Towering over his teammates at 6.8ft tall, Marco Jansen has an unmistakable presence on the field - at least when he’s not playing with his twin-brother Duan. Marco had started to create waves in South Africa’s domestic circles while still a teenager and by the time he’d turned 22, he was already a South African Test player. Hailing from the North West province, Marco’s talent was first spotted by his father Koos when the former scored an unbeaten 164 in a T20 game aged 9. Training both brothers, Koos saw his efforts rewarded when the boys were called up as net bowlers for India at the Wanderers during their 2018 tour. Impressing Virat Kohli as a 17-year old is not a feat many can lay claim to and it was one of many giant strides that Marco would go on to take in the years that followed.

Consistently hitting 140ks while hurling bolts from his lanky frame, not to mention his handy and powerful batting ability saw Marco rise through the domestic ranks pretty quickly. His List-A debut came in the 2017-18 season and was followed by his First Class debut shortly thereafter. His ability to extract prodigious swing with the new ball and his propensity to hit the deck hard and extract unsettling bounce made him a tough customer to deal with. Add to that the variations he developed, including a searing yorker and a deceptive slower ball, Jansen was almost the complete all-format bowler. The only hurdle that stood in his way was consistency.

Perhaps the greatest validation for Jansen’s skills came when he was scouted and picked up by the Mumbai Indians for IPL 2021. He became one of just a handful few overseas players that had made their IPL debut before their international one. While he only got a couple of opportunities in that season, Jansen had made enough of a name for himself to be picked up by the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

An international call-up was not far away, Jansen was added to South Africa’s squad for their tour of Pakistan in January 2021 but he’d have to wait till the end of that year to make his debut. It came in the Boxing Day Test against India in 2021 and his ODI and T20I debuts came soon after in the following year. He found himself in South Africa’s squad for the 2022 T20 World Cup as a replacement to the injured Dwaine Pretorious and in 2023, ahead of the Cricket World Cup, Jansen was named in South Africa’s 15 member squad.

Written by Anurag Hegde