In praise of the forcefully understated Wiaan Mulder
Without Rabada, South Africa were expected to struggle. But without Mulder, they wouldn't have earned as big a share of the first-day spoils as they did
Wiaan Mulder and Shukri Conrad spent long minutes sitting snugly side by side on a cooler box near the dugout at Kingsmead on Thursday. They stared into the outfield something like philosophically, talking quietly to each other and looking like a couple of longstanding fishing buddies waiting for a bite.
The bites came on the first morning of South Africa’s Test series against Australia on Friday. First Mulder strangled Travis Head into a catch behind down the leg side. Then he trapped Marnus Labuschagne in front.
Both decisions were referred. Richard Kettleborough didn’t believe Head was out. The spike on the gizmo said otherwise. Labuschagne didn’t believe he was out. This time the gizmo said Kettleborough had got it right, albeit marginally on the issue of impact.
It isn’t difficult to empathise with batters and umpires who doubt Mulder. He is, after all, the most unemphatic member of a side that bristles with specimens of the opposite. Friday offered a case in point.
Mulder shared the new ball with all two-metres-and-then-some of Marco Jansen and was succeeded by the magnificently moustachioed Anrich Nortjé. If you are any kind of cricket person, and even if you don’t know who Jansen and Nortjé are, you would instantly recognise them as fast bowlers — tall, athletic, razor eyes, a certain barely tamed latent violence.
Less so Mulder. Maybe he has the eyes, but the rest of the package isn’t as taut. He is built to a more human scale. His moustache and beard are fuzzy rather than ferocious, and he walks with an almost apologetic roll of the shoulders.
But Conrad has retained faith in him. Mulder made his debut against Sri Lanka at St George’s Park in February 2019. He featured in 11 of South Africa’s 27 Tests — just more than 40% — before Conrad took over in February 2023. Mulder has since played in 14 of a possible 22 Tests: a shade under two-thirds.
Conrad isn’t alone. Talking about Mulder’s batting ability at a press conference on Thursday, Bavuma said: “Wiaan gives you a little bit more with the bat. I think in that position, No. 6 or 7, you need someone who can score big runs.”
Fair enough: Bavuma was talking about a player who has scored three Test centuries. That two of them, including an undefeated 367, were scored against Zimbabwe takes some of the shine off that achievement. But there’s no doubt Mulder can bat at this level.
Then Bavuma said: “And with the new ball …” The rest of his words were lost in the incredulity. Mulder? The new ball? Yes. He’s done the job in 10 Test innings now, going wicketless in six of them but conceding fewer than three runs an over as many times.
The cynical opinion on Friday was that if Mulder’s medium pace was going to make any impact he would have to be granted, however grudgingly, the new ball. That theory was intact when he dismissed Head in the eighth over but not when he removed Labuschagne on the stroke of lunch, when the ball was 26 overs old.
In an age of overtly forceful cricketers Mulder is forcefully understated. When last have you read or heard of performances characterised as bluecollar or, in the men’s game, workmanlike? You don’t because we don’t often see players who could be described in those terms on the cricket’s bigger stages anymore. That has as much to do with the T20 revolution as it does with draws having become about as fashionable as long, bushy sideburns.
But here Mulder is, making an understated impact in his not quite long, not quite bushy sideburns. And leaving an impression on opponents and teammates alike.
“When Mulder came on and it was swinging and nipping around, I was trying to hold myself back,” Matt Renshaw, who faced 115 balls for his 46 not out, the sturdiest Australia effort, told a press conference.
It isn’t easy to stick out when Jansen’s bowling arm is swooping out of the sky. And when Nortjé is the wind in whites who dismissed Alex Carey and Beau Webster in the space of three snotspeed deliveries, especially after he has spent the past three years and seven months — or 1,317 days — not bowling a red ball in anger at all.
So Mulder will be pleased to hear Nortjé is a fan. “He brings a lot of control,” Nortjé told a press conference. “He’s consistent and he bowls with good pace. He brings something to the game.
“He hits the pitch hard … I’m trying to think of the right word, but let’s say he hits the pitch hard. So it’s never easy to line him up and it’s never easy to sort of score off him.
“That’s what you want, especially from a guy like him. He’s got to bore batters. He’s got to hit the areas. There’s a lot of pressure on him to be as consistent as he is, but he’s done really well. It’s good to see the energy he puts on the ball. It’s something he’s worked on and it looks really good from the outside.”
Without Renshaw’s resolve Australia might have been bowled out. Instead they reached 187/6 before bad light ended play with more than an hour-and-a-half of the day’s play remaining.
Without Kagiso Rabada, who was ruled out with a hamstring injury, South Africa were expected to struggle. But they had Jansen, who recovered from an indifferent first spell that nonetheless yielded the wicket of Nic Maddinson, bowled off the edge, to claim the prized wicket of Steven Smith with a catch in the gully.
And they had Mulder, who took that catch and did so much more. Without him South Africa would not have earned as big a share of the first-day spoils as they did. Maybe Nortjé can’t think of the right word to encapsulate Mulder’s contribution because what he brings isn’t obvious. And that makes him especially dangerous.
