Marathon man Botha makes shock comeback for BBL|10

It was while walking a lap of Park 25 in Adelaide two months ago that the seed was planted for the most surprising comeback of this KFC BBL season.

As Tasmania and Queensland played their opening round match of the Marsh Sheffield Shield, Tigers assistant coaches Ben Rohrer and Johan Botha were strolling around the boundary line when Rohrer casually asked the South African born spinner if, almost two years since his retirement, he missed playing the game.

"I think he was just testing the waters a little bit," the 38-year-old Botha tells cricket.com.au having announced a shock comeback with the Hobart Hurricanes for the upcoming Big Bash season, which starts on Thursday.

"He asked me if I missed it and if I'd thought about playing again. And I had, especially in the past three or four months. You watch guys play in the IPL, you watch guys you used to play with and against and you miss competing against those guys.

"If I'd straight away said 'I don't miss it all and I'm not interested in playing', that would have buried it. It was just a general chat and things went from there."

A few days later, Botha spoke with Hurricanes head coach Adam Griffith, who was working at the IPL in the UAE while trying to piece together a Hurricanes squad that was short of spin-bowling options.

It was then that the trio of coaches launched a cloak-and-dagger mission to get Botha back on the path towards playing again.

Having not played so much as a club game since his sudden retirement partway through the 2018-19 Big Bash season, Botha upped his bowling workloads at Tasmanian training, ostensibly to give their batters someone to face but also to see if he still could compete at a professional level.

"I had to get in a groove somehow, so those last few weeks (of the Shield hub), I upped it a little bit," he says.

"I started bowling a bit more because it started to look like I might get an opportunity.

"In the previous two years, I would bowl in the nets, but it was basically just to give the other guys practice. I didn't really worry too much about how they were coming out or if I was very consistent. But for those three or four weeks, I upped the intensity to see if I could still compete with the good players.

"But I didn't bat at all because I didn't want the guys to ask questions. It was just between Rohrs and myself and we just kept it quiet."

Having shown enough to convince Griffith and Rohrer he's up to the task, Botha has been signed by the Hurricanes as a replacement player for Test skipper Tim Paine, while one of his Shield coaching students – right-hander Charlie Wakim – has signed on while Matthew Wade is away on national duty.

Batsman Caleb Jewell has also signed as a replacement player while Mitch Owen recovers from injury.

Botha's is a shock signing that was very nearly scuppered at the final hurdle. The sudden COVID19 cluster in Adelaide, Botha's adopted home city, late last month not only ruined his hopes of playing some club cricket before linking up with the Hurricanes, the sudden closure of state borders threatened to leave him stranded in the South Australian capital.

But having arrived in Hobart on Saturday, the former Proteas captain – who played 123 times for South Africa before becoming an Australian citizen in 2016 – could make his playing return as soon as Thursday's season opener against the Sydney Sixers.

The Hurricanes will rely on the veteran off-spinner, young leggie Wil Parker and allrounder D'Arcy Short as their slow-bowling options before Nepalese import Sandeep Lamichhane arrives after Christmas, with Botha looking to impress at training this week to secure a return against the Sixers, another of his former BBL clubs.

While he hasn't played a game at any level in almost two years, Botha has been far from idle in retirement. In addition to a handful of coaching roles in both the Pakistan Super League and Caribbean Premier League, he's a committed long-distance runner whose main goal for 2021 is to run a marathon in under three hours.

Three years ago, he set himself the ambitious target of completing a virtual run around Australia – a total of 14,080km – before his 40th birthday, a target he's on track to achieve nine months ahead of schedule.

Not even the pandemic has been able to stop his mind-blowing running feats; when a gruelling 100-mile race in the Flinders Ranges in May was cancelled, he instead completed 161 laps of a 1km course around the block near his home, which he achieved in just under 22 hours.

"The last time I was at the Hurricanes, I had a couple of niggles and I needed cortisone injections into my back to get through the tournament," he says.

"But this time I feel as good as ever. I've had a good year of training and running and even some time on the bike. My body feels really good, so now it's just getting it to that match intensity.

"Obviously Twenty20 cricket is fast paced and you've got to move well, but fitness wise, three hours is nothing. I go on three-hour training runs, so I've basically run for a whole T20 game.

"I know I can do that, it's just about the movement in the field and catching balls again when for the last two years it's been all catching with a baseball mitt."