/ 31 May 2012

The unpalatable irony of selection

Kolkata Knight Riders praise Jacques Kallis for taking the wicket of Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman AB de Villiers.
Kolkata Knight Riders praise Jacques Kallis for taking the wicket of Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman AB de Villiers.

Chilli-flavoured ice cream was no doubt given a limp welcome to the menu by gastronomers worldwide when it was first introduced and the United States’ favourite sandwich, peanut butter and “jelly”, was the result of a child’s experiment. Even today, neither seems quite right.

Even harder to swallow for patriotic cricket fans is that two of the country’s greatest players of any era have spent four months of the past two years playing T20 cricket for their Indian Premier League franchises without playing a single competitive game for their country.

Dale Steyn has not represented South Africa in a 20-overs game since May 2010 in the West Indies and neither has Jacques Kallis, if you discount his own testimonial match, the one-off game against India at the Wanderers two months ago that was rained out.

Yet both will feature as prominently in the shortest format at the T20 World Cup in September as they do in Test and one-day international cricket. It is not their fault they have not played an international 20-overs game. Neither chose not to play; they were simply not selected.

Both have also been left out of the “friendly” T20 triangular series with Bangladesh in Zimbabwe from June 18 to 24, and so were Morné Morkel and AB de Villiers. In effect, the national T20 team is being rebuilt with its residents still inside. The inclusion of several new faces, including debutants Chris Morris and Dane Vilas, gives us an indication of what the distant future holds, although we know exactly what the immediate future will look like.

Yesterday’s generation
Cynics will suggest that coach Gary Kirsten and the national selection panel are hanging on to yesterday’s generation, but that does not fit with the axeing from the T20 squad of Test captain Graeme Smith. Kallis is just four months away from his 37th birthday, but anybody who watched the Indian Premier League final last week could not fail to be moved by the way he paced the run chase and eased the Kolkata Knight Riders towards their first title.

“Moments like that are the reason I still play the game, the reason I am still excited and passionate about it,” said Kallis afterwards. True to his personality and history of understatement, the great allrounder preferred not to show how keen he was to be included in the T20 World Cup squad. “It depends on what Gary wants and how he wants to play it, but I am certainly available for selection.”

Steyn, also true to his personality, is more forthright: “It may only be the T20 World Cup, but it is still a World Cup and South Africa has not won one yet. You need to have your best players there. I am not saying I am the best, but if the selectors say I am then I should be there,” Steyn said. The same, he said, had to apply to Kallis.

“Gary knows all about the value and importance of rest, because he played more than 10 years in international cricket as an opening batsman, so he understands the need for mental freshness, not just the physical side. It is particularly hard for those of us who play all three formats, because there is just no break in the international calendar. So ‘regular’ T20 internationals have been seen as a chance to rest us.”

Kirsten is unemotional and philosophical about the situation. “Ideally, we probably would not want them playing in the Indian Premier League, or at least not all of it. But are we going to compensate them with a couple of million dollars each for not playing? No, we are not. Do we want to give ourselves the best chance of winning these International Cricket Council events? Yes, we do. It is what it is and we cannot change it, so let us make the best of it.”

Building for the future
Kirsten is already managing Kallis’s exposure in the one-day international format with a view to the possibility of him reaching 2015 with the conditioning and desire to make the World Cup squad. After October he is unlikely to play another T20 international. Steyn, however, has “hopefully another two or three shots at World Cups” left in him.

The good news is that Kirsten and his former opening partner, selection convenor Andrew Hudson, are prepared to build for the future without taking their eyes off the present. With Corrie van Zyl and Vincent Barnes working with tireless passion on the conveyor belt of talent just below full international level, the Proteas’ on field future has rarely looked brighter.

Twenty-overs cricket, however, will always be held in direct, inverse esteem to what administrators have for it. Its financial muscle may increase to the point where Test cricket depends on it for survival and one-day international cricket is marginalised to the point of irrelevance, if not extinction, but that does not mean the players will love it. They will always love the money, though.

The combination is the new fusion food of the game. Indigestion, certainly, but not terminal.