'Give me a pair of boots and a cone': Kyle Abbott's old-school mastery

Now in his ninth season with Hampshire, Abbott has finished among the top 10 wicket-takers in the first division seven times. He's been in the top five five times and second on the list thrice. This season he was second going into the match against Essex at Chelmsford that started on Thursday.

Abbott has been among the 10 bowlers who have sent down the most overs in six seasons, and one of the top 10 bowlers of scoreless overs four times. Last year he headed the latter list with 133 out of a total of 447.3. Batters failed to garner a single run off almost a third of all the deliveries he bowled.

"I guess I've found a method that's worked, but going into every year a bit of imposter syndrome creeps in," he said. "You think, 'Maybe this is the year that it doesn't go quite right and I might have to change something.' And then you look back at the end of the year and you're still in the top three or four bowlers in the country and it's, like, 'Well, I'm going to just do the same thing again next year.' It's a method I've worked hard on and been consistent about.

"I'm still very old school when it comes to training. You have all these new science and medicine guys and everything, and they've got all this data and this and that and rotations and force. And I'm like, 'Give me a pair of boots and a cone and I'm going to bowl.'

"Over the last couple years I've become a lot more fit for purpose. So I've been running longer distances on the road over the winter, trying to replicate a four-day game. I do anything between 32 and 45 kilometres on the road during the week at a very low heartrate and low speed; six-and-a-half minute kilometres."

The idea is to ensure his readiness for what he thinks he does best: "I pride myself on bowling the most overs. That's the guy I've always been, that go-to guy who can bowl those overs and be reliable."

Playing for Hampshire has allowed Abbott to prove himself in that role beyond any doubt. That has meant living in Southampton, which is not unlike Ballito, the coastal resort some 40 kilometres north of Durban where, during the off-season, Abbott takes refuge from bowling all those overs. But we shouldn't confuse the two.

"I've had so much responsibility and I've played so many games of cricket. Never in my life did I ever think I'd be knocking on the door of 200 first-class games. Playing here has created different opportunities that I wouldn't have had in South Africa."

The Chelmsford match is Abbott's 187th at first-class level. Had he remained in South Africa he would have played exponentially fewer. In a first-class career that lasted more than 15 years, Dale Steyn appeared in just 48 matches that were not Tests. Abbott has been at it in whites for only two more years than Steyn. But he has played 175 non-Test first-class games. The difference is that Steyn featured in a mere 11 county matches. Abbott is playing his 121st.

And performing better than ever: "I feel that in the last three years or so I've been bowling the best I ever have. I've seen a drop off in pace, which happens as you age. But I don't feel as if I'm suddenly bowling at 120 [kilometres per hour]. I used to bowl at 135 or 136, and I might be bowling at 130 now. Which still has enough on it. So I've maintained some pace."

Abbott has been straightforward for a long time. In January 2017, to explain why he had abandoned his international career to go Kolpak, he told reporters: "If you want to buy me some groceries in the next 10 years you are more than welcome to. I need to pay bills, I need to buy groceries."

He had learnt, the hard way, that he couldn't rely on playing for South Africa to earn the money he needed. Because his performance, however good, wasn't enough to keep him in the side.

The decision wasn't made by the captain, the coach or the selectors. It was imposed from on high by CSA for reasons that had nothing to do with cricket. There was unhappiness with the number of black and brown players in the XI, so a white player had to be sacrificed for the semi.

Transformation is a valuable and necessary aspect of the game in this country. Without it stars like Kagiso Rabada might never have found their way to the top. But to enforce the practice so thoughtlessly at such a sensitive stage of a global tournament was a new level of brainlessness even for that era of CSA's notoriously self-harming suits.

Abbott was widely derided for his groceries quip, but his point was valid - if bowling better than anyone else in the squad didn't earn him a place in the team, what would? How could he believe his employers had his best professional interests at heart? Were they going to pay his bills and buy his groceries if they cancelled his contact?

South African lawyers and accountants who take up better offers in other countries aren't subjected to abuse. Maybe they would be if they went to work carrying briefcases emblazoned with the national flag, so conning the nation into thinking they represented them. Sport pulled off that con a long time ago.

Cricket's sometimes strange sense of humour might have something to do with South Africa's head coach at the 2015 World Cup now serving, from the start of the current county season, in the same capacity with Hampshire. Did Abbott and Russell Domingo need a clear-the-air conversation before Domingo took over?

"There's never been any bad blood [with Domingo] over that," Abbott said. "I knew full well at the time that Russell's hands were tied. It was never his decision. If it was I'd have a very different answer, but I knew he wanted to play me. So, no, we're all good."

Evidence of that was Abbott going into bat for Domingo with his Hampshire teammates during their preseason: "People asked, 'What do you think Russell is like with a tough conversation?' I was like, 'Nothing here is a tough conversation to Russell, I promise you. You can approach him and ask him anything, and he's going to tell you some tough stuff, too.

Domingo is also not given to wasting words. Like Abbott, he says what matters without frills. Should they be on the same coaching staff, expect more pithiness than you could throw a waffle at.

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