Bruised and battered at Boland Park

As the players completed their warm-ups on Boland Park's outfield while time ticked towards the start of Paarl Royals' SA20 game against Durban's Super Giants on Monday, Lungi Ngidi aimed a kick at Keshav Maharaj's backside.

Ngidi is 1.93 metres tall and has a physique to match. You don't need him kicking you. Especially when you're built to the scale of the 1.78-metre tall Maharaj.

But the kick, which landed firmly and squarely, was playful and generated smiles from all involved. Not least because, despite gametime looming, Ngidi wasn't wearing spikes because his name didn't appear in Paarl's XI.

Ngidi hasn't needed spikes since January 18, when he played against Pretoria Capitals in Centurion. He has missed Paarl's last four matches. That three of them have been at home, on the tournament's slowest pitch, helps explain that.

Indeed, in Paarl on Saturday, when Pretoria Capitals were in town, all the overs in a full innings were bowled by spinners for the first time in a senior men's T20 played outside Asia.

What with Paarl reaching the playoffs by winning that game, there didn't seem much point deploying Ngidi in Monday's 29-degree heat and 26 kilometres-an-hour south-easterly crosswind. And on the same pitch that was used on Saturday.

Besides, in his 11 overs in the competition – out of a possible 28 – Ngidi has taken 1/43. Going into Monday's game, 49 bowlers had a better economy rate than his 11.09. Reasons to pick him, particularly in Paarl, aren't plentiful.

Even so, part of the thinking for using him sparingly is that he returned as recently as January 11 – seventeen days ago – from three months on the sidelines because of a groin injury.

"We know about big fast bowlers like him," Paarl coach Trevor Penney told a press conference on Saturday when he was asked about Ngidi's continued absence. "I lived with Alan Donald when we played for Warwickshire, and he sometimes needed two or three weeks to get back into full flow and rhythm.

"So Lungi is on a programme and he's almost back. We played him in the first few games so he could get some game time. And I'm sure when we go to the Highveld he's going to be straight back in."

Monday's match was Paarl's last at home. They will wrap up their league stage of the tournament against Joburg Super Kings at the Wanderers on Thursday and Sunrisers Eastern Cape at St George's Park on Saturday.

If Penney's theory holds, Ngidi could play on Johannesburg's faster pitch but probably not on Gqeberha's slower surface. Then it's onto the four knockout matches, three of which will be played on the Highveld's quick pitches.

South Africans will keep an anxious watch on Ngidi, and not because of anything to do with the SA20. They are just about to run out of fingers and thumbs on which to count the number of fast bowlers who have been injured this season, and they wouldn't want Ngidi to be the 10th.

Not with South Africa's Champions Trophy opener against Afghanistan in Karachi just 25 days away. Ngidi is in the squad, but Anrich Nortje and Gerald Coetzee, among others, are unavailable.