The MLC's Saffer subculture

There was something reassuring about Obus Pienaar, miked up for commentary as he spoke from the Grand Prairie Stadium's outfield in the deep, dry and dazzling 41-degree Celsius heat of Texas on Thursday, sounding exactly like Obus Pienaar. You can take the boy out of Bloemfontein, but good luck taking Bloemfontein out of the boy.

Pienaar talked of how there was "so much [cricket] talent" in the United States, and how Morrisville in North Carolina, almost 2,000 kilometres to the east of Grand Prairie, was "close to the mountains and the sea" and "a good place to raise a family". Clearly, the boy is no longer from Bloem.

A cricket migrant for much of his 33 years, Pienaar's first journey was upward in the form of a growth spurt. That helped turn him into a left-arm fast bowler good enough to play 13 matches across the formats for South Africa's under-19 team as an allrounder from January 2008 to January 2009. Stress fractures along the way led Pienaar to abandon pace for spin, all the while carrying his batting ability with him.

Cricket has taken him from his native Free State to South Western Districts and Northern Cape, and beyond to Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Westmoreland, Antrim, Dublin, Belfast, Amsterdam and Wellington, as in New Zealand. This month he has been playing for the Washington Freedom in the inaugural edition of Major League Cricket (MLC) in the United States, where he moved in May 2021.

Pienaar is among 22 South African-born players who have seen gametime in the MLC. A dozen of them are the usual franchise suspects: from Kagiso Rabada to Quinton de Kock, to Faf du Plessis, Anrich Nortje and David Miller. But the other 10 are a subculture all of their own. Besides Pienaar, they are Cody Chetty, Justin Dill, Corne Dry, Andries Gous, Carmi le Roux, Dane Piedt, Calvin Savage, Rusty Theron, and Shadley van Schalkwyk.

Despite where they were born their profiles list all of them as US players. The pioneer among them was Van Schalkwyk, who rerouted a career that wasn't going places in South Africa to the US in time to play in the 2021 edition of Minor League Cricket - the MLC's forerunner.

Theron took his life to America several years before that, but not because of cricket. Rather, he went because of the lack thereof. Having played four ODIs and nine T20Is for South Africa - sometimes with explosive results - from October 2010 to March 2012, he was forced into retirement by knee injuries in October 2015. His decision to go to the US was prompted by a wish to become a teacher. But cricket had other ideas and Theron, now 38, resurrected his knees to earn 23 white-ball caps for the US from September 2019 to July 2022.

The most known member of the club is Piedt, who came through a selection struggle with Simon Harmer to play nine Tests from August 2014 to October 2019. Only to be relegated to the wings by Keshav Maharaj. He made the smart move to the US in March 2020.

Of the rest of the 10, Chetty, Dill, Dry, Gous and Savage all - like Pienaar - played for South Africa at under-19 level. This is testament not to the now threadbare trope of the country discarding too much of its talent, but to it producing more talent than it could exploit to the fullest.

South Africa is not alone in this tendency at the MLC, whose player rosters brim with players from outside the US - mostly Asia. Similarly, most of the spectators at the tournament's matches are, evidently, Asian or of Asian heritage.

If this is the way professional cricket gains a foothold in the land of baseball, offered as a taste of what the people playing and watching used to call home, so be it. For the players, the MLC also offers more money than they could reasonably have expected to make had they remained where they were born.

Players like Pienaar. If you're going to take a boy out of Bloem, it's only fair to pay him properly for his trouble.