Leus du Plooy: 'I'm excited to build memories at Lord's that are dear to me'

It's fair to say that the circumstances of Leus du Plooy's arrival at Middlesex aren't quite as he had envisaged when he made the decision, in July last year, to call time on his prolific five-year stint with Derbyshire.

On the face of it, the upgrade was obvious. At the age of 29, du Plooy was swapping the provincial charms of Derby for the Big Smoke of London, where he could fine-tune his career ambition amid the allure of Lord's and the prospect (so he thought) of regular trophy-hunting at a newly promoted first-division outfit.

Instead, he's found his new club to be in the grip of an identity crisis. As if Middlesex's immediate return to the second tier wasn't galling enough, this was coupled with the ECB's decision, in September, to place them under special measures for financial mismanagement - a double-whammy that tore back the veil on their gilded St John's Wood cage, and arguably left them looking more vulnerable even than the oft-maligned club du Plooy had left behind.

"I'd signed quite early in that transfer window, and I think we were mid-table at that point, so I was expecting us with the quality batting line-up that we had to stay up," du Plooy said on the eve of the new county season. "So that hurt me. It took me a time to get over too. But it's gone. I can see it from training; the boys haven't lingered on that or are still upset by it. It's how we get the best of ourselves this season."

Nevertheless, the reality of Middlesex's situation perhaps reinforces the sense that du Plooy could be one of the signings of the season - a man with a proven ability to shore up a malfunctioning batting line-up, as shown by a stellar haul of 1236 runs at 82.40 in that final, winless, Derbyshire season.

In the space of a fortnight last June, right around the time he was weighing up his options, du Plooy twice improved on his previous highest score for Derbyshire - 170 against Yorkshire, from the depths of 17 for 4, then 238 not out against Worcestershire, this time from a similarly bleak 38 for 3. Given his new club opened that same season with four consecutive ducks in a scoreline of 4 for 4 against Essex at Lord's, here's proof that he won't be fazed if the standards around him aren't everything he'd hoped they might be.

As the extent of Middlesex's plight became clear last summer, there was even a proposal from Alan Coleman and Richard Johnson, his new team management, to bring du Plooy in early on loan. However, his sense of loyalty, particularly to Derbyshire's head coach Mickey Arthur, held sway.

"It would have been great in a sense, that I'd have been able to meet the lads before now," he said. "Whether I'd have helped them to stay up, I don't know. But I completely understand Mickey's point of view there; he made me captain for a reason and until the very last over on that field I was committed to Derbyshire.

"It's always a club that I'll look back at and love them dearly. They gave me a great opportunity to play county cricket in 2019, and I had an awesome time there, but I just felt that I did all I could in that space of time from a personal level. I was always going to move, but you want to leave without burning any bridges. I certainly feel proud of my time there."

Still, at least some of those Middlesex drawcards remain as alluring as du Plooy remembered them from his very first visit as a 13-year-old in 2008.

"I just see it as a privilege," he said. "I'm sitting here at Lord's, chatting about playing cricket for a living. The first time I sat here was right over there [Mound Stand], watching South Africa play England. That was my first-ever experience of a cricket ground in England.

"The city of London was a major attraction away from cricket," he added. "Me and my missus don't have any kids, so it's a great time in our lives to explore the city. I'm a city boy from Pretoria in South Africa, so we enjoy the things that a big city offers. I think it's quite important away from cricket to fulfil whatever you want with your off-time."

It's not the first time, however, that du Plooy has rocked up to Lord's in less-than-ideal circumstances. As he recalled, on his second trip as a schoolboy cricketer in 2011, he ripped his toe open while wearing flip-flops on the escalator at St John's Wood Tube, and ended up in hospital instead of getting the full guided tour. "I was just running down the street with a massive bloody foot; I almost passed out from the blood."

He did, however, make amends on his next visit in 2019, when he capped a memorable maiden season with Derbyshire with a century in a rain-affected draw, after his then-coach Dave Houghton had given him the behind-the-scenes experience that he'd missed out on eight years earlier.

"That always just meant more for me. So this place - putting aside that it's the Home of Cricket - with my own history with it has been quite special. I'm excited to build more memories here that are dear to me.

"I think there is a lot of potential here," he added. "Looking back at your career, you'll remember the times that you won trophies. Some guys in the dressing-room have had a taste of that, and I certainly want to. Whether it's realistic for this season, that isn't for me to judge, but I'll give it my very best to try and build something special here."

The depth of commitment entailed in du Plooy's Middlesex contract is a far cry from the "madness" he encountered on the T20 franchise circuit this winter - particularly in a chaotic fortnight in February when, in flitting from the SA20 to the PSL, via a four-match stop-over at the ILT20 in the UAE, he inadvertently came to epitomise the sport's current free-for-all.

"The franchise world has gone a bit bonkers," he conceded, as he recalled the scramble for signatures as one tournament bled into the next. After another prolific season for Joburg Super Kings in the SA20, du Plooy found himself playing for Dubai Capitals just two days after JSK's play-off elimination, and was still sporting a JSK bandana when, a week later, he produced a matchwinning 63 not out for Capitals in the ILT20's own play-offs. Even that affiliation, he admitted, hadn't been a given when he stepped off the plane from South Africa.

"I was thinking I was going to play for Sharjah Warriors. But when I got there, they were like, 'No, they're out now; you have to go and play for Dubai Capitals'. I think of myself as a very loyal person, and it's quite tough. I guess you shouldn't be emotionally attached to those teams, but you almost have to detach yourself completely.

"It is still pretty cool to be part of, and you learn so quickly in those tournaments. But I feel like if you sign a player, then they should be available for the whole tournament unless it's an injury. I'm sure they'll figure it out; there are people who get paid to make sure that cricket is the lovely sport that we grew up watching, sustainable throughout. I'm sure people will take care of it."

Du Plooy clearly hasn't lost his love of the game despite its fluctuating circumstances, and this was perhaps best epitomised during perhaps the most unlikely of his winter engagements - an appearance for Hungary, his parental homeland, at the European Cricket League. There, his entanglement with a series of club cricketers led to an extraordinary series of scores, including the small matter of 163 not out from 40 balls against Turkey.

"I went there purely to play with my brother, and I left just having been made so whole," he said. "A lot of the guys in my team emigrated from Pakistan and India to get a better life. I can't call myself English yet, but I've very much got used to the culture where we find things to complain about quite often, especially after a long cricket season when sometimes you just want it over and done with.

"Playing with those guys, we stayed in a three-star hotel and we were on the beach every day. They were just loving it. We were getting a plate of food and they were just buzzing. It was actually the perfect thing to go to for me; it put everything back into perspective. Yes, I have the opportunity to live my dream, but there are guys out there who just do it for fun. There was no money there, it was a week in Spain for me to enjoy it. We got into the final and lost to Ireland, but that was all just add-ons. The whole experience was great."