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Scyld Berry is granted a rare interview with South Africa's star performer

A close-cropped South African country boy. A pace bowler who hits the deck hard. A batsman who hits the ball harder still with the heaviest bludgeon around. As a first impression you might be tempted to think the Almighty created Lance Klusener by taking a couple of planks, sawing them in two, and joining together the shorter pieces.

That would be a mistake, though, or rather two mistakes. For you would not only be underestimating Klusener but also cricket's capacity to sift the thinking from the thoughtless. If Klusener were not a perceptive all-round cricketer, he would not be the leading wicket-taker in this World Cup, or have scored so many runs so quickly (112 off 89 balls) without being dismissed before yesterday's match, or have won three man-of-the-match awards in South Africa's first four games.

After winning the third of these awards, in Amsterdam on Wednesday, Simon Hughes grabbed a few words with Klusener for television and said: ``You're the forgotten man in a sense, a bit of a mystery.'' To which Klusener replied: ``Yah, I like it way.'' And hence the misleading impression he might give of having nothing to say. In fact he is intelligent, decent, polite - and exceedingly shy of any publicity. He says his ambition is to play county cricket for a season or two (''hopefully somebody will take me'' he says, as if any county would not); but South Africa's astute manager Goolam Raja says Klusener's ambition is go through a tour without giving an interview.

Barry Richards, who attended the same school of Durban High a generation earlier, singles out Klusener's ``powers of observation and ability to learn'' as his prime attribute, and this was as apparent in his bowling in Amsterdam against Kenya on Wednesday as it was when he clubbed Sri Lanka and England with his impeccably selective hitting. While South Africa's new-ball bowlers banged the ball in short on the newly turfed and slow pitch, and Kenya's opening batsmen rushed to 66 without loss and raised the possibility of another giant-killing, Klusener stood at fine-leg beside the poplar which is inside the boundary Canterbury-style, and he watched under his sun-hat (always a floppy sun-hat), picking up all the cues, without the need for an ear-piece.

He had not fielded beside a tree before - ``next to cattle or dogs in country districts cricket, yah'' - but he was ready when his turn came. He pitched the ball up having worked out that front-foot driving was difficult, and he mixed in slower balls, which brought him four of the wickets in his five for 21, the fifth coming with a reverse-swinger which trapped Tom Odoyo first ball. These powers of observation seem to be as much a part of his make-up as the reticence about public speaking.

Klusener grew up on a farm on the coast of Natal north of Durban. At the prospect of talking about himself and his cricket he almost writhes with discomfort, but he settles into a line and length once he talks about home, and sugar-cane, and burning off dead leaves before harvesting; and becomes eloquent when he mentions fishing, either on the coast or for trout in rivers, ``when it's important to get away and be by yourself, and have the opportunity not to see anyone or hear anyone for quite a while.''

He played his first cricket in the garden with African boys. ``We played together, all kinds of games. Not rugby, they weren't really into rugby, but football and cricket mainly. I've just got one sister so if I didn't play with them I didn't play at all. I probably did most of the batting but they were quite happy to play along. My father was a big influence on us.'' Was he the one who emigrated from Germany? ``No, two back.'' But when or why his great-grandfather emigrated he does not know.

``As much as you grow up with your family you grow up with your friends as well, and growing up with a nanny who speaks only Zulu and I spent quite a bit of time with her and her children - I ended up learning the language. I can speak it as fluently as I speak English. Then you start thinking the way they're thinking and appreciate the things they appreciate. A lot of westerners forget about nature and take a lot of simple things for granted, like a tap, but a lot of Zulus have to fetch their water from a river. I'm lucky to have grown up with them, but it could equally have been Transkei or wherever.''

He was a boarder at Durban High School from 13 to 18, one of 120 or so boarders out of a thousand pupils, so he reckons. ``You were always encouraged to play sport at school. If you didn't you were almost looked down at, and that definitely gave me a reason to compete and do well. I did bowl at school but I wasn't very big and strong so I thought batting was the way to go, and I tried to get in early.

``When I left school I spent three years doing national service in the army. That's when I played country districts cricket, all over South Africa, but I spent a lot of time in Northern Transvaal and Zululand. It was in country districts that I started to bat and bowl and have fun, that was the turning-point. The standard of cricket is such that you can get away with learning to bowl there.''

He soon became part of an exceptional Natal side, bursting with all-rounders, which has provided five members of South Africa's World Cup squad and Neil Johnson of Zimbabwe; then, after an under-24 tour of Sri Lanka which exposed a weakness, part of the South African side. Only 11 players in the history of Test cricket have scored a hundred and also taken eight wickets in an innings. Klusener did so by his fourth match.

His eight wickets came in the second innings of his Test debut, on a pacey pitch in Calcutta, after he had conceded 75 off his 14 overs in the first innings (some learning curve there). The century came off 100 balls in the return series in South Africa, when he so hammered India's pace bowlers that he went from 75 to 102 in nine balls. In his fifth Test he blocked out to save the game, something else two short planks could not do.

It can be no coincidence that England came back into the Test series last summer the moment Klusener broke a foot at Old Trafford. In Amsterdam Allan Donald remarked: ``If Lance had been there on the last morning at Headingley he'd have knocked the runs off.'' In his vibrant though ghosted autobiography White Lightning, Donald observed how the South Africans became ever more tense after Old Trafford until they ``choked'', and says that Klusener, if he had stayed, would have helped here too for, though generally taciturn off the field, he offers unmalicious wit and fearlessness. According to Donald, he has recently been saying: ``Who's Shoaib Akhtar?''

Next Saturday sees the winner of Group A play the winner of Group B in the Super Six phase: Pakistan v South Africa most probably, a final before the Final. Then Klusener and the South Africans will be exposed to their main weakness, that of attacking spin in the form of Saqlain Mushtaq and perhaps of Mushtaq Ahmed, too, although the legspinner could be preserved for the final. With his 3lb 2oz bat Klusener has been overcome by spin before, but he learns so fast that yet again he might carry the favourites through to Lord's on June 20. By then all of South Africa's opponents will be sorry they have not a Klusener.