A match-winning South African spinner was considered as rare as footprints on the moon, until Dane Piedt came along. An offspinner who has in his arsenal the doosra, the carrom ball and top-spinner, he surged to the top of the wicket charts in his first full season of franchise cricket for the Cape Cobras in the 2013-14 summer.

Piedt's 45 wickets from eight matches included four five-wicket hauls, one of which contained a hat-trick in the team's victory over Dolphins. Piedt quickly earned a reputation as a fourth-innings assassin and embraced the responsibility that came with having to bowl teams out instead of only contain, but his economy-rate for the season was tidy as well, at just 2.50 runs to the over.

That form was enough to earn Piedt a maiden call-up to the national side for South Africa's tour of Sri Lanka in July 2014. He didn't make his international debut there, but got an opportunity soon after in a Test against Zimbabwe in August, and made it count. With his first ball, he trapped Mark Vermeulen in front, becoming only the second South African bowler to take a Test wicket with the first ball of his career. He went on to take four wickets in the innings, making it the best debut figures by a South African spinner since Aubrey Faulkner's 4 for 26 in 1906.

Piedt's success was also reward for work that had gone into his game from childhood. Piedt started taking cricket seriously, or as seriously as a 10-year-old could, when he was at Kenridge Primary School, where Stiaan van Zyl was one of his team-mates. He played in their first team and at Bellevue Cricket Club before attending high school at South African College High School, the alma mater of Peter Kirsten.

Part of the Western Province Under-17 and Under-19 teams, Piedt was also at the province's academy and played for the Cape Cobras Emerging team on a trip to the UK in 2010. He was part of the 2011 intake at the national academy and visited Bangladesh with them while also touring Australia with an emerging team that played against A teams from New Zealand and India.

He made his franchise debut in 2011 but yo-yoed between the second tier of domestic cricket and the top level until the 2013-14 season, when he earned a regular place. As a handy lower middle-order batsman, Piedt also scored two half-centuries that summer, one of which was a career-best 92, to showcase another facet of his game and catch the attention of the national selectors.

Firdose Moonda