Marco Jansen

Beanpole South Africa allrounder Marco Jansen generates steep bounce at sharp pace and can hit a long ball to go with it, giving his nation reason to hope they had a worthy successor to the Kallises and Pollocks of years gone by.

The first cricketer born in the 2000s to play for South Africa, Jansen began his cricket career as a batter, coached by his father, Koos, a former rugby player, who trained Marco and his twin brother Duan in their hometown, Potchefstroom.

Jansen toured India with South Africa's Under-19 side in 2019, and that season was the leading wicket-taker for North West in the three-day provincial competition. Then, fresh off a 23-wicket campaign for Warriors in the 2020-21 4-Day Franchise Series, he headed to the IPL for Mumbai Indians.

His Test debut came in the 2021-22 series against India, where he took seven wickets in his second Test, in a big South Africa win, and then another seven in his third, the series-sealing victory in Cape Town. About three years later he topped those early feats, taking 11 in a player-of-the-match performance against Sri Lanka in Durban where the visitors were despatched for 42, their lowest innings total ever.

In 2022, Jansen moved to Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL, where he formed a formidable pace attack with Pat Cummins and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Back home, playing for their namesake franchise, Sunrisers Eastern Cape, he won the SA20 in its first two years, topping the wicket-takers' table in the second of those seasons with 20 wickets. In 2025, having switched to Punjab Kings in the IPL after a bidding war for him at the auction, he took 16 wickets and the team finished runners-up.

His ODI debut too came against India, early in 2022. At the World Cup in that country a year on, he shone in South Africa's second-place finish on the league table, making an unbeaten 75 from No. 8 and taking two top-order wickets in the massive win against England, and three wickets apiece in the ones over Pakistan and New Zealand.

Jansen contributed four important wickets in South Africa's long-awaited first ICC title, the World Test Championship win in 2025.

Marco Jansen IPL factfile

- Marco Jansen's first stint in the IPL was in 2021, when Mumbai Indians (MI) bought him for his base price of INR 20 lakh at the auction.

- On his IPL debut as a 20-year-old against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in IPL 2021, Jansen took two wickets for 28 runs in his four overs, which included the wicket of Glenn Maxwell. He played only one more match that season.

- In 2022, he was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) for INR 4.2 crore, a big jump from his base price of INR 50 lakh. He picked up seven wickets in eight games that season as SRH finished in eighth place.

- The next season, he finished with ten wickets, with his best figures of 2 for 16 coming against Punjab Kings (PBKS) in SRH's opening match

- In IPL 2024, however, he played only three games. He did not have a good time of it, conceding over 40 runs in each of the matches.

- SRH released him ahead of the mega auction in 2024. Entering the auction at a base price of INR 1.25 crore, Jansen was part of a tussle between MI and Gujarat Titans (GT), before PBKS acquired him for INR 7 crore.