Birthday special: Duanne Olivier – The SA pacer who can dominate coming years
Duanne Olivier is one of South Africa’s emerging pace sensations, having made a tremendous impact on the national team in red-ball cricket. Olivier is capable of spearheading the Proteas pace attack in absence of their frontline pacers and this was proved during the two-match home Test series against Bangladesh last month where he kept the visiting batters at bay despite the hosts not fielding a full-strength squad.
As Olivier turns 30 on May 9, here’s all you need to know about one of South Africa’s finest pacers who looks forward to excelling at the highest level with his promising performances.
Duanne Olivier: The next standout pacer of the ‘Rainbow Nation’
Olivier could only get a chance to don the South African jersey in January 2017 at the age of 24. While the Pretoria cricketer could not make much of an impact in white-ball cricket, he went on to become one of their go-to bowlers in Tests, having registered 59 wickets from 15 matches.
The Bloemfontein pacer is regarded as one of the bowlers who has the potential to provide vital breakthroughs on flat wickets. Apart from that, the right-arm fast-medium bowler is also known to get some handy reverse-swing as well.
While Olivier did make his first-class debut at the age of 19 for Free State during the end of the 2010-11 season, he had to climb the ladder by working hard by playing some tough cricket in the years that followed, which also saw him represent the Proteas’ U19 team in 2011 during a One Day International series against England.
His efforts paid off and Olivier was promoted to the franchise system where he got an opportunity to represent the Knights during the 2014-15 season. Olivier has only made two ODI appearances for South Africa so far while his T20I career never took off in the first place.
Meanwhile, the Pretoria cricketer has enjoyed two County stints as well at the peak of his career, having represented Derbyshire in the 2018 season and Yorkshire from 2019 to 2021. Since he has not been impressive in the shortest format, Duanne Olivier has never been able to bag an IPL contract to date.
