Bowls fast, hits hard, like dad: late bloomer Corbin Bosch is making up for lost time

In the days when Corbin Bosch was making his way into the coliseum of international cricket, he was occupied with conquering a fortress of a different kind.

"I'm a big Lego man. It's something just to keep my mind off cricket," he said during this summer's SA20. "I built the Barad-dur from Lord of the Rings. It was five-and-a-half thousand pieces and it probably took me about a day and a half. But one of my best friends came and helped me a little bit here and there. I was building that just before the Test."

He's referring to the Boxing Day Test of 2024 against Pakistan, in which South Africa sealed their place in last year's World Test Championship final. Bosch was a wild-card pick, included because Gerald Coetzee was injured, and responsible for one of the game's best performances: he got a wicket with his first ball, four in the first innings, five in the match, and scored a crucial 81 not out, which gave South Africa a match-winning 90-run first-innings lead.

That he did all that at the ground where his late father, the former South Africa international Tertius Bosch, spent his entire domestic career was a full-circle moment nobody could script.

"It was a dream come true, that first Test match at the ground where my dad played all of his cricket," Bosch said. "I don't think it could have come any better than that.

"Obviously things fell into my favour, I won't deny that. Guys got injured and you don't wish that upon anybody, but it was just an opportunity that I was so grateful to have and I was going to express myself the best way I could. Fortunately I took a wicket off my first ball. Taking a wicket would have been enough, let alone off the first ball. That was incredible in itself, and then managing to score some crucial runs in the first innings, I surprised myself probably because at the time that was my highest first-class score as well. It was just special to be a part of all that."

If that match had been the full extent of Bosch's international career, he would have been satisfied. "My dream was to play a game of international cricket. Everything since then has been a bonus," he said.

Bosch is 31 years old and thought his time to shine had gone by. More than a decade ago he was part of the South Africa squad that won the Under-19 World Cup in 2014. He was the player of the match in the final, taking 4 for 15 and limiting Pakistan to a gettable total, which Aiden Markram set about chasing down. While Markram and South Africa's leading wicket-taker in that tournament, Kagiso Rabada, got domestic contracts soon after, Bosch went back to the grind.

"I managed to play my first couple of T20 games for the Titans at the back end of 2014, but didn't play as well as I would have liked to," he said. "But I was only 20 so you never know what to expect."

He played in four T20s for Titans in November that year, batted twice with a top score of 30 not out, and bowled 13.2 overs for a single wicket. He waited almost a year for another opportunity and played five matches in the 2015-16 season, where he batted once, scored 13 not out, and went wicketless. "I thought I was playing nice cricket but just wasn't going anywhere," he said.

At the end of 2016, Bosch packed his bags for Australia, in the hope he might make it in a different environment. "I played a year of grade cricket, which opened my eyes to a different mindset, especially the way Australians play cricket," he said. "I saw Australia as an opportunity to learn from a country that produces fast bowler after fast bowler, and thought that was probably the best move for me. And it was also when I decided it's a good time for me to try to bowl a little bit faster, try to add a bit more X factor to my game."

He returned in the winter of 2017 and was gearing up to go back to Australia when he had a chat with current South Africa fielding coach and former University of Pretoria coach Kruger van Wyk, and Northerns coach Mark Charlton. "They said to me they really wanted me to be involved. Those two convinced me that staying in South Africa would be better for my cricket. People had belief in me. That's what I needed just to stay at home and really work on my craft."

In the 2017-18 season, he played in all formats for the semi-professional Northerns provincial team and a few matches for Titans (at the time South Africa had a two-tier domestic system) and started to see what was possible. "I only played a couple of four-day games but all the raw pieces were there. I just never really put the puzzle pieces together."

Not on the field, at first. While Bosch busied himself with his Lego models, he also plugged away through the back end of the 2010s until he had a decent season in 2021-22, where he was among the top ten wicket-takers in the domestic List A compeition and also had the best strike rate, that things started to happen.

He got an IPL deal with Rajasthan Royals in 2022 but didn't play a game, and also got a CPL gig with their Barbados namesake. "I got a few opportunities around the world. The broader landscape was T20 cricket and my game maybe tended to lean towards T20 cricket," he said.

He has since also played for MI Cape Town in the SA20 and for their flagship side, Mumbai Indians, in the IPL - and opted out of and been banned from the PSL for a year, having pulled out of that tournament to be able to play for MI.

Bosch has no regrets. "To be a part of such a special family has been incredible. They leave no stone unturned. They're very particular with how they go about their business. Everything is done for a reason. Everything's very specific when it comes to plans. As a person, I like that kind of structure," he said.

"With all the resources they have given me during my training… they've had guys like Mitch McClenaghan here at SA20. He's probably got one of the most incredible minds that I've ever worked with when it comes to tactics. He's played a crucial part. It opened my eyes as to how specific one person can actually be when it comes to field placings and how I want to think about going about my bowling. He was probably one of the big catalysts as to where I am today."

Unlike McClenaghan, whose injury history meant he never played a Test, Bosch still hopes to have something of a future in red-ball cricket, and would rather play more of it than T20s "in a heartbeat". But he recognises T20 may present more opportunities. Though he was part of South Africa's WTC final squad, he didn't play in that game at Lord's, and is far more likely to get an opportunity in their T20 World Cup playing group, especially given coach Shukri Conrad has a preference for big-hitting bowling allrounders.

Bosch's ability to hit the ball a long way is well-known but his challenge is to do it consistently. "It's tricky, obviously, being an allrounder," he said. "I'm still trying to manage that all. Even at 31, there's still parts of my game that I really feel like I can still grow exponentially to really take my game to the next level. Batting is also one of those things that I'm still figuring out. But I definitely can bat higher and I can bat longer. I know I've got the capabilities."

Chiefly, he is in the side for his bowling, which is often express at 140kph plus, and has brought great rewards recently. Since 2024, he has taken 68 wickets in 59 T20s - one every two and a half overs. Only five of those T20s have been in India, though, and he knows the demands there will be different.

"Changes of pace is going to be crucial, and also finding different areas for different conditions," he said. "It's also realising I can bowl other deliveries.That's also slowly evolving and growing - that I'm not as one-dimensional, so people can't just set up for one delivery. Subtle changes of paces and variations of length are going to be crucial in the subcontinent."

That may mean stepping a little away from the family DNA of raw pace, but given his last name and his natural speeds, it's unavoidable that Bosch will be compared to his father. Tertius only played one Test and two ODIs but was a domestic legend. Bosch was only five years old when his father died and has almost no memory of him playing but knows that many of the people he talks to, do.

"I was very young when he passed but my grandmother and my parents have videos of him. Watching the videos of us being next to the field and my dad playing, it's a feeling that comes back, and it's obviously special to watch him and to see how he played his cricket compared to how Eathan and I play our cricket," he said.

Eathan, the younger of the brothers, was two when Tertius died and has less to remember of their father, but memorably wore Tertius' old shirt to the game where Corbin made his South Africa debut. He too is a seam-bowling allrounder. Both boys bat better than their father ever did, though they will never say it.

"We are both unique in the way that we play our cricket, but watching how he went about his business and hearing how people speak about him has always been really special. People call him the gentle giant and people just loved him. That's a legacy that I would like to leave for myself," Bosch said.

The numbers, much like for Tertius, don't matter. The message does.

"I would like to be remembered not just on the field of cricket but as the person I am. One of my biggest goals is just to be remembered as being a great human being and that people want to be around [me] instead of just tolerating me in the team space. That's a big thing for me, and again it's to honour him [Tertius]."

He has the words "Tertius Bosch" tattooed on his forearm but his father is not the only person he wants to pay tribute to. "A lot of the reason why I'm here today is my mum," he said. "She's such a special human being and raised two boys, two ambitious boys. A lot of testament also goes to her. She gave Eathan and I both the opportunity to excel in whatever we wanted to, and by hook or by crook, it was cricket."