Cool cricketer always kept ahead of the game

One of the discoveries you make when you first meet Roy Pienaar - other than his nonchalant demeanour - is that he is not your regular 49-year-old.

The more you learn about Pienaar, the more you realise that "regular" has never been a fitting description of the former St Stithians pupil.

He started his own biltong business at the peak of his cricket career, in 1990, and watched it grow over 20 years. He then sold it to a listed company.

Unlike most men his age, Pienaar spends his week days at home in sandals, Bermuda shorts, and a golf shirt. He's planning his next cycle tour when he's not doting on daughter Kristin, 12, and son Julian, 10.

At 14, while his peers were cutting their cricketing teeth at age-group level, Pienaar was playing club cricket in the Transvaal Premier League.

At 16 he had already broken into the Transvaal B side, then, at 18, Transvaal A, batting alongside Graeme Pollock, Jimmy Cook, Ray Jennings, Clive Rice and Alan Kourie.

With Transvaal dominating Currie Cup cricket in the late 1970s and '80s, it wouldn't have been easy for anyone to break into the "Mean Machine", let alone a pimple-faced laaitie who didn't think much of post-match bonding rituals.

Pienaar learnt this lesson the hard way when he came back from the nets one morning to find his kit strewn across the embankment in front of the players' change rooms.

"I never knew there were reserved spots in the change room. I came in early, changed and made my way to the nets. When I came back, I discovered I had picked Dougie Neilson's spot."

Despite his early promise, Pienaar never quite set the cricket scene alight.

He attributes this to the fact that he was never a student of the game when he began his first-class career, a pair of bad knees - aggravated by an extensive bowling workload for Kent in the late 1980s - and a green Wanderers wicket that was not conducive to batting.

"I only started playing cricket because of my brothers. I was never an avid watcher. I made my first-class debut before I had ever watched a first-class game. It was only after I went through a lifestyle change following a lean first season with the bat for Western Province that my game began to improve."

"I started having knee problems at the age of 10. Later in my career I had to cancel a contract with Kent when my knees couldn't handle the workload," says Pienaar.

At the end of the 1999/00 season, Pienaar concluded a glittering career, having captained SA Schools, SA Universities, the South African Defence Force, Transvaal and Northern Transvaal. He also won two South African Cricket Annual Cricketer of the Year awards, in 1983 and 1990.