{"id":495999,"date":"2026-02-22T03:43:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T03:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/495999\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T03:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T03:43:16","slug":"morkels-reignite-battle-of-the-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/495999\/","title":{"rendered":"Morkels reignite battle of the backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s been billed as the biggest match of the 2026 T20 World Cup<\/a> so far is also a contest between two members of the same family as Morne Morkel<\/a> and Albie Morkel<\/a> come up against each other from the dug-out.<\/p>\n

Once team-mates, briefly at the international level and for a longer period domestically, they are now on opposite sides as India’s bowling coach and South Africa’s T20 specialist consultant, respectively and the battle from the backyard could be reignited. There, there was usually only one winner.<\/p>\n

“With Morne being the youngest, Albie and myself always batted first in any backyard game,” Malan Morkel<\/a>, the oldest of the three brothers, who had a brief under-19 career and now works as a coach at one of South Africa’s most prestigious schools, Paarl Gimnasium, told ESPNcricinfo. “So Morne had to bowl thousands of balls at us and when it was his time to bat, we would often say, ‘let’s go for a swim’ depriving him of time in the middle.”<\/p>\n

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The result was that Morne had plenty of practice against left-handed batters, as both Malan and Albie are left-handers, but “never really developed batsmanship because we seldom let him bat.”<\/p>\n

No wonder when the opportunity came up to open the batting for South Africa in a Test match in 2009 (when Graeme Smith had his hand broken by Mitchell Johnson<\/a>), Morne grabbed it with both gloves and earned the nickname Haydos as a result.<\/p>\n

Earlier that year, Albie played what turned out to be his only Test for South Africa<\/a>, also against Australia, but there was no resentment on his part that Morne had surged ahead of him. “They were always supportive of each other and enjoyed each other’s success,” Malan said.<\/p>\n

Albie went on to become a “T20 specialist,” as Malan puts it and developed a cult following at CSK, for whom he played 92 matches between 2008 and 2013. He is a lifer at the franchise and now works in its coaching set-ups around the world, including at JSK in South Africa. Morne went on to have a stellar international career and is one of only six South African bowlers to get more than 300 wickets in Tests<\/a> and was part of the team that lifted the Test mace in 2012<\/a>. The two have been team-mates against India on three occasions at the T20 World Cup – 2007, 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n

Albie and Morne Morkel and Justin Kemp in the nets\u00a0AFP<\/p>\n

Between them, they lived their late father Albert’s dream. “Their love for cricket stems from the exposure we got through our dad being a semi-professional cricket player, school teacher and cricket coach. He played competitive cricket until the age of 45,” Malan said. “We spent countless hours next to the field where he was either playing himself or coaching a team. It was part of our DNA.”<\/p>\n

As similar as their interests were as children, their personalities are vastly different. “Albie was quiet, reserved and a deep thinker but ultra competitive,” Malan said. “Morne was the funny one. We have many home videos where he is always pulling funny faces or performing a crazy dance.”<\/p>\n

Strange then, that the one to crack a joke about their relationship now was Albie. “No, we don’t talk to each other,” Albie said in Delhi, holding a poker face that eventually curled into a wry smile. “My mother is more worried about who to support: India or South Africa.”<\/p>\n

Has mom Morkel made up her mind? “Mom is nervous for them both. She wants her boys to do well,” Malan said. “I don’t think she will wear either a green or blue cap on Sunday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s been billed as the biggest match of the 2026 T20 World Cup so far is also a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-495999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}