Proteas enforcer Nortjé loves putting on the pace

SA and Warriors speedster Anrich Nortjé is relishing bowling at speeds rarely seen in English conditions.

He was timed at 148km/h in his team’s crushing innings defeat of England in the first Test at Lord’s.

Nortjé ripped through the heart of the home batting on Friday, taking three wickets in 10 balls at one point, as England slumped to 149 all out in their second innings to lose the Test inside three days.

Nortjé’s average speed in the over where he dismissed the dangerous Jonny Bairstow was 148km/h, making it the quickest over England have had to face at home in the last decade of Test cricket, according to the analytics website CricViz.

“It’s exciting, something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid,” Nortjé told a news conference. “It’s hard work, you have to get yourself up.

“Sometimes you think you’ve bowled the right ball and it just goes to the boundary and then you have your captain saying: ‘It’s a good ball, keep going, keep going’.

“That helped me at stages as well. But yeah, it’s a nice feeling.”

Nortjé, 28, admitted he did sneak a look at the board display for the speed gun, measuring the pace of bowlers’ deliveries, to see what pace he was generating.

“I do, I do, but it’s not a focus to be trying to go quicker or slow or whatever. But it is nice to see when the rhythm is there.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s a lot slower and the speed gun says something different, and then sometimes it feels fast, then this speed guns says it’s slow.

“But when I’m on the field, I just try to execute as much as possible.”

Nortjé’s speed was one of the talking points of the Test victory, but the overall proficiency of the SA seam attack has also been lavishly praised.

Kagiso Rabada was named man of the match for his seven-wicket haul, with Lungi Ngidi taking the vital wicket of Joe Root and the 22-year-old Marco Jansen chipping in with two more near the end of the match.

Captain Dean Elgar said he had always believed his young side could become a formidable team.

“Everything has been a work in progress since I’ve taken over the captaincy but I always felt the core of the group had the basic fundamentals to one day become a world-renowned Test side,” he said.

Elgar said the players had grown in experience over the past 18 months into a winning collective.

They have won eight of 10 Tests — since he took over — against the West Indies, India, New Zealand and Bangladesh.

“They’ve put the individual stuff aside and actually focused on the team.

“I’d like to think what we’ve laid down as a foundation has been pretty true and pretty solid. Our team goals are not unrealistic, but pretty achievable.

“We are a special bunch and we play bloody good cricket when we’re doing well,” he said.

Elgar hailed the batting as pretty sturdy, but labelled the bowling attack, led by Rabada and Nortjé and with a surprise haul of wickets for spinner Keshjav Maharaj, as brilliant.

“It was a pretty special squad performance.

“We haven’t left any stone unturned so far and hopefully we don’t go into a comfort zone ... no, well — I’m definitely not going to let us go into a comfort zone, because I know what complacency can do in international sport.

“But we need to enjoy these moments.

“We did it at a really unique place and it’s special for a lot of guys who haven’t experienced Lord’s before.”