Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – At the ripe old age of 39, Boland-born Claude Henderson continues to be a weapon of mass strangulation, if not always necessarily destruction.
Henderson, the left-arm spinner capped by South Africa at both Test and ODI level – although he last represented his country some nine years ago – played two pivotal roles on the same day on Saturday as underdogs Leicestershire clinched the Friends Life T20 title at Edgbaston.
First the former Cape Cobras stalwart was entrusted with the solitary over in a nail-biting semi-final “eliminator” against Lancashire after the sides had ended all square.
Former England player Vic Marks, writing in The Guardian, noted: “Both sides gave it (the lone over) to ancient left-arm spinners.”
Henderson, despite being thumped for six off the first delivery, kept his cool to eventually concede 13 runs, and then Lancashire’s Gary Keedy, not much younger than his counterpart at almost 37, could not match the South African’s economy as Leicestershire advanced to the final on the three-match occasion.
He was then hugely to the fore once more – bowling “impeccably”, according to Marks – in conceding fewer than three runs to the over in his full stint of 4-0-11-0 in the final against Somerset, featuring two SA-born players in Alfonso Thomas and the sometimes England wicketkeeper Craig Kieswetter.
Thanks in no small measure to Henderson’s throttling job, Somerset could only reply with 127 for nine to Leicestershire’s 145 for six, and went down by 18 runs.
Both Leicestershire and Somerset thus earn passages to the Nokia Champions League Twenty20 (qualifying phase) in India shortly, where South Africa’s representatives are Henderson’s old franchise the Cobras, plus the Warriors.