The oldest player in the One-day Cup final walked off with the Man of the Match award on Friday night – and it was no surprise, because Cape Cobras swing bowler Charl Langeveldt likes nothing better than to show he’s far from a spent force in the game.
The Cobras were decisive winners by five wickets against the Warriors, and are currently the proud possessors of all three domestic titles since they hold the Pro20 and SuperSport Series from last season.
Langeveldt’s role, with a match haul of 5/45, in helping to secure a R775,000 winner’s cheque cannot be under-estimated.
And to think he was not in the team for the Cobras’ opening One-day Cup assignment early last month. He was summoned for the next game, against the Lions at the Wanderers, took 2/56, and the “golden oldie” had hit his straps.
Friday night’s showing lifted him to 22 wickets in nine games, the best in the tournament.
And, although he turns 37 on Saturday, Langeveldt still appears to have plenty left in the tank.
A limited overs specialist, who has mastery over a wide range of deliveries, the Stellenbosch-born seamer will be looking forward to the Pro20 competition which starts in January, and possibly action in the Indian Premier League, which follows that.
And, given his continued success, it would not be a surprise if the one-time prison warder attracts interest from English county sides for their domestic short-format competitions in the South African winter.
In the last English season he turned out for Kent in the T20 competition and in the IPL he has most recently been contracted by the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Langeveldt has an enviable record in finals – he hasn’t been on the losing side in one yet.
On paper his statistics are impressive. His 331 victims in List A (one-day) games have cost just 23.69 runs each – 100 of this number have been taken in 72 ODI appearances for the Proteas.
In this season’s One-day Cup he had twice taken four wickets in an innings before the final.
Striking twice in his fourth over at the top of the Warriors innings, and twice in his 10th over (the final one in the Warriors innings), he also picked up the valuable wicket of the opposition’s top-scorer, Ashwell Prince (63 off 87 balls), in the middle of the innings.
The man they call “Chico” took a bit of punishment in his final over – despite the two wickets off successive balls – as Rusty Theron avoided the hat-trick by driving him for four airborne over mid-off and Makhaya Ntini cracked his last ball for six.
Langeveldt had made yet another major contribution to the Cobras’ cause, though.
Of course in his catalogue of performances he can look back on another special final over.
In 2005 he took a hat-trick in the last over of an ODI against the West Indies in Barbados to win the game for the Proteas by a single run.
This is still the only ODI hat-trick by a South African.
For the Cobras on Friday, it was a case of the young complementing the old.
Chasing the Warriors’ total of 242/5, they were taken most of the way by Englishman Owais Shah (83 off 109 balls) and Richard Levi (84 off 111 balls). The pair added 122 off 172 balls for the third wicket, and, at 23, Levi can feel well satisfied with his steady, rather than spectacular, innings when it really counted for his side.