When a tall left-arm seam-bowling all-rounder takes the field for South Africa in the T20I tri-series in Namibia later this month, you'd be forgiven if you thought you were seeing double. The player will look like Marco Jansen, will bowl and bat like Marco Jansen but won't be Marco Jansen because it will be his twin: Duan Jansen.
The other Jansen is in line to make his international debut, four years and eight months after the OG, and when he does, he may prove lightning can strike twice, albeit with some time in-between. "I had to take my own route, if I can say it that way," Duan said from Windhoek, where South Africa will play the opening match of the series on Friday.
And that route is not quite what anyone would have had in mind when the brothers were discovered eight years ago. As teenagers, they caught the attention of none other than Virat Kohli, whom they bowled to in the nets when a visiting Indian side were looking for players to face. The following year, Marco was picked for the South African A side and the year after that, he finished as the joint-sixth highest wicket-taker in the domestic first-class competition. Marco made his Test debut the next summer. At the same time, Duan was struggling for regular game time, unsure how to understand why he lagged behind and perhaps even a little envious of his twin.
"When his (Marco's) career started, it was a bit difficult because obviously the media and people were asking a lot of questions, like you guys now," Duan said, "But I think from four or five years ago to about two years ago, it all changed for me, mentally. It changed how I play, how I approach training, how I saw his games when I watched him, and I asked a lot of questions. If anyone else is in that position, I see it as a positive because you can get a glimpse of how it's run in the Protea setup. Your own mindset should be in this environment, travelling and all that stuff so that's how I set my mindset since that point. Once I did that, I reaped a lot of rewards."
The biggest switch happened last summer when Duan moved domestic teams from North-West to the Titans. At the former, Duan never really found his place, broke his foot twice and eventually flirted with the idea of quitting altogether.
"At that point in time, I was trying to go forward and putting in the hard work but it was the most difficult time for me. I would wake up every morning and say, 'I have to do this to improve,' but it didn't feel like I was improving. I had a psychologist that I saw so that helped a lot as well in spiritual life. No-one knew about it, only me and my family."
The process of seeking help "made me stronger and made me more patient", but he also needed to improve his performances and for that, he seemed to indicate he needed a more competitive environment. While North-West are a mid-table, the Titans have a well-stocked trophy cabinet and have made a habit of producing national players. For Duan, playing there helped him improve to meet the rising tide.
"One thing that changed was the environment I was in, moving from North West to the Titans. That made a big difference for me more mentally than skill-wise," Duan said. "Once I got a set of plans together for how to bowl, how to bat in certain situations, that helped a lot. Bowling-wise, I'd done well but for me, it was the batting part and if I could put that together. At the back end of that one-day cup, it clicked for me: how to approach a certain situation and deal with that pressure and I took that deeper and deeper."
In his first season at the Titans, Duan racked up numbers worth knowing. In the first-class competition, he took 24 wickets in four matches at 18.83 to finish as the joint-fourth-leading bowler overall and that was just the start. He was also the joint-highest wicket-taker of the one-day cup, with 16 wickets in nine matches at 18.00 and he also scored 186 runs at a strike-rate of 96.87, including a run-a-ball 61 to win the final. Those performances saw him named Titans' Player of the Season and CSA's one-day cup Player of the Season at the annual awards.
Juxtaposed with a decent showing for JSK in the SA20, where he took seven wickets in five matches, Duan also got a deal at Gloucester for the Blast and finished as their most successful bowler. The end result of all that effort was a call-up to South Africa's white-ball squad to play in the T20I tri-series and ODIs in Namibia to fulfill a childhood dream.
Perhaps the only downer is that Marco isn't in the same squad as his workload is managed ahead of an eight-Test home summer. The time to take the field together, Duan hopes, will come.
"One of our personal goals is to play together for the Proteas but we know it's not going to be that easy," he said. "If it means we have to come in and out for each other or be on tour together and one sits out and the other one plays, that's fine. But I think if we do the right things for a longer period of time, the chance for us to play together for our country is going to be better than not. We have to walk our own way in that sense where I have to do a job, he has to do his job. And if it aligns in that way, then we're both going to be happy."
Incidentally, the job they do is exactly the same. Both bowl left-arm seam - and quickly - and both bat in the lower-order middle-order which may make picking them together difficult. "I know this and my brother knows this, but we're exactly the same," Duan said. "It just comes down to performance on that day. If you look at it in a broad spectrum, we can do exactly the same job even though we are two different people. He's done a lot of good things for the Proteas. I'm starting my journey here, so I still have to show it on this stage."
The difference is that while Marco's path has been relatively straightforward, Duan has taken a scenic route which has been challenging but "definitely worthwhile now" he said. "In hindsight, I wish I had a time portal thing that I could see into the future with."
Those who are wondering if they will really be able to see double with both Jansen in the same South African side, may feel the same.