When the earth trembled under Levi's feet

In this new Cricbuzz series - The IPL Benchwarmers - we talk to players who made it to the IPL alright, but didn't go very far, and were out of opportunities - and reckoning - sooner than they'd have liked.

"Will try (to) remember. Was ages ago," Richard Levi replied when Cricbuzz contacted him to arrange an interview about his experience of playing in the IPL. Many would concur. Levi featured in only six of Mumbai Indians' 17 matches in 2012, his only appearances in the tournament. How much could he have done that was worth remembering? But he has quite a tale to tell - about the special magic of batting with Sachin Tendulkar, the special menace of facing Dale Steyn, and the specially tight confines of MRI machines in India.

Levi might not have IPL memories at all were it not for what he did 15 days after he went unsold at the 2012 player auction. In his second T20I, against New Zealand at Seddon Park in Hamilton, he launched an unbeaten 117 off 51 balls. He swept the fourth ball of the innings - bowled by Nathan McCullum - out of the ground, hammered Doug Bracewell for two sixes in the second over and three in the 12th, and raised health and safety concerns on that sleepy Sunday evening by dispatching an offering from Ronnie Hira down Seddon Road. It was a rabid pitbull of an innings.

The match was the 222nd T20I, but no-onne had hit 13 sixes in an innings before. Neither had anyone reached a century off as few as 45 balls. Because Levi was not out his effort was the world record score. Chris Gayle's 117, against South Africa at the Wanderers in September 2007, was the original international century in the format. But he was dismissed.

Levi's phone duly rang, and after some back and forth involving Mumbai Indians and Pune Warriors, Levi signed for Mumbai for a reported USD40,000: USD10,000 less than his base price at the auction. Next thing he knew his name was at the top of the order for the first match of the tournament, in Chennai. His partner?

"You had to report your movements to the security guard at the hotel, and on the day before the game I told him I was going to the mall," Levi said. "He said, 'That's fine, but after tomorrow you can't do that. You'll be opening the batting with Sachin Tendulkar and that changes everything. We were having a pool session and he swam over and said, 'Hi, my name is Sachin', which is probably the most obvious thing he could have said. He's very analytical about his game. He prepares unbelievably well. But one of the things he didn't tell me was that the ground would shake when we walked out because of all the noise the crowd made."

By then Tendulkar had played all but a dozen of his 664 matches for India and scored all of his 100 international centuries. His immortality had long since been assured. Little wonder the earth itself trembled under his feet. Yet Levi took first strike that day at MA Chidambaram Stadium. CSK's new-ball pair, Albie Morkel and Doug Bollinger, didn't show Levi anything he hadn't seen before. But after four overs, in which he advanced to 20 off 16, Ravichandran Ashwin, then almost unplayable in his home conditions, stood at the top of his run.

"Tendulkar had told me every variation of what Ashwin would bowl in that over," Levi said. Nevertheless, his attempt to nudge the first delivery to leg produced a leading edge that dribbled to mid-off for a single. He dealt more convincingly with three more balls in the over, and garnered a single. Then he plundered two fours and a six off Ravindra Jadeja. Tendulkar sent the first delivery of Ashwin's next over scurrying past short fine leg for one. Levi defended back to Ashwin, then drove hard and straight along the ground but also back to the bowler. He smeared the next delivery to midwicket, also for no reward, and looked up to see Tendulkar approaching.

"Sachin came over and said, 'He's going to bowl the overspinner now'. He did, and I hit it for two. Then he said, 'He's going to try and get you out now'. So I was prepared, and I hit it for six." Not quite. Contemporary reports say Levi fetched a turning delivery outside off stump and slog swept it for six before taking a single past point. Then again, he did suggest his memory might be hazy.

But Levi can't be accused of talking himself up: "It wasn't a pretty innings; I got away with a couple of things. Dwayne Bravo kept bowling slower balls that stuck in the wicket and I kept squirting them into gaps for one bounce fours." Still, he reached 50 before lunging at the 35th ball he faced, a wide delivery from Bravo, and holing out to long-off with 44 required off 73. In the next over Bollinger had Rohit Sharma caught behind and forced Tendulkar to retire hurt with a blow to the hand, but Mumbai lost no more wickets and won with 19 balls to spare. Levi was named man-of-the-match and seemed set for an extended run as Tendulkar's opening partner.

He played in Mumbai's next three games but reached double figures only once, when he made 29 against Rajasthan Royals. In the first of those matches Pune's Murali Kartik - "one of the better spinners in the world" - opened the bowling and needed only two deliveries to remove him. "He's bowling with a brand new ball so you don't expect it to turn, but it did... my back foot went up, stumped."

Then, for Deccan Chargers in Visakhapatnam, came Steyn. In his first over he had clung to a one-handed catch to dismiss Tirumalasetti Suman. Maybe that fired up still further the most fired up of all fiery fast bowlers. "I was told, and maybe they were just trying to make me feel better, that that was the highest average speed for an over in the IPL," Levi said of Steyn's second over. He survived for five balls. The sixth was a cross-seam yorker aimed at his pads that swung away and crashed into middle stump. "It was one of the worst wickets I've played on, and it was a scary over."

Rajasthan's Brad Hogg ended Levi's 29 by bowling him through the gate, and he lasted four balls before heaving across the line to Delhi Daredevils' Shahbaz Nadeem and playing on. Worse was to follow in the field. "I was at third man with Virender Sehwag facing, a place I never want to be again," Levi said. He took the catch at long-on to get rid of the marauding opener for 32, but finished the match with a significant hand injury. "It was never properly diagnosed because I couldn't fit into the MRI scanners - my shoulders couldn't get in."

Levi missed Mumbai's next three matches, and when he took guard again he saw a familiar figure charging at him. "The wicket was so green it might have been the outfield at Lord's in June. Steyn runs in and bowls an inswinger that hits my off pole. First ball of the game. Fine. It happens. But for the rest of his spell he bowls away swingers, and Tendulkar and [Rohit] Sharma keep playing and missing. I sat there in the dugout losing my mind."

Levi kept his head, but he did lose his place in the XI for the rest of the tournament - not least because the squad bristled with James Franklin, Herschelle Gibbs and Dwayne Smith. "I never had any doubt about my game, but because we were Mumbai we had so many options," Levi said. "It was a horse for courses scenario." Still, he remembers his time in the IPL warmly and, at 32, won't rule out a return: "I'd love to - it's unfinished business. I was so naive then."

Levi last played in South Africa in January 2018, and he is less than enamoured with the way the game is run in his country. Since 2013 he has been a regular for Northamptonshire - not as a Kolpak player but as the holder of a British passport. "In South Africa, you get to your 30s and people start wondering why you're still playing. [In England] guys are playing into their 40s. Loyalty is rewarded."

That's not to imply Levi comes across as bitter. Rather, he brings welcome realism and humanity to a game that's in danger of being overrun by furiously efficient athletic cyborgs who are increasingly removed from the world as lived in by the rest of us. How many other modern players would offer: "My body's not built for this; I've had some serious injuries that people don't know about."

Imperfect or not, that body has brought Levi a long way. He scored centuries at under-13 and under-19 provincial level, and his first-class career started brightly at 18: he was prevented from marking the occasion with a hundred, for Western Province, by the declaration that came when he was 82 not out. He put that right with a ton in his third senior innings, and in his next five trips to the crease he had two more centuries. But Levi will be remembered as a T20 juggernaut in the colours of, mostly, the Cape Cobras and Northants. He played 13 T20Is for South Africa, the last of them in December 2012, without getting close to the heady heights he hit in Hamilton. He was in the service of Gemini Arabians in the Masters Champions League in Dubai in January and February 2016 - when he and Sehwag opened the batting with Kumar Sangakkara at No. 3 - and Pokhara Rhinos in Nepal's Everest Premier League in December 2018, when he banked the tournament's highest strike rate, a rippling 196.15. Another of Levi's bruising ilk, Kevin O'Brien, was almost 36 points behind.

How much of that is or isn't fuzzy in Levi's mind isn't important. What does matter, to him, at least, is his clear memory of the shining day in Chennai in 2012 when the ground shook under his feet as he walked to the wicket with the most celebrated player of the age. There can be no forgetting that.

Also read:An unexpected call that halted a cricketer's family holiday in South Africa and took him all the way to Mumbai