When Rassie van der Dussen crammed his earthly belongings into his Nissan Tiida to exchange Pretoria for Potchefstroom a decade ago, it was in search of opportunities to play white-ball cricket.

Back then, Van der Dussen was pigeonholed as a red-ball player, only playing 30 games over two seasons for Northerns because he was languishing in the lengthy shadows created by the more illustrious talents of Heino Kuhn, Blake Snijman and Pieter Malan.

But the one thing the past 10 years have taught us about the driven Van der Dussen, who has since travelled to far-flung places such as England, Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands and the Caribbean for this cricket thing, it is that he gets what he wants eventually.

At the time, when Van der Dussen travelled down the N12 with his worldly possessions in his small car, the then opening batsman had a loose arrangement with North West’s Monty Jacobs. It was essentially a trial where he wouldn’t be paid while he proved himself. A bed in a commune with other would-be North West players was thrown in to sweeten the deal.

It was from those crumbs that the 30-year-old built the relative bakery of not only going on to make it as a professional cricketer – he also made his international T20 debut late in 2018 and his full One Day International debut a few months later.

So there was a strange sense of life coming full circle for the very much self-made Lions man when he was named as one of six potential new caps, along with Malan (believe it or not), Dwaine Pretorius, Rudi Second, Dane Paterson and Beuran Hendricks, for the Proteas’ Test series against England this week.

The said four-match series begins – fittingly enough for Van der Dussen – in Centurion on Boxing Day.

The multiple changes almost feel like an on-field reaction to a harrowing 2019 in which South Africa’s cricket leadership allowed it to drift to the point where the Proteas couldn’t even get into a position to choke at the World Cup; a 3-0 whitewash by India was anticipated and duly administered, and the organisation all but gutted itself.

If indeed that is what the new management team of former Proteas captain Graeme Smith (director of cricket), ex-wicketkeeper Mark Boucher (head coach), Enoch Nkwe (assistant coach) and batting and bowling consultants Jacques Kallis and Charl Langeveldt were aiming for, then the relentless Van der Dussen should be the face of that fight back.

In an age of microwave cricketers who go straight from school to academies and into international cricket, Van der Dussen is a throwback to the days when cricketers were slow-cooked in the pressure cooker environment of first-class cricket.

“The overnight success is the part everybody else sees,” he said earlier this year. “I’ve been playing domestic cricket for 10 years. There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes work and sacrifices like having to move from Pretoria to Potchefstroom …

“I packed everything in my car and blindly went without any guarantees. I definitely took a leap of faith there, it was a difficult decision for me to uproot myself and go there, but it’s probably the best decision I’ve made in my life.”

Former Lions coach Geoff Toyana wasn’t exactly ringside to Van der Dussen’s tentative steps into the unknown, but as the coach whose selective hand would be forced by the sheer weight of runs by a batsman in his catchment area, he has an idea what makes the player tick.

“People were giving him grief, saying that he could only score runs on flat wickets,” Toyana remembered. “Yet he kept getting runs to push the batsmen we had at the Lions who were ahead of him and he put pressure on me as a coach to pick him.

“His mental strength is one of his best attributes. When he got runs a couple of years ago, the national selectors ignored him, but he kept working hard because he knew his opportunity would come. It’s all about what he does behind the scenes.

“He hits a lot of balls, understands his strengths and weaknesses and works on those weaknesses. I remember one year where he sacrificed the chance to make some money by not going to England to work on his game – he really trained hard and got fitter and stronger,” said Toyana.

The decade spent globetrotting in the name of cricket came in handy when international cricket finally came knocking.

Having looked as if he’d always belonged in the T20s against Pakistan, he followed that up with ODI series numbers reading 241 runs from four innings (three 50s, top score 93) at an average of 120.50. “Having played a lot of domestic cricket and getting international experience in terms of playing in other countries has helped develop my game and me to know my game,” said Van der Dussen.

“It is a step up in skill and level, but the fundamentals remain the same in terms of the game plans and processes I try to apply. Before I played for South Africa, I knew that I’d played against world-class players domestically in the Caribbean, Canada and India and had done well. So I knew I’d done this before. It was just a case of taking it moment by moment and trying to be the best at that moment.”

If Van der Dussen’s story has a parallel, it has to be the Australian nicknamed Mr Cricket as much for his relentless pursuit of higher honours as for his obsession with the sport, Mike Hussey.

The tenacious Aussie had to wait until late in his career for his Test debut. He played 79 Tests in eight years, scoring 6,235 runs at an average of 51.52.

“Mike Hussey was inspirational for me because he also made his debut for Australia when he was 30 years old,” said Van der Dussen.

“Everybody at the time said what a healthy system Australian Cricket had for a guy to make a late debut and do well in international cricket. I think it’s very much the same for us here. If a guy like me can make a debut at 29, it says the system doesn’t discard a guy who doesn’t make it at 23 or 24 like most do.”

Test cricket prides itself on being a more accurate metaphor for life than other sports, what with its ebbs and flows of momentum and blowtorch examinations of character. While just about any team can maintain intensity for the duration of a T20 or One Day International to steal a win, the long haul of 15 sessions over five days inevitably spits out a deserved winner.

The inability to handle the constant pressure to be consistent has crept into the Proteas’ play of late, meaning they are almost always first to blink in the staring contest that is Test cricket. Van der Dussen’s take on pressure suggests he should form a significant part of the team’s batting spine.

“I’m just lucky that my character lends itself to being calm,” he explained. “What I consciously have learnt over the last few years is to take a second longer and think about a situation and try and look at it from an outside perspective.

“Pressure for me is something that’s created internally. Yes, the game pressure will be that you need 10 runs off two balls but you can, to a very large extent, control the pressure in your mind. Often, if you can take that second longer to think and get that outside perspective, you realise you’re not under as much pressure.

“[Also] the thing is to try not to downplay the situation and accept it for what it is. Once you do that, you don’t expend mental energy fighting against what you perceive to be a pressure situation and you can make peace with it and lend your mental energy to the task, and the task as a batter is to face the next ball – that is what I try to do.”

Van der Dussen may not be the most talented around, but the Proteas desperately need his tenacity at the moment. DM

Simnikiwe Xabanisa is a Johannesburg-based sports writer and editor.