Short & sharp: Anrich Nortje plans his Aussie assault

It is a baking hot Brisbane day. As the temperature hits 35 degrees and the player comfort level plummets, South Africa's fast bowlers are sweating their way through a lengthy net session on Ray Lindwall Oval.

Afterward, as Lungi Ngidi heads indoors for an ice bath, and Kagiso Rabada zeroes in on some technical work, Anrich Nortje turns up for this interview, smiling and joking and seemingly as fresh as he was prior to his toil.

Nortje has changed into his Test whites for a photoshoot and, together with his sunny disposition, he looks trim and fit and fast, like a South African Mark Wood. His neatly manicured moustache, however, is out of kilter with the burgeoning reputation he brings to these shores; it is much more Ned Flanders than Mitchell Johnson.

Yet when Nortje starts talking fast bowling – and specifically, how he expects to be unleashed in the upcoming Test series against Australia – it is difficult not to cast one's mind back to the summer of 2013-14, when a moustachioed terror named Mitch ran amok against England.

"Shorter spells," he tells cricket.com.au. "Try and be the aggressor in the team.

"It's a role that I've really enjoyed, and it just makes sense; I mean, you don't want to waste energy bowling 140(kph) when you can go 150(kph) at stages. "So try and keep it as quick as possible, and be as aggressive as possible."

Quick and aggressive. The two words have been synonymous with Nortje since well before his arrival on the world stage, a simplification of his talents that nonetheless sits comfortably with him. So too does the prospect of his maiden Test series in Australia, where those two traits – the twin pillars of his success to date – could again prove invaluable.

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Anrich Nortje is not, as he calls it, "a cricket badger". His strongest memory of South Africa's hat-trick of Test triumphs in Australia across the past 14 years is JP Duminy's hundred on debut in Perth in the summer of 2008-09, but that besides, his recollections are vague, and confined to generalisations around "pace and bounce".

He draws a blank on Johnson's Ashes, too, as well as the Australian's routing of South Africa that followed in the months after. What he did not miss, however, was Sandpapergate, and specifically, the way tensions between the two sides boiled over in that 2018 series, both on field and off.

Leading into this series opener at the Gabba, Usman Khawaja reflected on the regrettable way that battle had unfolded, while insisting the group had evolved.

"I know we're a very different Australian cricket team from what we were back then – the way we go about it, the way we play," Khawaja said. "A lot of the guys over there have matured a lot too, both as cricketers and humans.

"I expect this series to be played in a lot better spirit. I know it will be."

Nortje, meanwhile, is spirited. A teammate of David Warner, Steve Smith and Alex Carey in recent years with Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League, he is a competitive beast who is proudly known as a 'proper Dutchman', a moniker he defined in a 2020 interview with ESPN as "a sense of trying to go out there and fight, and come hard and be aggressive, with a lot of heart".

All of which means he is relishing the battle with Australia, in whatever form it might come across the next three weeks. In fact, Nortje again flashes a smile at the mere mention of the word 'confrontation'.

"It depends where I'm at in the day," he grins, "but most probably I'll get involved.

"What happens, happens. I'm a big fan of having some competition in the middle. Having a go. After a series, everyone's friends again, but during the series I like to come hard. I like it when it is hard, I think that's when the best cricket comes out.

"So I'm a big fan of that, and we should go all out – there's a lot on the line.".

Indeed there is. South Africa are aiming to become the first visiting country to win four consecutive Test series in Australia, while both sides also have an eye on the ICC World Test Championship standings ahead of the final in London next June.

But it all begins with the Gabba, a venue which, until this week, Nortje has never laid eyes on. It is a well-worn trope nowadays to suggest visiting quicks will invariably get carried away with the pace and bounce on offer, yet despite his lack of local knowledge, the 29-year-old, who hails from Uitenhage, north of Port Elizabeth, says such a scenario is unlikely for the South Africans.

"We're used to the bouncy conditions, playing at Centurion and Wanderers," he says. "All of our seamers, if I'm not mistaken … have played most of their cricket up north (in South Africa) where there's a lot more bounce.

"So to them, that's natural, they know the story, they know the drill. And for me, the same thing … getting carried away with bounce, it looks nice, but it's not really effective, and you want to be effective."

Nortje showed in Pakistan last year that he is much more than merely fire and brimstone. The paceman, who has degrees in commerce and financial planning, learned from his difficult Test introduction in India some 15 months prior, and set about his work with a focus on targeting the stumps in both Karachi and Rawalpindi, with the occasional 145kph bouncer to keep the batters on the back foot.

He took nine wickets across those two Tests to be the shining light of South Africa's pace attack while underlining an impressive versatility. And though he is yet to bowl Down Under in Test cricket, Nortje, a man who once told ESPN he wants to "be the player who stands up when it's 40 degrees and it's flat", knows adaptability – and patience – will be pivotal to his success.

"Sometimes I might need to try and just hit off stump, sometimes I can be aggressive and go for three or four short deliveries in an over," he says.

"It will just depend on the conditions, but I definitely think I've got the skill set to do either role … whatever the team needs at that stage, I'll just try and execute that.

"But I do think I've got the pace to try and execute a different plan as well – a more aggressive plan – when it's needed."

Against a Cricket Australia XI last week, his preparation began in earnest. Across four days at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, he bowled 15 overs across three spells. It was a light workload, and he went wicket-less, but CA XI batter Jake Doran, who made 78 in the first innings and faced plenty of Nortje, insisted the Proteas quick was hard work, comparing to similarly built Australian tearaways Lance Morris and Riley Meredith.

"He's a very skilful bowler," Doran says. "Definitely tries to rush you with his pace. He's got a really good short ball and he tries to hit the wicket quite hard.

"Him and (Gerald) Coetzee were having a real good crack. They bowled fast. Both of them were clocking up near the 150(kph) mark.

"I was thinking (Nortje) would only be on for a short spell to send down some quick balls, and I think that's what his role will be (in the Tests) – to come in, hurry a few batters up and try to create a wicket.

"He rushed me a bit and he bowled a heavy ball, trying to hit that length and use the wicket to his advantage … having that extra 10-15km is a big difference, especially in (a batter's) footwork – it can create the lapse in decision-making and force an error.

"He's going to play a key part in their team, and I can imagine he'll be having a real crack – he seems like the type of person that will be in the contest, and the type of player that could win them a game."

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In primary school, Nortje was always just that bit quicker than other bowlers his age. That remained the case as he worked his way through the Eastern Province system, though injuries inevitably struck and he was eventually confronted with the age-old fast-bowling problem: how to maintain high pace while also staying on the park.

Recognising the young quick's potential, his then coach Piet Botha put together a plan with his support staff to better hone Nortje's technique for both the demands and subtleties of fast bowling – all while upping his pace.

"I had the right people around me to guide me on how to go about things," he says. "They obviously saw what I could do, what I couldn't … it was 2017-18 when I started working on the technique and the action.

"We worked on the strength, and just tried to do the basics right, getting the front leg to brace. We worked on actions with the wrist, but once I got the brace and hip drive, things started falling into place, and then it was just a work in progress to get the rest – the timing and all of that – right."

In March 2019, after negotiating a couple more injuries, Nortje made his international debut. The following year he was picked up by the Capitals in the IPL, where head coach Ricky Ponting encouraged him to worry about little else than bowling fast. Weeks later, he clocked 156.2kph – the quickest delivery in the history of the competition.

Then last year, in his first match of the IPL, Nortje bowled what were then the eight fastest deliveries in the tournament in a single spell against Sunrisers Hyderabad.

His economy rate across eight matches in that campaign was 6.16 – the best of any bowler among the top 40 wicket-takers – and he was even more miserly in the recent ICC T20 World Cup in Australia, where he claimed 11 wickets in five matches while conceding just 5.37 runs per over.

Yet with Nortje, all roads lead back to speed, whether he's conscious of it or not.

"When I'm off the field, especially when I was a bit younger, I'd always try and strive to get that extra few yards, whether it's with training or (improving my) technique – that was always in the back of my mind," he says.  

"When I'm on the field, you try and execute what the plan is for the day. I try not to think about bowling too fast – I just try to let the ball go."

And so it will be at the Gabba.

Men's NRMA Insurance Test Series v South Africa

Dec 17-21: First Test, Gabba, 11.20am AEDT

Dec 26-30: Second Test, MCG, 10.30am AEDT

Jan 4-8: Third Test, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Lance Morris, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, David Warner

South Africa squad: Dean Elgar (c), Temba Bavuma, Gerald Coetzee, Theunis de Bruyn, Sarel Eree, Simon Harmer, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Heinrich Klaasen, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Rassie van der Dussen, Kyle Verreynne, Lizaad Williams, Khaya Zondo

Buy #AUSvSA Test tickets here