This Burger's out to ruin the batters' day

The next time South Africa and India meet will be in 2024, but don't expect Nandre Burger to wish the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma a happy new year. He'd rather "be the person that gets them out and ruins their day".

Burger was asked after the Centurion Boxing Day Test - his debut - if he had been overawed by the big names in the Indian batting line-up and just did not back down in response. "I don't think it intimidates me. If anything, it fires me up a bit more."

The evidence had been on display about an hour earlier. India were 96 for 4, with their best two batters of the Test, Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, in the middle, and only 67 runs behind. Burger bowled one full and wide outside off, Rahul chased it, got an edge and was caught at second slip. Next ball, Burger went shorter on the same line, R Ashwin played away from his body and edged to gully. The hat-trick ball had to wait for Burger's next over and he delivered it to Kohli. He pitched it back of a length, though he was intending "to go fuller", and as it moved away, it almost kissed the shoulder of Kohli's bat.

The cordon did its duty and appealed as the oooohs and aaaaaahs rang around SuperSport Park. Kohli shook his head and took a few steps away from the crease, perhaps to get out of the heat. And Burger? He smiled. Not wryly, but genuinely. Ear-to-ear. Teeth on display. He knew the ball was a good-enough attempt at a third wicket and he was having too much fun to be disappointed that he didn't get it.

Kevin Pietersen did not approve. The former South African advised less niceness and more aggression from Burger, because, "smiling at batters gives them a small win every single time". That may be, but it was ultimately Burger who got the big win.

He finished the Test with seven wickets to his name to end a dream December, in which he made his international debut across all three formats in the space of 12 days. For someone whose formative years were spent at one of the country's leading rugby schools, who preferred tennis and who wanted to stop playing cricket at 17, the last two weeks have been unexpectedly magical and affirming for him and validation that hard work pays off.

Though it may seem like it, Burger has not come out of nowhere, and at 28 is a fairly late international debutant. He made his provincial bow in 2016, when he was 20 years old, in a team that included Devon Conway, and came to prominence in the Africa T20 Cup in the 2018-19 season. There, he was the leading bowler with 11 wickets at 10.45. In the 2019-20 summer, he took 18 wickets in four first-class matches at 22.38 but could not find regularity of game time at Lions and moved to Western Province in the winter of 2021 when his efforts to bowl as quickly as he could took its toll on his body. A lower-back stress fracture kept him out of most of the next season and last summer, he had a heel injury for a significant part of the schedule. In all that came some life lessons.

"It's always tough to miss games and to watch everyone else play but it made me appreciate my team-mates a bit more," Burger said. "And it taught me about being happy for other people, being selfless and things like that. It helped me be a lot better in that regard."

After that slow burn on the domestic scene, his time came this season. He was the leading bowler in the domestic one-day cup, where he took 14 wickets at 19.78 and was selected on that form along "lateral lines", as Test coach Shukri Conrad put it, in all three of South Africa's squads.

Before the Test, the biggest impression he made was in the second ODI against India, where he took 3 for 30. That match took place on the same day as the IPL auction and Burger also landed a deal with Rajasthan Royals. On Christmas Eve, he was told he would play the Boxing Day Test and took the news in his stride. "My nerves were okay. I am not someone who has trouble sleeping, I am the kind of person that can lie down and sleep anywhere and I had the chance to let the nerves settle," he said. "Having made my debut in the other two formats in the previous week, my nerves had settled. I was actually more nervous in the second innings of the Test, thinking this is our chance to win the game."

South Africa's lead of 163 was healthy but with two-and-a-half days left in the game and an India line-up with names like Rohit (though his record in South Africa is poor), Kohli and Rahul, it was set up as a well-balanced contest. Between them, Kagiso Rabada, Burger and Marco Jansen broke the tension and sped up the game to leave India stunned. Burger put it down to how they used the conditions.

"Our decision to bowl first was based on the overheads for all five days, where it was supposed to be overcast and cloudy. The wicket didn't change as much as it usually does, and the overcast conditions worked in our favour," he said. "And when a team is a bit behind the game, as they were, they have to make a play and be a bit more aggressive and, on this kind of wicket, it either goes your way or it doesn't and today it went our way."

He called the experience as a whole "unreal" as "it sunk into me that every wicket you take is for 60 million South Africans".

And did any of them matter a little more to him personally, given the players he was up against? "No, every wicket is my favourite," he said. "Every wicket could be your last wicket, so every wicket will be my favourite."