SPOTLIGHT Theunis de Bruyn, spending his 'short time' on Earth, just right Tristan Holme Share Tweet

Not only is it a case of when, rather than if, he will play Test cricket, but there is a growing expectation that he will one day captain South Africa. ©Getty

It is now a little more than three years since Theunis de Bruyn made the decision that many informed commentators expect to change the course of the South African cricket team in years to come.

It was late in 2013, and de Bruyn found himself short of opportunities - a familiar position for young cricketers in South Africa. An Under-19 World Cup participant the year before, the batsman was unable to find a place even in the provincial setup. Word on the ground was that racial quotas would be introduced in domestic cricket, which would make opportunities for a white player like de Bruyn even rarer.

As a B.Com Accounting student at the University of Pretoria, de Bruyn had two options: pursue cricket, or become a Chartered Accountant. Only one of those options offered security, but it wasn't the one that de Bruyn chose.

"I was enjoying my degree, and I had to think about it," he says. "Because this is the difficult choice - to play cricket. I mean you get one opportunity and you make a mistake, you're out. You're competing in a big pool of players. But I thought to myself: 'You've got 15 years. You can be on TV, you can influence more people. If it happens that you get the opportunity, you should go big.'"

Since making the decision, de Bruyn has done just that. In 2014 he led his university to the Red Bull Campus Cricket World title in England. One month later, with the introduction of quotas confirmed and the door to domestic cricket looking shut and bolted, de Bruyn crowbarred it open. Playing against a Protea-laden Titans side in a couple of pre-season warm-ups, he performed so well that coach Rob Walter stuck him straight into his team for the season opener.

Having played just a handful of three-day games for his province, Northerns, de Bruyn had expected that he would need to work his way through those semi-professional ranks first. Instead his List A debut came at franchise level in a televised game, and immediately he issued notice of his abilities. Batting at No. 3, he arrived at the crease in just the second over and scored 108 from 90 balls. His fourth innings yielded 60, and in his fifth he scored an unbeaten 152 from 144 balls. The Titans went on to win the competition later in the season, with de Bruyn their top run-scorer.

Before that trophy landed, de Bruyn had already made his mark in the four-day game. After hitting an unbeaten double-century in South Africa A's first unofficial Test against England A , he followed it up with 161 at close to a run a ball in the second. Up in the dressing room, the Andy Flower-led England Lions think-tank were scratching their heads on how to get de Bruyn out, while out on the field there was general disbelief among an attack that included Mark Wood, Liam Plunkett and Boyd Rankin.

"I think it was just after Tea and I was on a hundred again in the second match, and Wood just said, 'Jeez, can you please just stop batting? We've had enough of you now. We don't want to bowl any more.' It was just one of those stages, like Virat Kohli in the IPL [last year]. You just get into those great times as a batter. It doesn't happen all the time."

That was something de Bruyn discovered in his second season. After becoming the third fastest South African batsman to score 1,000 first-class runs, his second campaign was hampered by a badly-timed injury, after which he struggled to recover his place in the Titans side. The silver lining was a loan to the Knights, who were so impressed by his presence that they asked him to return the following season as captain. De Bruyn accepted and this season, at the age of 24, he led an unfancied and unfashionable team to their first trophy in nine years, becoming the second youngest captain after Hashim Amla to win the title in the franchise era.

Which is why de Bruyn's decision to follow the cricket dream could yet change the course of the South African team in years to come. Not only is it a case of when, rather than if, he will play Test cricket, but there is a growing expectation that he will one day captain South Africa.

*****

"A lot of things need to change in our country - not just cricket. Our country is sitting in the balance; which way is it going to go? Is it going to go bad or is it going to go great? If it goes great then in 20 years' time we're going to dominate sport again - maybe not even that long because the talent is still here." ***

Numbers are one thing to look at whilst evaluating the potential of a young cricketer. Attitude and aptitude are others. Your average 24-year-old cricketer on the fringes of the national side can offer a couple of mumbled lines about 'basics', 'consistency' and 'good areas'. De Bruyn is not like that.

The first time we speak is in Harare midway through 2016, 45 minutes after South Africa A have been held to a draw by their Zimbabwean counterparts. It is a casual environment, but de Bruyn locks in with unblinking eyes and an hour of intense conversation flies by. Discussion of his career naturally flows into thoughts on South African cricket and the country at large. After all with South Africa's history, sport and politics are intertwined - most notably through the topic of transformation.

"We can have a very long discussion about this," de Bruyn notes at one point, "but a lot of things need to change in our country - not just cricket. Our country is sitting in the balance; which way is it going to go? Is it going to go bad or is it going to go great? If it goes great then in 20 years' time we're going to dominate sport again - maybe not even that long because the talent is still here. The people are frustrated with the country and they leave the country but as soon as things get better, everyone is going to come back. That I can promise you, because we have a great country."

De Bruyn is clearly someone who thinks about things. He says that, as is so often the case in Afrikaans culture, he discusses them at length with the older generation. That means he is well aware that just a generation ago, it was rare to find Afrikaaners in the top levels of cricket. "One of our family friends was the first guy to make the Northerns team as an Afrikaans boy - Joubert Strydom. He's 54 now. In those days it was just the English guys that played cricket. My dad was more of a rugby-playing man but he had a passion for cricket. None of them really played the game that well but they loved it. They'd be up at 2am to watch a Test series in Australia, and that's how I got into it as well. I played a lot of sports but this was my passion."

De Bruyn went to Menlopark, an Afrikaans high school in Pretoria. Although well known, it boasts just a fraction of the national talent produced by its rival, Afrikaans Boys High School, where AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Jacques Rudolph and a host of Springbok rugby players went. De Bruyn worked hard at his cricket in those years and molded a batting technique that leans towards positivity - his first-class strike rate is 66.5.

"I'm a fiery person in any case," he explains. "I may look lazy, but inside I'm fiery. So I fight fire with fire if I have to. But my technique is also getting into strong positions and being aggressive. You can be aggressive blocking or leaving as well, just by showing that you are present and up for the fight. Matthew Hayden, Kevin Pietersen... those kinds of guys come to mind when I think of the sort of presence I would like to have. When a bowler knows that if he gets it slightly wrong, it's runs."

In 2010, de Bruyn was named player of the tournament at the national under-17 week, and two years later he was part of the South African Under-19 team that reached the World Cup semi-finals. De Kock was also part of that team, but was way ahead, having quit school early to focus on his cricket. The wicketkeeper made his first-class debut at the age of just 17, and four months after the Under-19 World Cup he was making his Twenty20 debut for South Africa.

De Bruyn was not so fortunate. Although he had a good Under-19 tournament, a hip operation soon after put him out of action for nine months. When he returned, it took almost a year to get a game for Northerns. "There wouldn't have been that gap if it weren't for the fact that there aren't enough opportunities for young guys to get that chance at a young age in our country," he says. "Obviously when you're young you want things quickly so it was tough for me and I had to make choices. But things work out - I became a captain of a franchise at 23."

As frustrating as the time spent waiting may have been, the stories of Quinton de Kock and de Bruyn show that white talent in South Africa can still find a way through a domestic system that is set up to try and reverse the racial wrongs of the past. But they need to be exceptional talents who take every small opportunity that comes their way. De Bruyn's early centuries for the Titans one-day side earned him a place in their four-day team - even if it was filling in as opener, a position the Titans had struggled with the previous season. A couple of half-centuries there saw him picked for the South Africa A side, and before anyone knew it he had 1,000 first-class runs from just 20 innings.

"But I felt I wanted that responsibility, because maybe that would bring more out of me and it has." ©Getty

While one other player in the modern era, Jean Symes, was quicker than de Bruyn to the mark, 981 of his first 1,000 runs came in semi-professional cricket. De Kock was one innings slower than de Bruyn, but 904 of his runs came in the lower league. By contrast, just 266 of de Bruyn's first 1,000 runs came at the easier level. Of course, such records mean little if they are not sustained, and last season de Bruyn had a quieter time, scoring a less spectacular 602 runs at an average of 38.

"What happened is I had a great season, then I went to India with the A team, which was a tough tour for everyone. I didn't go there in a good state of mind for personal reasons, and I maybe thought it was going to come easily because I was still young and stupid and it had come easily the previous year. It wasn't easy at all, and I came back feeling like I didn't really love cricket any more. India is a tough place and we went to tough places there as well. I like my food and I didn't enjoy the food in India at all, so I lost 11 or 12 kgs in five weeks. It was tough scenes.

"I got back and played the first two games for the Titans and made 20s. I got a rough one in the first game, and played a loose shot in the second. Then I got an injury in that game, and other guys did well in the next three games. When I came back I wasn't in the T20 squad at all, even though I was vice-captain. That was very disruptive for me. I had to make a choice, because I thought I still deserved to be in the team. When I went to the Knights on loan I had to move to a place where I haven't been before for four or five weeks and leave everyone behind, and play against my own team. It was the first time I've been out of my comfort zone. It was hard but it was good as well.

"If I look back at my second season, the mental struggle was probably more with me than the opposition. I actually learnt a lot more in my second season than in my first, because the first season was just instinct. You just played with freedom as a youngster, and then suddenly you did so well that there is actually a lot of expectation to perform - not that I mind that, but you just learn a lot more, I feel, through rough stages than through good stages."

*****

De Bruyn's time at the Knights proved a turning point for both the player and the franchise. Former South Africa spinner Nicky Boje was interim coach at the time, and just starting out in his coaching career. Having seen something in de Bruyn, he asked if he would come and captain a franchise that had been in decline for the better part of a decade, when they effectively became a feeder team to more fashionable franchises. A Bloemfontein boy through and through, Boje wanted to change that. Along with de Bruyn, Marchant de Lange was signed to bolster the attack while David Miller also joined.

De Bruyn's appointment as captain had recently been confirmed when we spoke last year. "Nicky played cricket at the highest level and he knows the game, but he's still hungry and wants to prove himself as a coach, while I want to do so as a captain and player," he said. "That's good, I like starting fresh and having clear goals to achieve. There's a trust bond between us. If you're not open and honest in this environment in our country, it's difficult for players because players are already edgy. There are so many things outside of cricket that influence the change room now, if you're not honest with players and people don't know where they stand, they get very frustrated. Then you've got cliques starting to form, and you don't want that. It's a big challenge."

***

While de Bruyn's 751 runs at an average of 58 and de Lange's 34 wickets at 28 were telling contributions to the Knights' Sunfoil Series success this season, there was also noticeable a noticeable shift in attitude. Where there was previously an unmistakable air of the underdog about them, which told as they fell narrowly short of silverware on a couple of occasions, this time there was a refreshing confidence.

The competition went into the final round with all six teams theoretically still in it, making first-innings runs, when points are gathered in the first 100 overs, crucial. With de Bruyn's 72 at almost a run a ball setting the tone, the Knights scored 435 for nine in their first 100 overs. From there, they just needed to win to claim their first four-day title since 2007/08, when they were still known as the Eagles. They duly went on to crush the Lions by an innings inside three days, with Proteas new boy Duanne Olivier taking six wickets to boost his season tally to a remarkable 52.

When I spoke to de Bruyn a second time, on the eve of his departure for the New Zealand Test series, he played down his contribution somewhat. "Just remember that when I got here, they wanted to change," he said. But his attitude towards captaining also suggested a natural affinity for the role. "It was a risk to take the opportunity because I was throwing myself into deep end - to take on a team that hasn't had success for a long time and you're a young captain, and you've just finished a second season which wasn't as good as you wanted it to be," he reflected.

"But I felt I wanted that responsibility, because maybe that would bring more out of me and it has. Performance-wise, I want to make other people better as well, and make them believe in something. That's more rewarding than scoring a hundred or winning the game. It's creating that environment where guys grow and also be someone when they're done with cricket. Not just a cricket player who focuses on hundreds and five-fors and winning, because it doesn't always happen all the time."

In the long run, de Bruyn sees himself taking his desire to lead into the boardroom. "If you're in control of a big business you have a lot of families to look after so you have a lot of responsibility and there are new challenges all the time," he reasons.

But for the moment, his decision to choose cricket over business means that he will continue to look for greater responsibility on the field. "That's actually the main reason I play the game, to influence people. Whether it's the public or my players or teammates or opposition, to make an impact. We've got such a short time on earth, we've got to spend it right, I feel."

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