Lance Klusener played his last international in 2004, ending 1906 runs and 80 wickets in 49 Tests, and 3576 runs in 171 ODIs. He went on to play domestic cricket till 2010, turning out for the Mountaineers in Harare.
The South African all-rounder Lance Klusener electrified the 1999 World Cup with the power of his hitting. It made him an automatic selection as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year. Simon Wilde writes on his genius.
It was Gary Player who once said, in response to claims that he enjoyed remarkable fortune extricating himself from bunkers: “You know, the funny thing is, the more I practice, the luckier I get.” These words might have been echoed by another South African, Lance Klusener, at the 1999 World Cup. He stalked out to bat, carrying a three-pound weapon, with all the menace of the soldier he once was, crew-cut under his helmet, muscular frame hidden beneath baggy shirt. Klusener already had a reputation as an exceptionally effective tail-end slogger – but prepared by smiting up to 100 balls every day from a bowling machine.
“Of course cricket is about luck,” he says. “Balls go in the air and fall in gaps, but hitting does not just happen. You have to learn to improvise and swipe – and be at peace with what you do.”
In one-day cricket, though, his fearlessness in tight corners was already considered essential. His six off the last ball, an attempted yorker by Dion Nash, to settle a match in Napier in March 1999 gave warning of the pyrotechnics to come. Klusener believes the turning point for him as a batsman was the ankle injury that cut short his tour of England in 1998. After surgery, he was told not to bowl for several months and focused on fine-tuning his batting.
For all the World Cup games he won, Klusener will probably be best remembered for his part in the game that saw his side eliminated – his two blunderbuss boundaries off the first two balls of Damien Fleming’s last over and Donald missing his call in the melee moments later, when one run would have put them in the final.
“In hindsight, there were ten other ways we could have done it, but when you are out there it’s not easy,” he says. “You forget that you haven’t quite finished the job. We thought we had won it. Maybe we should have communicated more.” Maybe, chance was simply reasserting its hold over one of the most calculating hitters the game has seen.
