Nqobani Mokoena wants to be the best death bowler in the world

On Saturday, Princess Mokoena will, for the first time, be able to watch her son Nqobani Mokoena play a professional match. At 19, he hasn't had many - only 13 T20s - but more than half of them have come for Paarl Royals, the SA20 team that's based on the opposite side of the country to where the Mokoena family's base is, in KwaMashu, 20km north of Durban.

He studied at Northwood Boys, one of South Africa's most prestigious schools and the alma mater of Shaun Pollock, Keshav Maharaj, and the late Robin Smith. The Durban school turned Mokoena from a spinner to a top-order batter to a fast bowler, and gave him the chance to break into the South African Under-19 team.

Mokoena has a burgeoning career with the KwaZulu-Natal side but since their matches are often played on working days, his mother has not yet had the opportunity to watch him in a game. Now that her son is a certain starter in a Royals team with only three specialist seamers, she will be at Kingsmead this weekend. Mokoena cannot wait to show her what he can do.

"She raised me by herself, with no dad. That's quite a tough thing," he says from Royals' base at Pearl Valley in the Cape Winelands. "And it wasn't nice, seeing her struggling.

"We've come a long way and we're quite close. I can't wait to go back home, so I can see her. I just want to make her proud. It's quite cool to have your mum watching. That's been one of my dreams."

It's one of many that have come true for him in a short time. Less than three weeks ago, Mokoena had the opportunity to share a field with the player he considers his hero. "Internationally, my favourite bowler is Kagiso Rabada. And I played against him twice."

Better still, Mokoena's Royals beat Rabada's MI Cape Town on both occasions, and the only thing that went wrong was Mokeona couldn't get to talk to Rabada. "It was too busy."

More opportunities like that are sure to come as Mokoena continues to make a name for himself. In Royals' set-up, he has been effective with the new ball and bowling at the death. "I'm quite happy to do it," he says. "That's my job. I'm excited to open the bowling as a youngster and close it off as well."

It's the second of the two skills that he has a preference for. "I've been watching a lot of cricket and I see the best bowlers in the world, like Jasprit Bumrah and Rabada, do really well at the death. So I want to try and be the best death bowler in the world. I've been doing a lot of practice on my death bowling."

In the first five matches of this SA20, Mokoena bowled at the death four times, with an economy rate of 6.83, and took four wickets. His seventh game, against Durban's Super Giants, did not go quite as well. He conceded 37 runs in his final two overs to push his overall economy at the death up to around 9, and he was rested for Thursday's return clash with Pretoria Capitals in Centurion.

He has already picked up some big-name wickets in the SA20 - Aiden Markram, Ryan Rickleton, Tristan Stubbs, Heinrich Klassen, Senuran Muthusamy, James Vince and Jordan Cox - but his favourite dismissal remains that of Quinton de Kock.

After Sunrisers Eastern Cape beat Mokoena's side by 137 runs in their first encounter of the season, Royals roared back to win the return fixture in Gqeberha four days later. Their comeback started when de Kock nicked Mokoena's wobble-seam delivery to the keeper for 7.

"I really enjoyed that wicket," Mokoena said, though his respect for de Kock remains intact. "A batter like him or Nicholas Pooran, you can bowl your best ball and they can still hit you off that."

And what is Mokoena's best ball? At the SA20 he has shown us a little bit of everything: he can crank it up around 140kph; he has a slower ball variation, which he used to dismiss MI Cape Town's Jacques Snyman; he has found movement and can extract extra bounce.

He puts that varied skill set down to his experiences both in domestic cricket, at KwaZulu-Natal, and playing for Royals at their home base of Boland Park. It is typically the slowest and lowest of the SA20 venues, and to succeed there as a seamer "you have let your ego go down and use your skills more. If you come in with pace, you travel [get hit], so you have to use your skills nicely and be able to adapt."

Mokoena has been able to learn from one of the bowlers who does that best: Ottneil Baartman, a Royals and Dolphins' team-mate, who made South Africa's 2024 T20 World Cup squad on the back of his performances in that year's SA20. "We're always chatting about game plans and he's been helping me a lot. We're quite close. He just told me to keep doing what I'm doing right now and take care of my body and my health and I should be fine. Things will just happen after that if I just keep doing what I'm doing."

Like so many who are at the start of their career, Mokoena dreams of going on to represent his country. He was part of the Under-19 World Cup squad that reached the 2024 semi-final. Two of his team-mates from that tournament, Kwena Maphaka and Lhuan-dre Pretorius, have already played international cricket for South Africa.

Mokoena played three U-19 World Cup games, including the semi-final against India, but has since experienced the step up in the intensity of competition in senior domestic cricket and the SA20.

"I had a tough U-19 World Cup because I was quite injured, so I couldn't be at my 100% best, but it's a big tournament. In the step up from U-19 to professional cricket, the margin of error is much smaller. You have to be mentally prepared. And the same for SA20. The stadiums are packed, there's a lot of noise and everything, and sometimes you can't even hear your own team-mates. It's quite cool, actually."

It will be far cooler on Saturday, when Princess will be in the crowd to cheer him on.