2oceansvibe’s bi-weekly sports columnist, Sean Wilson, considers why looking at Mark Boucher’s international career is an act of engaging in almost all of South Africa’s modern cricket history.

Describing Mark Boucher’s international career is an act of engaging in almost all of South Africa’s modern cricket history, as well as reliving moments that rightfully define him as a cricketing legend.

Think about Boucher, and you’re overcome with memories that make him live up to his billing as being a “great fighter” and a cricketer “you’d go to war with”. Everyone describes him with characteristics used for the ideal wicket-keeping middle-order batsman. If you type the words “Mark Boucher nuggety” into a Google search, you get over 30 million results (that’s an easy thing to research). That must be the record number of results one gets on Google if you combine someone’s name with “nuggety” (that’s a much harder thing to research).

It’s strange to think that there was a period at the beginning of his career when he hardly resembled these traits.

Yes, he announced himself on the international cricket stage with a world record 9th wicket test partnership with Pat Symcox early in 1998, but it was later that year when he toured England where his wicket-keeping looked like it was being tested beyond its ability. At this stage, there were still many doubts that this was a player who’d cut the grade as South Africa’s wicket-keeper, let alone one that would play 147 tests.

Sometimes it was hard to look at the floppy-haired youngster conceding a host of byes from all the prodigious swing, as well as dropping the odd key catch. He looked like a young man who just wanted the stadium to eat him up, especially when Allan Donald would share his disappointment by shouting and giving him that iconic glare.

For a young wicket-keeper, this was textbook thrown into the deep end stuff. Unlike what people have demanded should have happened to his successor, Boucher wasn’t groomed to be the South African wicket-keeper when he first appeared in the team in 1997. When Dave Richardson was nearing the end of his tenure, it seemed Nic Pothas was the one earmarked for the position. After all, Pothas had toured England with the South African A team in 1996 along with Steve Palframan (who was Border’s first choice wicket-keeper ahead of Boucher, right up until the great man’s debut).

By Boucher’s own admission, his selection was a surprise. The fact that he grew from these circumstances and the surrounding baptism of fire to be the epitome of the team’s fighting spirit for the next 14 years is one of the biggest testaments to his legendary character.

His record of 999 international dismissals as a wicket-keeper, and one as a bowler, looks completely unsurpassable now, as well as having a type of Sir Donald Bradman’s batting average type romance about  it.

Once a wicket-keeper has established himself in the team, so many of his dismissals are taken for granted. He’s the man with the gloves expected to gobble up anything near him. Even if a catch wasn’t completely straightforward, people always give more attention to the bowler or the batsman involved in the dismissal. This results in so much of the glove-man’s work going by unnoticed.

For instance, so many people remember Boucher’s 1st of his 999 dismissals as a wicket-keeper, but forget that he was involved in it. Most people remember it solely as Makhaya Ntini’s first wicket in international cricket when he got New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming to edge the ball to Boucher in a one-day international in 1998. Boucher’s milestone was a mere supporting act to the much anticipated bit of South African cricket history: a black man’s wicket.

It was understandable that the start of Boucher’s record-breaking would be overshadowed by the start of Ntini’s great career. After all, it was the start of a very testy period in South African cricket. Selectors weren’t sympathetic in using words like “quota player”, and fans around the country seemed to start every single cricket conversation with that awful phrase “I’m not a racist, but…”

Fortunately, everyone’s greatest memory of Boucher more than made up for it, and this time it was Ntini that returned the favour with the supporting act role. No-one in South Africa will ever forget exactly where they were when Boucher hit the winning boundary for the famous 438 ODI win against Australia in 2006. How Boucher went about composing that moment is the greatest testament to his title of being one of one-day cricket’s great finishers.

It’s important to note that when he came to the crease, wickets had started to tumble. It seems all the players as well as everyone at the Wanderers had gotten all punch drunk with a run rate hovering at around a ridiculous nine per over. After all, how do you reply to Aurstralia’s 434 in 50 overs other than everyone just going for it? There was no anchoring of the innings up until that point. No-one felt they had the time to play themselves in. It seemed everyone had to go bananas.

Amidst all this never-before-seen hysteria, Boucher figured out that it was still a cricket game, and if he could offer a contribution resembling a more “boring” 6,5-an-over, South Africa would be in a position to win. As fate had it, he was at the forefront of the iconic match-winning moment which was the most deserving reward for the ultimate team gesture.

Just being there as Ntini came to the wicket with two runs needed to win with one wicket in hand was an occasion for Boucher to make his wealth of experience count. It was a nice touch to tell the slog-happy number 11 “No run outs”, a pertinent homage to what he witnessed in dismay from the changing room at the World Cup semi-final at Edgbaston in 1999.

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