Ntini's eyes tell of his passion

Makhaya Ntini's voice crackles from the boundary like a loose connection spitting with renegade volts, and his eyes are barbed beams of passion. He is energy itself dressed in increasingly undone whites. Damn fool needs to be told when he's tired, because he just can't work it out for himself.

Please forgive the purpleness. It's the afterglow of the Queen's Park Oval Test, you see. In these post-Cronje crash, post-World Cup disasters, post-England ignominy, and post-and-pre-Australian thrashing days, the sight of a South African cricketer in rampant form is a rare and (for us, his compatriots) a beautiful thing. Ntini was that, and more, as he ripped through West Indies in the second Test.

His match figures of 13 for 132 were the best ever returned by a South African, and the 7 for 37 he took in the second innings represent a new career-best performance for him. For this South African reporter, the most memorable member of Ntini's unlucky 13 was not someone who could hold a bat convincingly. It was, instead, Reon King in the second innings. Ntini almost excommunicated King's head with the first bouncer. Then he sent one thudding into his ribs. The next ball was full and straight, and stumps and bails parted company. The silence with which the crowd greeted that moment was sweeter than any roar of applause could hope to be.

The bristling confidence, the sheer inevitability of success that Ntini brought to that cameo confrontation was the distilled spirit of a man who has come a long, long way. His journey began in Mdingi, a smidgen of a place in the rural Eastern Cape that is marked by nothing but a clutch of roughly built houses. And a cricket ground perched precariously on the side of a hill. Because it isn't so much that Ntini came to cricket. Rather, cricket - big cricket, that is - got off its backside and found him.

Mdingi is deep in the heart of South Africa's black cricket country. But you wouldn't have guessed it in the days of Apartheid sport, when the South African government tried to tell the world the game could only be played at the highest levels by whites, against other whites. Then, even as fascism breathed its last in our country, a development coach called Raymond Booi came to Mdingi to hold a clinic. Ntini ran up in tattered trainers and bowled the first of many deliveries that would be closely watched, and the rest is recorded elsewhere on this website.

Most of it, that is. The Ntini story is not complete without examining those barbed beams of passion. There was horrified disbelief in the room when Ntini's name was first read out as part of a Test squad in the summer of 1997-98. No-one there seemed to believe he was worthy of a place, and the hurt and fractured confidence was writ large in the young fast bowler's eyes. For a long time public opinion remained stuck in that ugly place: Ntini was the passenger in the side, the affirmative action selection.

It didn't help that he was tried and convicted of rape not long after reaching the international stage. Again, his eyes betrayed him: they were clouded with anger and confusion. But there also lurked a compelling determination to trudge through the crisis. I looked as deeply as I dared into his face one long afternoon in the midst of all that, and I did not see guilt. Ntini appealed his conviction and won. He had made a poor witness in the first trial, and the consensus of legal opinion was that he had been ineptly represented and should never have been found guilty.

Last Tuesday, as one West Indian after another succumbed to his swift poison, Ntini's eyes told a different story. "Makhaya was superb, it was wonderful to see the hunger in his eyes as he was running in," Graeme Smith said with the sort of half-smile that spoke of relief that he wasn't among those who had to face his ace. The next morning Ntini looked at the world through the haze caused by the night before's celebration. But Ntini's glint has since returned, and come Thursday in Bridgetown it will no doubt burn brightly. The eyes will have it, as they always have.