Friday, 7th September 2007 at 10:44 am

Thandi Tshabalala’s big break?

At first glance, it may well seem an act of madness: throwing a young off-spinner with negligible international experience into a World Cup based exclusively on hitting cricket balls as far as possible, as often possible. But the Twenty20 World Cup may just prove to be the catalyst for Free State’s Thandi Tshabalala has been waiting for…

Last season’s Standard Bank Pro20 series - the platform from which the World Cup has since emerged - showed the diminutive offie to be remarkably comfortable with a form of the game that is uniformly brutal on bowlers. Tshabalala emerged as one of the competition’s leading bowlers, the guile of his craft luring opposing batsmen into reckless shots, and subsequent downfall.

Granted, the test that lies ahead will be substantially tougher - bowling to a rampant Chris Gayle, Mahendra Dhoni or Ricky Ponting will be a slightly different prospect to Andrew Puttick or Doug Watson. But Tshabalala’s got a lot of self-belief, plenty of talent, and the best opportunity of his career to date. Slow bowling hasn’t been South Africa’s strongest suit for some time now; Feverpitcher will be watching Thandi Tshabalala particularly closely in the coming weeks.