'Prison guard job made me tough'

Kolkata: The iceman under pressure. That was how Charl Langeveldt was known among his teammates in South Africa.

He was continuously overlooked for a place in the first XI for the Knight Riders in the first 13 matches in the second edition of the IPL in South Africa. Hard to digest for the team that had finished at the bottom of the list. But Langeveldt had no problems. Excerpts from a phone interview:

Gulf News: You had excelled on the very first opportunity you had as a player for the KR?

Langeveldt: Well, I was prepared to do well whenever the opportunity knocked at my doorsteps. I practiced hard, kept myself ready. Knew that the opportunity could come at any moment.

That I could do what the team was looking for is good for me. But it's really sad that we had to go out without being qualified for the semifinal.

What are the reasons that the Knight Riders fail to do so?

That's for the experts to find out. We had lost a few close matches and we had finished each of them on the wrong side.

In fact, three matches were decided in the last over. It would have been different if we had won those close matches. It was a good team and we all were keen to perform well. But somehow, we could not win matches.

Did you become mentally tougher because of the stint at the Drakenstein prison, working as a warder?

In terms of becoming mentally tough, it is the best job to have. It is one of South Africa's hardest prisons.

So, what were the lessons you learnt from there?

It taught me to be brave. You may be scared sometimes, but there were no ways you could have shown that to the prisoners. The fights break out many a time.

You have to be among them then, without thinking about any other thing. Need to stop that immediately. And that had taught me to work harder than others, too.