Having an ear for opening people's eyes

CRICKET:In Zimbabwe and elsewhere Dean du Plessis has described Tests, ODIs and Twenty20 tournaments. He has called the action across TV, radio and internet to listening millions and none of them were aware of his blindness. He tells
SEAN KENNYhis remarkable story

ONE DAY in Durban, Dean du Plessis watched his first live cricket match in surround sound. His ears saw everything. He heard the intake of breath and raucous cheer of delight as ball cleared boundary. There was the sudden sharp punctuation of a fallen wicket, the fierce thudding report of bat sending ball for six. Single runs followed a demure clunk.

He sensed the tension in those around him, felt it tauten with their dismay at a wicket lost, loosen with their jubilation at a big hit. He hung on the twists. Then as now the noises painted pictures of the game he loves. It’s a mood piece, a mosaic of sound and movement and shifting fortunes. Of the unforeseeable. The unseeable.

His ears saw everything because his green eyes are glass. Dean du Plessis was born blind in Zimbabwe 33 years ago. There were tumours on his retinas. His whole invisible future lay ahead, a sightless vista. A blind boy learning to read Braille books. Blind school. Blind job.

He was less fortunate than many, but luckier than some born sightless in Africa. His parents, at least, could send him as a boarder to a specialist school in Worcester, near Cape Town. It was the early 90s and South Africa, having been a pariah during apartheid, was returning to international cricket. He turned on a radio in an idle moment one day. A great crackling wave of sound emerged.

“I heard this unbelievable noise, this cacophony of 120,000 people. That initially got me curious as to what was going on, and it turned out to be a cricket match between South Africa and India. I think what really put the cherry on the cake was the 1992 World Cup. Being in South Africa, there was wall-to-wall cricket. Of course, what was really special was the Zimbabwe team narrowly beat England by nine runs. And, if I can use the expression, I haven’t looked back since.”

In the school dorm he would perform mock commentaries, keeping other pupils awake with the imagined exploits of various Zimbabwean batsmen blithely hitting for six from the deliveries of hapless South African bowlers. His impossible dream was forming. If there was cricket on the radio, the du Plessis kid was listening.

He entered his first commentary box in 2001, having impressed the South African cricket journalist, Neil Manthorp, with his knowledge of the game. He described some of the action from a triangular series involving Zimbabwe, India and the West Indies for an online broadcast on the Cricinfo (now ESPNcricinfo) website.

“When I do my commentating, the stump mics are very important. If those stump mics don’t work I can’t do my job. Luckily the stump mics were superb in that series. It was outstanding. I could even hear the players saying stuff to each other, like: “I think Ive got a problem with my boot.” That alone gave me a lot of confidence.

“Obviously you still take a few very deep breaths because you know you’re commentating to millions of people. So I knew I had to be at my very best. And I knew that one mistake, and that could be my one and only chance. Thankfully it went pretty well and the rest, as they say, is history.”

He can’t deliver a ball-by-ball description, but, working with other broadcasters, settled into a role as the second or “colour” commentator. As they did on that day in Durban, his ears serve as eyes.

“I can tell you that when a ball is through the offside, for example, it makes a sharper crack when it comes off the bat. When the batsman plays the ball on the onside it’s slightly more muffled.

“You can tell a lot by the crowd’s reaction. If it’s a half-hearted cheer, it’s one run. Or if it’s a full-on cheer, it’s a four or a six. Bear in mind that I have to work with another commentator.

If he tells me, for example, “good shot. That’s a sweep towards the cover boundary”, I know that invariably a man who’s sweeping towards the cover boundary will only get two runs. I sort of have the dimensions of the field.”

In Zimbabwe and elsewhere his voice has described Tests, ODIs and Twenty20 tournaments. He has called the action across the media of TV, radio and internet to listening millions who were unaware of his blindness. They were all in the dark, and nobody noticed.

He bats away expressions of amazement, a shrug in his voice. He’s a conjurer in reverse, drawing the magic out into the light. Certainly, there are ingredients. A crisp, clear voice, acute sensitivity to sounds, a little judicious eavesdropping, and a brain serving as a vast personal archive of the sport. Suggest his gift is uncanny, though, and he blasts for the boundary.

“I promise you, it’s not as amazing as people make it out to be. Sighted people don’t necessarily take it for granted, but they’re using their eyes to tell them what’s happening. I’m using my ears as my eyes. I’m simply doing what a sighted person is doing, but with my ears.

“I think, because I can’t see, people make it out to be some sort of magical thing almost. It’s not really. You listen to so much cricket, you know, for example, when fine leg drops back it’s inevitably going to be a Yorker because the bowler’s invariably going to double bluff. That’s just cricket common sense.”

Many players could be identified by distinctive sounds. He noticed that Dwayne Bravo, the West Indies all-rounder, tended to drag his feet. England captain Andrew Strauss always muttered, “come on, come, come on” to his batting partner on striking the ball well enough to run. Amusingly he describes Shane Warne as having sounded as though he were constipated when bowling (a new product endorsement possibility for the Australian?).

He has shared a commentary box with the likes of Geoffrey Boycott, Tony Cozier and Bruce Yardley, who himself lost an eye to ocular melanoma. In 2004, he and du Plessis described a match with a single functioning eye between them.

There has been struggle, of course. A blind, freelance sports broadcaster, he is a demographic of one. The path he has set out on slopes steeply upward still. “There are people out there who don’t necessarily want you to be there commentating because they think it’s dumb. They think another man, who’s actually played cricket, should be given a chance to be commentating instead of some blind weirdo. There is quite a bit of pressure, but I like it because it brings the best out of me.

“Even now there’s some reluctance. It’s not easy. Even 10 years later, I’m still nowhere near where I want to be. But I guess you’ve got to spend some time away from the cricket field or commentary box talking cricket over a few beers or glasses of wine. Then, like any human being, people become a bit curious and say, ‘Hmm, let’s see what this guy can do’.”

His blindness is not the only obstacle he has had to overcome. During a regular slot on Zimbabwean radio in December 2005, he was critical of rampant political interference in cricket affairs by members of Zanu-PF, Robert Mugabe’s party. It was a bold act, an expression of raw courage. For the record, he does not now wish to comment on what happened next. In a previous interview, however, he described how he was taken away by two men the day after the broadcast. They sat him down in an air-conditioned room and played a recording of his comments. He was unapologetic.

It was probably a fan belt that they used. It lasted half an hour, and his feet stung like murder.

Now, he wants to leave that in the past. He is hopeful for the future of Zimbabwean cricket, encouraged by the return to the country of many former players as coaches or selectors. What of his own future?

“My biggest hope is to become a full-time commentator. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen in this country. There aren’t enough radio stations and not enough cricket played. The only way it can happen is if I move to another country. I’m not afraid. If I got assurances I’d be all right from an accommodation point of view and financial point of view, I’d pack my bag and be on my way. It’d be a great adventure.”

Talk turns to the Cricket World Cup, which he’ll be covering for African radio and TV. He speaks with authority of the Irish team, how impressed he has been with the O’Brien brothers and at the job William Porterfield has done “directing traffic”. The words flow with easy eloquence.

You forget he has never set eyes upon these or any other players.

Dean du Plessis

Dean du Plessis (33) hails from Kadoma, a small city in central Zimbabwe. Born blind, he has been a cricket commentator since 2001.

As a freelance broadcaster, he has worked for BBC Africa, BBC World, SuperSport, a major African TV network, and on various radio and TV channels in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Acting as a co-commentator, he has described matches involving all the Test-playing nations, including ODIs, Tests and a Twenty20 World Cup.

His delivery has been described as “very smooth” by cricket broadcaster Tony Cozier.

Wired up to the stump microphones, he can discern from sounds how a ball has been bowled or struck.

He also gauges the action by audible crowd and player reactions.

According to Zimbabwean broadcaster Dave Emberton, “he’s unique. On air, you can’t tell he’s blind. Only a circle of cricket followers know he is”.

He lives in Harare where, in addition to commentating and writing a cricket column, he works as a media editor for Zimbabwe Cricket.