duminy.

But you play only one more match in the competition. When it's all over you have bowled seven overs of a possible 64 - more than eight times fewer than the hardest working member of your team's attack - and faced 13 balls, or less than 4% of the number received by the busiest batter in your dressing room.

You have a right to feel hard done by, denied the chance you have earned to give of your best. You are Dillon du Preez.

"To be honest, I was happy I got the two games," Du Preez told Cricbuzz about playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2009 IPL. That he was on the books at all was, he said, a case of the franchise big wigs thinking "we've got some leftover cash, let's sign another allrounder".

The other side of that equation was more complicated. Du Preez explained: "I got the call from [RCB coach] Ray Jennings to say, 'Do you want to be part of the IPL?'. I said, 'Don't ask me ridiculous questions - I'm there.' He said, 'OK. You need to be in India on the 10th of April.' I said, 'Can I be there on the 11th? I'm getting married on the 10th ...'.

"[Jennings] words were, 'There are a lot of nice places in India where you can get married'. We actually moved the wedding to the 20th of March. Only to find out about a week after that that the IPL would start on the 18th of April and that it was being moved to South Africa! My wife's still pissed off with me."

That wasn't the only bit of unsmooth sailing for Du Preez. RCB lost four of their first seven games, prompting a rethink for their match at the Wanderers against Mumbai Indians, who had won four of six. "Jennings came to me the night before and said, 'Listen, you're playing tomorrow'," Du Preez said. "I actually couldn't sleep - I had been told I was a back-up player for guys like [Jacques] Kallis or [Dale] Steyn. I was getting into the changeroom the next day when I remembered that I had left my playing shirts at the hotel. I had to send the security guard back to my room to get my clothing. So it was a great start."

All was forgotten when, with his third ball, he drew Tendulkar into an untidy drive with a fullish delivery outside off. The healthy edge flew to Rahul Dravid at slip. "I remember running through to the guys and celebrating, and on my way back to my mark I thought, 'What just happened?'. I mean, that guy invented cricket! I couldn't believe it."

Du Preez' early success sparked a second slip, Robin Uthappa. Whose idea was that? "I was floating in the clouds. I've no idea. I want to take credit for it, but I really don't know." Whoever was responsible, it proved an inspired decision. Du Preez' next delivery was identical to his previous ball, Ajinkya played a stroke similar to Tendulkar's, and Uthappa took the catch.

Enter Duminy to face the hattrick attempt, which was pitched shorter. The left-hander shouldered arms and was struck high on the front leg. Nonetheless, RCB yowled like a choir of scolded cats. "It wasn't out," Du Preez said. "I went up for the lbw shout - on a hattrick ball you have to - but it was never out." Duminy became Du Preez' third victim in his next over, when he flailed at a short, wide effort and was taken behind by Mark Boucher.

In the same over Du Preez found a defending Dwayne Bravo's edge. But the ball dribbled to earth. He clanged Sanath Jayasuriya on the helmet. Conceding two singles was the closest he came to getting anything wrong.

So he was granted another over. Anil Kumble's misfield to Jayasuriya's extra cover drive off the first ball cost three runs. Two dots and a single to Bravo followed. The afterthought allrounder was looking good: 2.4-1-7-3. Then Jayasuriya produced an unlovely but emphatic horizontal swipe to smear a short ball over mid-on for four. Du Preez, his tail up and trusting the fastest pitch in the country to be on his side, retaliated with another semi-bouncer - which Jayasuriya dispatched many metres over the midwicket fence. "He smacked me so hard it almost hit the scoreboard."

Even so, Du Preez had done enough for Kumble to entrust him with the last over of the innings. But his planets had lost their alignment. Abhishek Nayar blitzed a four down the ground and edged another boundary to the fine leg. Four runs off the next three balls took the over's damage to a dozen runs. Bowl the last one and get the hell out of there ... Not only did Du Preez overstep but he also flubbed a simple throw for a runout, which resulted in overthrows: "Thanks for reminding me. I forgot about that." The free hit was worth just one - Nayar's top edge plopped in front of mid-on - but the 16 runs Du Preez conceded in that over were as many as he had given up in his first three combined.

"Even if I had to pay for my own flight I would have gone, just to be part of it." ©AFP

All ended happily for RCB with Jacques Kallis and Uthappa scoring unbeaten half-centuries to seal victory by nine wickets with a ball short of two overs remaining. "I was sitting in the bus on the way back to the hotel really chuffed," Du Preez said. "You're playing with some big guns - Kumble, Dravid, [Virat] Kohli was still casual - so when you get a game you feel like you have to perform to prove that you're part of this; that you fit in and are on par."

Du Preez kept his place for RCB's next match, against Rajasthan Royals in Centurion four days later. Before he could get his hands on the ball, he had to bat. He walked out in the 15th over with RCB having crashed to 72/6 and his coach's barked instruction uppermost: "Don't get out! Be there at over 18!" Sergeant-major Jennings, Du Preez said, "has a funny way of making you feel bad for not doing what he says".

But other words fogged the calm head Du Preez needed to succeed in his mission: "Shane Warne was standing at cover giving me a mouthful. I stood there looking at him and I wanted to have a full go in Afrikaans. I did say something - I'm not going to tell you what - but I was thinking, 'I'm not even facing. Why are you having a go at me?'. I wanted to climb in and smack him out of Centurion. He was in my face for a few overs, and I was at the non-striker's end thinking, 'This guy is a legend, but he's a clown'."

It seems a good thing, for Du Preez, that Warne had only one over left when he took guard. He faced just two balls from the Australian, squirting a single backward of square leg and surviving a threatening slider. There were four balls left in the innings after Du Preez shoved Amit Singh's slower ball down long-on's throat. Gone for 10 in a measly total of 105. But at least he had followed Jennings' orders.

The highlight of Du Preez' three overs, no two of them bowled consecutively, was a short delivery to Yusuf Pathan, who was beaten for pace and top edged to fine leg. It had little impact on a match Rajasthan won with three wickets down and 30 balls remaining.

That confirmed RCB's fifth loss in nine games. But they won four of their last five to finish third in the standings before sweeping past Chennai Super Kings by six wickets in their semi-final. Only to go down by six runs to Deccan Chargers in the final. Du Preez was returned to the spectators' ranks for all seven of those matches - despite the fact that the semi and the final were played at the Wanderers, where he had performed so well. But no bitterness lingered: "Just being part of it was amazing, sitting in the changeroom with people like Anil. I was 12 or 13 when I first saw him play. When guys like that talk, you listen."

Du Preez never bowled nor faced another ball in the IPL. But, as his contract was for two years, he was in India for the 2010 edition. "It was again nice being part of it, but after six weeks I had started moving my bed to the other side of the hotel room and putting the TV somewhere else just to get a different view of things. It was tough. My wife was pregnant, so she couldn't fly over."

That's not to say he left with dull memories only: "Before a game against Mumbai in Bangalore there was a massive bang. We were told to go into the changeroom, and that a generator had blown up. But on the TV next to the officials while they were telling us that it was reported as a bomb. Kevin Pietersen said, 'This is not my bread and butter, so that's it - I'm done, I'm not going onto the field'. I was 12th-man but I didn't walk around the field. I stayed in the changeroom. Dale Steyn played a loose shot and got out, and on his way back to the changeroom - while I was looking out at the field - he smacked his bat onto the steps next to me. I thought it was another bomb!"

In fact, two bombs had exploded an hour before the scheduled start of the April 17 match, injuring 15 people and reducing to rubble a section of the wall around M. Chinnaswamy Stadium. A third was discovered and defused by police. In other countries the match would have been called off. But not in India: the start of play was delayed by an hour. According to contemporary reports, Bangalore police commissioner Shankar Bidari said, "It is a minor bomb blast, but investigations are in full swing to find out who is responsible." Seven people connected to jihadist organisations were arrested.

You might consider the trip a mistake. But you're not Du Preez: "Even if I had to pay for my own flight I would have gone, just to be part of it." And for the money? "Some guys could buy a casino or a cruise ship with what they make from the IPL, but not me." How much did he earn? "Was it USD50,000? I can't remember."

That September, in the Champions League, which was in South Africa, Du Preez garnered enough attention - a 25-ball 46 against South Australia helped, as did cleanbowling MS Dhoni in the semi-final against CSK - to keep himself in the reckoning for the 2011 IPL. And so to the player auction ... "I sat in front of my laptop for two days. My name would come up and then go away again. I wanted to put my foot through that laptop [when he was confirmed as unsold]. I didn't, probably because I was stiff from bowling and I couldn't get my leg up high enough."

Self-deprecation comes more easily to Du Preez than to many other fast bowling allrounders. Maybe it was drummed into him early. His first-class debut was for Free State against West Indies in Bloemfontein in December 2003. The visitors batted for all but three overs of the first two days to total 618. But Du Preez' breezy positivity served him well even in the throes of all that. Four of the six bowlers went for more than a hundred runs each. Not Du Preez, who took 3/75 - among them Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who was bowled for 245 to end a desperate drudge of an innings that lasted almost eight hours into which 369 balls disappeared without trace. That done, Du Preez, batting at No. 10, clipped 56 off 66 balls. Then he dismissed Wavell Hinds and Ramnaresh Sarwan. "I always hated bowling in 'Bloem'," Du Preez said, a reference to the unfailingly somnambulant surfaces at his erstwhile home ground. "I don't think I took one five-for there." Not quite: he claimed one in first-class cricket and another in a limited overs game. But he spread 14 five-wicket hauls in first-class, list A and significant T20 games among other grounds - despite playing 86 matches of all sorts in Bloemfontein.

Now 38, and after a playing career that never reached international heights but took him to Leicestershire on a Kolpak contract in 2008 and, in 2012, back to Asia for the Uthura Rudras in the Sri Lanka Premier League, he is now coaching. The Free State women's team were among his first charges. "Sometimes it's tough because there tends to be more emotion after a bad game. But they're tougher than a lot of the guys - if they get cut during a game they go back onto the park and play." Perhaps the most important skill he learnt was to knock on the dressingroom door before he entered: "Yes, that's crucial."

Eleven years after her preponed wedding, his wife, Nicola, would expect no less.

Also read: The story of Tatenda Taibu's gig with KKR, and how Aryan Khan might have influenced his selection

© Cricbuzz

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