Often, when Rassie van der Dussen introduces himself to a stranger, he is quizzed back: “So are you flanker?” Most invariably, they automatically connect him with rugby, because he shares his name with Springbok’s rugby coach and former player Rassie Erasmus. The more inquisitive of them have even asked him whether he was in some way related to Rassie the rugby legend, or indeed his parents named him after the “original” Rassie.
“My second name is Erasmus, so that’s where Rassie comes from. I don’t think we look very similar, but I definitely think he is the most recognisable Rassie in the world,’ Van der Dussen once told SA Cricket Magazine. The 32-year-old, though, is content in his garb of anonymity, though he says, in the last two years, he has been recognised more often, more so after he emerged as his country’s highest run-getter in the 2019 World Cup. “Over the past year, though, I have probably been recognised a bit more. They don’t always put two and two together, but when they hear it’s me, sometimes people want to take pictures and have a little chat.”
After his breezy 40, his counterpunching in the morning seizing early initiative for South Africa, he would be an even more recognisable sporting figure in the country. In a way, he is an inseparable dramatis personae in this Test match. The controversial catch, the verbal jaunts he traded with Rishabh Pant and in the end, the immensely valuable knock he played out in the first hour of the game, he was in the eye of the action. In case Pant is not aware, he is a trained kickboxer too.
If Indian fielders and bowlers presumed that he could be chickened out—and they gave a guttural welcome, the leading vocals being Pant—they were grossly mistaken. Tetchy though to begin, beaten on both edges and surviving tortuously, he seamlessly turned the tables. Jasprit Bumrah slithered a full ball outside the off-stump, probably a bait to tempt a drive and induce an edge. As expected, he was tempted, but rather than the edge, the ball skimmed flush from the sweet-spot of his blade through the covers. Tall batsmen sometimes reach out for the ball, but he leant nicely onto the ball and cajoled it towards the boundary with a fluid batswing.
The shot had the psychological pain of a bullet piercing through the heart. A wave of fear suddenly clutched India. They panicked; they bowled like no-hopers. van der Dussen sensed the vulnerability, he imposed himself on the dangerous Mohammed Shami. In pursuit of the demonic nip-backer, he strayed just fractionally onto the stumps and van der Dussen crunched him through square-leg. Shami pulled the length back a trifle, and he unleashed a thundering pull to the left of square leg. An embittered Shami then banged one too shot that it stormed over Pant for five byes.
Rolled in Shardul Thakur, the seven-wicket hero in the first innings. van der Dussen greeted him with a brace of boundaries that took them 68 runs closer to the target. The first was streaky, but the next was bludgeoned through covers. Though Shami snared him soon after, the proverbial damage was done. Though he was handed out of a vocal send-off, and he was cursing himself all through his walk back to the pavilion, he had illustrated ample sense of purpose and game awareness in his knock, one that would temporarily mute the baying of his critics. He had a nod of acknowledgment from his captain, Deal Elgar too. “He is someone who could be trusted to stand up for the team, someone who bats well in a crisis,” he said.
In the post AB de Villiers-Hashim Amla era, he has been South Africa’s mainstay in white-ball cricket—and the fastest to 1,000 ODI runs and nearing 1000 runs in T20Is too. He has been a vociferous supporter of Black Lives Matter movement too. In reply to a twitter exchange between noted journalists Dougie Oakes and Max du Preez, he posted: “I support BLM, I’m against all murders; physical, character, and cultural murders. I support equal opportunities for all. Long live Africa!”
His forthrightness was met with criticism from quarters of white African community, but he didn’t budge from his stance. “As a white Afrikaner, I’m lucky because I grew up in a household where my dad was politically involved on the ANC side, so I feel I have quite a balanced view on politics and social structures in SA. As a generation, we now have a big role to play, to listen to those stories and understand the different back stories and paths guys have had to take, situations other races and families were in in the old South Africa,” he told IOL.
His sensibility impressed former captain Faf du Plessis, who considered him a potential leader. He replied with typical humility: “Obviously it’s a compliment hearing these things from Faf. It’s just something I naturally do. I try to understand what the captain is thinking and doing. I am always thinking anyway, and offering suggestions to the captain, but I have to achieve a lot more.”
One of them is to score a Test hundred—he has six scores over 50 but not a three-figure score in 19 innings—a dream that he has been dreaming since he first wore a South Africa jersey as a 15th man during a Test match a decade ago. Given his mental toughness and batting skills, it seems the dream is round the corner. And steadily, the rugby (mis) connect too would blur. Rassie the batsman to go with Rassie the flanker.