Anrich Nortje wasn't a Lucknow Super Giants player when he arrived for his press conference at the city's Ekana Stadium on Tuesday. When he rose to leave less than 10 minutes later, he was. "I'll see you guys soon, then," he quipped on his way out to a roomful of journalists, several of them local reporters.

LSG bought Nortje for USD220,000 - the same price they paid for Wanindu Hasaranga. It's more than twice as much as Mumbai Indians shelled out for Quinton de Kock, but almost 13 times less than the USD2.8-million Kolkata Knight Riders spent on Cameron Green.

Is Nortje honestly more than twice the cricketer De Kock is? Is one Green worth nearly 13 Nortjes or Hasarangas, or more than 25 De Kocks?

It isn't that simple. How much owners pay is tied up with the money they have left in the budget, the balance of their squad, and their overarching philosophy of how they might win the IPL, which differs from franchise to franchise.

In Nortje's case, his risk of injury must also be a consideration. He was able to play only two games for KKR in last year's tournament because of a back problem, and has appeared in just 13 matches overall this year. The good news is that nine of them - T20s for KwaZulu-Natal Coastal - came in the space of 28 days in November.

He is, right now, in decent nick and has let fly in the upper 140 kilometres-an-hour in the two T20Is he has played in South Africa's ongoing tour of India. But those are his only internationals in more than 17 months because of injuries and his decision to opt out of Tests - he last featured in that format in February 2023.

"It's nice to be in the Proteas shirt again," Nortje said. "I really missed it and I've really enjoyed my time here."

The jury remains out on his current form. He went wicketless for 41 in four overs in Cuttack last Tuesday, but reeled that in with 0/14 in three overs in Dharamsala on Sunday.

"I'm just trying to focus on every game, to try and improve as much as I can. I have to be realistic, but so far I've been happy with the progress."

Nortje appeared in his first IPL game for Delhi Capitals in Dubai in September 2020. He played 16 matches that year, but after six campaigns he has earned 48 of a possible 89 caps for Delhi and Kolkata. That's 53.93% of the total those teams have played from Nortje's involvement in the competition.

It's an even more threadbare story with South Africa, who have played 243 matches from Nortje's debut in an ODI against Sri Lanka at the Wanderers in March 2019. He has been in the XI for only 85 of those games. That's 34.98%.

Nortje has played in more than half of South Africa's matches in a calendar year three times in his seven years as an international, with a high of 11 of 19 - 57.89% - in 2020. But he has gone three years without reaching the halfway mark.

Over the course of Nortje's career, Kagiso Rabada has featured in more than half of South Africa's games four times. Make that more than two-thirds in three of those years with a high of 86.96% - 20 of 23 - in 2019.

In Rabada's five years as an international before Nortje arrived, he was part of a majority of South Africa's games three times. And they were landslides: 91.43% in 2016, 72.50% in 2017 and 76.47% in 2018.

Rabada's body has been exponentially kinder to him than Nortje's. How do you justify spending money on someone who has been picked for half, or less, of the number of games you might expect him to be available to play?

LSG have taken that plunge, not least because a fit and firing Nortje is among the most foreboding sights in the game for opposing batters. And not only because he owns cricket's grandest moustache.

He has never taken more than three wickets in an IPL match and his economy rate for the tournament is a weighty 9.07. But, a month after his 32nd birthday, he still makes an arresting spectacle as he bolts towards the crease. Clearly, LSG believe there's life left in that athletic but often battered body.

How Nortje goes if he is selected for the fourth T20I in Lucknow on Wednesday will be significantly more closely watched by the home crowd than it might have been before the auction. Some of the locals might be chuffed should he make the Indians' life difficult. Quietly and cautiously, anyway.

Nortje has to get through Wednesday's game and the last T20I in Ahmedabad on Friday unscathed. Then there's the SA20 to navigate from December 26 to January 25, three T20Is at home against West Indies from January 27 to February 1, and the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and India from February 7 to March 8.

The start of the IPL on March 26 is still 101 days away. That's enough time for much to go wrong. But also for much to go right. Nortje deserves the latter.