Coetzee soars to the skies to bring SA's series back on track

The strapping young man in seat 8D on a flight from Gqeberha to Johannesburg on Monday morning was fooling no-one. His baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes, his headphones were lodged deep in his ears, and the photograph behind the icons on the tablet he held on his lap was of his smiling wife - not of something he had done on a cricket ground.

But we see you, Gerald Coetzee, and we are quietly unsettled. How could this figure of comfortable averageness in a non-reclining, regular seat on an ordinary flight on a random weekday be the hero straight out of Marvel Comics who helped Tristan Stubbs beat India on Sunday?

Coetzee's nine-ball 19* - 14 of them hit in fours and sixes - was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. When the home side dwindled to 86 for 7 in the 15th over in pursuit of a seemingly modest target of 125, they were running out of likely suspects to stay with Stubbs. Then came Coetzee, who wanted to do more than prop up an end. And he did.

South Africa couldn't have won - by three wickets with six balls to spare - without Stubbs' 41-ball unbeaten 47. But he wouldn't have been able to play as freely as he did without knowing he had a reliably aggressive partner. Their unbroken 42 runs off 20 balls was a partnership in more than name: Stubbs' share of 23 runs wasn't much more than half its worth.

Thus, did the South Africans level a T20I series that will resume, rudely alive and wonderfully well, in Centurion on Wednesday and conclude at the Wanderers on Friday. That scenario hadn't looked likely after India hurtled to victory by 61 runs at Kingsmead last Friday. Especially not considering South Africa went into Sunday's game having lost six of their last seven T20Is, and that India had won 10 of their previous 11 and tied the other.

Yet there Coetzee sat on Monday, just another passenger on just another plane going just another somewhere. Nothing to see here. Except there was, because the rest of the squad were also aboard. So were the ICC officials. Along, of course, with a bunch of civilians.

For most of the flight, the players kept to themselves and their devices. But Reeza Hendricks, Keshav Maharaj, Donovan Ferreira and Ryan Rickelton found the time to indulge in a conversation about cars and dogs, which evolved into a conversation about dogs in cars.

No-one bothered or interrupted them because that doesn't happen often in South Africa. Playing cricket better than almost all of your compatriots doesn't make you special. The country's best cricketers are admired from afar and attract knowing glances and nods, and they are unfailingly polite to all who engage them for a quick word. But they are, after everything, a few South Africans among 64-million-odd others. No more and no less.

Not everyone on the flight was South African. Once the place landed, and while the players were still seated, a middle-aged couple of south Asian appearance and Indian accent came striding up the aisle to disembark. She walked in front, her phone held at head height and clearly set to video in selfie mode. She smiled as she went, capturing the faces of the players she passed on either side. The man in her life followed, also in the shot.

After the players were on their feet, Maharaj helped the woman who had been seated directly in front of him retrieve, at her request, three bulky pieces of hand luggage from the overhead bins. She was grateful for the assistance. He shrugged off his display of good manners as merely something one person would do for another.

In the front row, Marco Jansen unrolled all 2.06 metres of himself into a standing position with practised ease and not a little skill. Commercial aircraft aren't built to a human scale. Neither is Jansen built like most humans. We watch him rising up and up and up from his seat and wonder when the show ends. "When I hit my head," Jansen said.

In the airport building, Aiden Markram was seen wearing a metal brace on his little finger. He had been hurt trying to take a catch offered by Hardik Pandya in the last over of India's innings on Sunday. Was it broken? He said he didn't know. Maybe he didn't want to know.

Shortly after take-off on Monday, the captain had announced the presence of the squad on board and said something like "your journey inspires us". It was not a spontaneous gesture. He clearly read from a script - the carrier is CSA's "domestic airline partner". Nonetheless, applause rippled through the cabin brightly.

On Saturday, on a flight on the same airline out of Durban, where India had won the night before, the captain made the same speech even though both squads had already left for Gqeberha on an earlier, chartered flight. This time there was no applause. That's the difference a win makes.