Slow-burning Klaasen prepared to play the long game

In an age of transformation targets and proposed changes to the domestic structure, and of Kolpak-deals and T20 leagues, it's comforting to have cricketers like Heinrich Klaasen. The newest addition to South Africa's Test squad has followed what can be called a traditional route to the top and has proved that, despite all the perceived hurdles, a cricketer who is good enough will get called up.

Klaasen, from Pretoria, has not just climbed every step on the ladder to success but he's spent a significant amount of time standing on each one. His cricket career started at school, where he decided to become a wicketkeeper-batsman and spent time honing both disciplines. He progressed to the Northerns under-19 side before embarking on further studies in Human Movement Studies at the University of Pretoria (Tuks), where he was part of the Academy.

Tuks' is home to one of the best high-performance programmes in the country and has produced several international players including AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, the Morkel brothers, Paul Harris and Marchant de Lange. During Klaasen's time there, current Leicestershire coach Pierre de Bruyn was in charge and he oversaw a crucial stage of Klaasen's development that resulted in him being picked for the Northerns provincial team.

For three summers, Klaasen was among their best performers. He averaged 42.58 in his first season, 52.10 in his second and 65.25 in his third, but could not crack the franchise team. Titans had an embarrassment of riches when it came to batting, keeping, and batting and keeping, with Heino Kuhn and Mangaliso Mosehle occupying the available spots. Someone else would have seen a blocked path and sought opportunity elsewhere; Klaasen was content to bide his time despite the obstacles.

"It was a really good three years for me in the semi-professional competition," Klaasen told ESPNcricinfo. "It allowed me to sort out my own game. The provincial set-up is very good for that kind of thing. When you play there, you don't always get a good wicket and that helps you. For example, there were a few games where we thought the wicket was flat and the opposition scored 400 but then then bowled us out for 70. It's a competition that puts you in different situations and you have to deal with them. I got an offer from the Cobras but I didn't feel I had to go. I was quite happy to wait for my chance at the Titans."

In the 2016-17 summer, with Mosehle having left for Lions and Kuhn concentrating only on batting, Klaasen's turn came. It coincided with the appointment of Mark Boucher as Titans' coach, which could not have worked out better for Klaasen. "He has made a really big impact on me, both for my keeping and for my mental game," Klaasen said.

The results have been immediate. Klaasen finished seventh on the first-class competition batting charts with 635 runs at 48.84, which included his first franchise hundred. Although he was more than 200 runs behind the leader, Colin Ackermann, Klaasen had reason to think he may be rewarded at the highest level.

"When Dane Vilas signed a Kolpak-deal, I did think about it [getting a call-up] but I was still very surprised that it happened so quickly," he said. Not least because another wicketkeeper-batsman, Rudi Second, was above Klaasen on the run-scorers' list and is more experienced.

But the selectors have seen something they like in Klaasen - it may be his higher strike-rate of 65.71 compared to Second's 50.01 - and they have decided to go with him first. In doing so, they have also continued to debunk the myth that a grave consequence of South Africa's push towards aggressive transformation will be to deny white players. In fact, there is now sufficient evidence to overturn that theory altogether. South Africa's two most recent Test call-ups, Theunis de Bruyn and Klaasen, are both white, as is their most recent Test cap, Duanne Olivier, and so too their latest ODI representative, Dwaine Pretorius.

Still, that does not guarantee Klaasen game-time, although it's his speciality and not his skin colour that is the cause of that. Klaasen will travel to New Zealand as back-up to Quinton de Kock and is unlikely to play unless there is an injury. That could well be the case for most of his career. De Kock has the hegemony on the job that Boucher had, which means for the foreseeable future, other gloveman will have to be understudies, so Klaasen has a plan to combat that. "That's the reason why I have tried to work so hard on my batting," he said.

Even there, there is a queue. De Bruyn is next in line and a certain AB de Villiers may yet return which could leave Klaasen waiting for a while longer still. That's why he is looking at this tour as purely a learning experience. It will take a place in a country he has never been to, in the company of some people he does not even know.

"There are some players I have never spoken to at all, like Hashim Amla, so I am really looking forward to learning from him," Klaasen said. "And also from some of the other guys. I just want to learn the culture and be able to take that back to my franchise. I know there's a lot I can work on."

As is the case for any young cricketer, this is how it starts.