Nandre Burger: How a tennis-obsessed teenager became the IPL’s lethal new-ball weapon | Cricket News
Growing up, Nandre Burger wanted to be Roger Federer. The best part of his childhood was spent watching countless videos of the Swiss, trying to absorb the grace and the geometry. Then a back injury ended the tennis. He flirted with squash. His father made him try cricket. Up until that point, Burger’s association with the game was mostly his backyard wall. When he wasn’t volleying a tennis ball against it, he would draw stumps on the surface and try to copy Dale Steyn. He played cricket with his friends, but beyond that, he had no ambition to be a professional cricketer. He was fifteen when he enrolled at Wits University to study sports psychology. It was there that he met Neil Levenson. *** Unlike Rabada, Ngidi, Jansen, Nortje — South Africa’s recent production line of fast bowlers who came through the system young — Burger wasn’t a fast bowler at all until Levenson found him. He was clocking 127, 128 kmph. Good enough for a club bowler. Levenson saw something else. “I felt that …
