'I played the fool with myself' - van Niekerk looks back at the lost years

Dane van Niekerk last bowled a ball more than two years ago, and was horrified to discover that she couldn't.

"It was to my wife, Marizanne [Kapp], in a warm-up game and I wasn't really thinking about my bowling because it came so naturally for me. But I walked in and bowled and I rolled the ball. I've never rolled a ball in my life," she told ESPNcricinfo's Powerplay podcast. "I could be injured and I close my eyes and land the ball on a cent and I could not understand what that was. There were laughs all around and the embarrassment I felt, I just don't want to go through that again."

That's why, more than two years, a retirement, a reversal and an international comeback later, van Niekerk still has not bowled in a game situation. She simply can't bring herself to.

"When I have a ball in my hand, I can bowl in the nets and it's fine, but the moment there are eyes on me, I freeze. My hand freezes and I've never experienced it in my life. I'm somebody that if I can't do that skill 100% I'm not doing it," she said. "I miss my bowling dearly but it's a massive mental battle. I'm allowing myself to just feel at the moment, to get into the team, to get some confidence and find that old Dane again."

At the time of her last delivery, van Niekerk was in a completely different space to what she described above. Her career was in limbo after a protracted recovery from a broken ankle and she was in a race against time to prove her fitness for the home T20 World Cup. Before she failed to run a two kilometre time trial in a then-non-negotiable time of 9:30, she got the bowling yips and the compound effect of the pressure she was feeling took its toll.

"I just didn't know where to put my head," she said. "If I could just dig a hole and put my head in there at that moment, I would have. There was fear, it had never happened and I didn't know why it was happening all of a sudden."

CSA has since relaxed the selection criteria and players are not automatically excluded if they do not meet certain markers. National women's coach Mandla Mashimbyi said he only wants someone who, "looks like a cricketer, moves like a cricketer and thinks like a cricketer."

Van Niekerk believes she can do that and more while acknowledging where she continues to fall short. "Fitness is very important. I'm obviously not as thin as people want me to be and I probably will never be, but when I picked up a lot of weight, I played the fool with myself. I thought I could still move the way I did when I wasn't 12 kilogrammes heavier. My attitude towards it now is that I can always just get better. There's such a stigma about how you need to look and how people need to perceive you but at the end of the day, my job is to win games for my country," she said. "My connection to fitness was so negative. It always felt like I was being punished. I want my connection to just be healthy and fun."

She is taking the same attitude to her bowling and giving herself time to embrace a beginner's mindset, even though she is one of the most successful players to ever bowl for South Africa. Even with a four-year absence from international cricket, van Niekerk is fourth on South Africa's ODI wicket-takers' list and third on the T20I charts but right now, she sees herself as "bad" at the thing she was once so good at.

"I'm having really good conversations with Mandla. We're really working on the mental side. He said to me, 'Just admit you're bad at it now and be okay with it and then from there you can only get better,' she said. "I've still got this idea of where I need to be. Every time I have a ball in my hand and it doesn't come out I want it to, I get angry, I get despondent and I feel like I am not doing this right. We're really working on just being okay with being bad and from there fighting through those bad sessions because you can only get better."

For now, that battle will take place in the nets because van Niekerk is not quite ready to trial anything on game day. "If I come back what if my first ball in international cricket rolls? People are going to say I shouldn't be there. I'm just taking one step at a time; as I said it's my baby. I wholeheartedly believe I'll still bowl for my country again. When, that is, I can't tell."

What she offers South Africa instead is her experience as a batter, and especially as a power hitter. She hit 21* off eight balls in her first game back - a T20I against Ireland - followed by 41 off 19 deliveries in the second game. In ODIs, she made her return with an explosive 88 off 47 balls at her home ground, St George's Park, on Tuesday, which includes 13 fours and three sixes as South Africa registered their highest ODI total of 375 for 6.

While van Niekerk's ability to clear the boundary could make her a sought-after player on the league circuit - and she was recently involved at the CPL - she is pragmatic about whether she will get many deals. "I need to be realistic. I'm not being classified as an all-rounder so when I go into these leagues, teams need to pick me on my batting and maybe what I can add when it comes to tactical leadership," she said. "It's not off the table and I'll always put my name in the hat but over the last two years, I wouldn't have picked me as well."

Her last stint at the WBBL was in the 2021-22 summer and she was last at the WPL and the WPL in 2023 and has steered clear of auctions and drafts as she worked her way back.

"I couldn't do disappointment anymore. I'd love to play in the leagues and I'd be stupid not to want to play. I've had a taste of the WPL, even though I wasn't in the best space after the omission and then the retirement. Now, I know that I'm competing with out-and-out batters and there's pretty special batters out there that I'll probably bid on before me. It's not out of the question but at the end of the day, it's about if a team wants my skill set or not. If the bowling comes, then I can put my name up again as an allrounder but I'll never put my name up as an allrounder if I'm not an all-rounder."

But leagues are not the ultimate aim for van Niekerk at the moment as she channels all her cricketing nous into doing what all South African cricketers aspire to: "I want to win a World Cup for my country."

She will be in contention for South Africa's squad for next year's T20 World Cup, to be held in England in June and July.