Johannesburg - What Anrich Nortje sees as simple, can prove to be complicated for the opponents trying to deal with it, as England discovered in two and a half days at Lord’s.
Nortje picked up six wickets in the Proteas’ innings and 12-run victory at the Home of Cricket, and also bowled the fastest over ever recorded (the 25th in the second innings) in England, part of what he described as “doing my job”.
“My job is to bring energy and heat to the game,” said the 28 year old from Gqeberha.
“(Bowling fast) is something I’ve wanted to do since I’ve been a kid and to be able to do it now … ” he let that part about the excitement it engenders hang in the air.
Nortje, like Proteas captain Dean Elgar, was still in shock about how quickly the first Test ended. “I didn’t wake up expecting this to happen.”
Nortje was mainly responsible on Friday for the accelerated conclusion, taking three wickets in nine balls to blow away any semblance of resistance from the English, with intense, high class pace bowling, followed by muscular celebrations.
“It’s a nice feeling,” he said about bowling 150km/h. “I don’t look into it too much when I’m on the field. When I’m not playing, I just try and focus on training. On the field I try to execute.”
And while he’s focused on getting wickets, the kid inside him does want to know if he’s actually bowling fast.
“I do (watch the speed gun), it's not a focus for me to see whether I’m going quicker or slower, but it is nice, to see when the rhythm is there,” he said. “Sometimes it feels it’s a lot slower and the gun says it’s faster, sometimes it feels faster and the speed gun shows it’s slower.”
Nortje was very much aware of how special South Africa’s current generation of bowlers were, and his role in it. “I’m really happy to be bowling with the red ball again.” Nortje had missed all of the Proteas’ Tests last summer with injury. “This is an unbelievable attack. Everyone covers a different aspect.”
With the pre-series chatter being about England’s aggressive and liberated approach, South Africa – having told everyone they’d like to see how it would fare against the Proteas bowling – will return to plotting a series win in Manchester next week.
“We are quite focused on our game and how we want to play Test cricket. We haven’t paid too much attention to what they want to do and how they go about things. The next game might go their way. We have to start from scratch; see what worked well for us and then look at areas where we can still improve. There were periods where we lost a bit of momentum.”