Heinrich Klaasen battled severe exhaustion amidst the Mumbai heat to produce an all-time World Cup classic for South Africa against England today, writes Naman Agarwal from the Wankhede Stadium.

Players often talk about switching on and off between deliveries to optimize their concentration levels for longer durations of time. What that generally involves is walking over to the adjoining pitches on the square, thinking about something other than the game, or just closing your eyes off, among other things. Klaasen did all of those today, but out of compulsion rather than choice.

Mumbai is known for being hot. Throughout the year. The beginning of November, which is a week and a half from now, is generally the time when winter starts setting in in most parts of India. Not in Mumbai. There’s nothing known as a winter here. The mean annual temperature of the city is 27.7 degrees Celsius.

Everyone present at the Wankhede Stadium today including players, officials, and spectators witnessed what the Mumbai heat meant first hand. Klaasen, meanwhile, was at the dead centre of it.

At one point in his knock today, Klaasen had to walk over to the adjoining pitches after every ball to sit on his haunches and get some air. He had to close his eyes after every ball as his mind must have went to the physical pain his body was very visibly under. After every shot where he didn’t have to set off for a run, Klaasen grimaced, fell on his knees, tried to get up, failed, and fell on his back instead. The Mumbai heat was fast at work. It battered him, yet somehow, wasn’t able to break him.

Between the sessions with the physio on the pitch and the desperate attempts to push through the pain, what Klaasen produced at the hallowed turf of the Wankhede, witnessing its first men’s ODI World Cup game since MS Dhoni famously finished off in style 12 years back, was special.

Coming in to bat at No.5 with the score reading 165-3 from 25.2 overs, the stage was set for Klaasen on a flat surface to mark his presence at the World Cup. Coming into the tournament, he had rocked the cricket community with his white-ball exploits around the world. An average of 58.6 with a strike rate of 151.4 from 10 ODI innings in 2023 spelled doom for opposition teams. However, the start to his World Cup hadn’t been the best.

Cameos of 32 (20), 29 (27), and 29 (28) showed promise, but those were very Klaasen-of-pre-2023 numbers. The Klaasen of 2023 had a lot more to give. And he gave today. Scoring 109 off just 67 balls, numbers that sound very befitting to Klaasen, he took South Africa from what could have been a score in the 320-s to one short of 400. And while the knock included the typical Klaasen mayhem towards the end, it had method behind it as well.

He took his time and didn’t try anything fancy up until the very end. His first 20 balls fetched 28, only six of those produced no runs as he expertly placed balls into gaps and ran hard, which perhaps contributed to his exhaustion and in a way, to the spectacle he put on at the death.

He reached his fifty off 40 balls in the 42nd over. His first six came in the next when a back-of-a-length googly from Adil Rashid was pulled over the mid-wicket fence. By that time, he was completely withered. Yet, the next 22 balls produced 45 runs, all while he could barely run and needed medical support after every few balls.

The 2023 World Cup has been criticised for a lot of empty stands so far. Today was not one of those days. The Mumbai crowd had braved the heat and had already started filling up when the match started. By the time Klaasen along with Marco Jansen were hitting fours and sixes for fun at the death, the stadium was close to full.

Every time that Klaasen got up and got ready to face the next ball, he had the crowd’s support. Every shot that zinged off his bat was being cheered for. The Mexican Wave was out and Klaasen and South Africa were feeding off the energy of the crowd, which is noteworthy given that this was a neutral game without the involvement of the home team.

The first ball he faced in the nineties was a dot. The second, a searing Mark Wood yorker that had him on the floor, not for the first time in the game. Anticipation and restlessness grew in the stands. You could sense it. For all the nuanced discussion around the importance of personal milestones among cricket’s elites, the fans didn’t want to go back without a hundred. This innings didn’t deserve to get over before a hundred. And it didn’t.

A six and a four later, Klaasen took off his helmet and let out a roar, in the face of Wood, for which he immediately apologized. The century was here. Off 61 balls no less. South Africa had added 143 in the last ten overs, 84 in the last five. England had been set a target of 400. They could manage less than half of that as they were bowled out for 170, leaving their World Cup hopes in tatters.

When asked about how he pushed through the exhaustion after the match, Klaasen said, “I had to dig really, really deep there. I didn’t have any energy left… It’s a privilege to play for our country and especially in a moment like this, after a bad loss against the Netherlands, you got to dig deep for your country as well.”

The Mumbai heat forced Klaasen to dig to depths he might never have before to find the strength the continue. But when the result of that is an iconic World Cup century that takes your team to a record victory, set you well on the way for semi-final qualification, and gets a neutral crowd standing on its feet, it is worth it.

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