/ 16 October 2014

Proteas pitched against the odds

Proteas Pitched Against The Odds

Half a dozen years ago Daniel Vettori climbed the stairs on to the glitzy stage at the annual International Cricket Council Awards night to accept, on behalf of the New Zealand team, the Fair Play award. When the Kiwi captain returned to his table, he was heard to mutter: “I’m sick to death of winning this thing …”

It was true – perennial good guys, always on the nominations list but rarely the winners. That was New Zealand cricket.

Vettori, of course, was the nicest of them all. But, like most good guys in sport, he would have happily traded a large slice of his reputation and popularity for a few more wins, especially a World Cup win.

Now 35 and the only survivor of the first full one-day international (ODI) series against South Africa on New Zealand soil in the 1998-1999 season, the left-arm spinner is on the comeback trail and aiming for a World Cup swansong after playing against the Proteas in the whistle-stop, three-match series which starts next Tuesday and concludes six days later.

Man for man and pound for pound, no team comes close to matching the Black Caps’ record in World Cups. Semifinal appearances are almost expected and yet cricket is classified more as a pastime than a sport in some parts of the country – like the charming town of Mount Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty.

It’s a beautiful part of the world, make no mistake, but as an international sports venue it has barely qualified for “L” plates. Its solitary cricket club has staged just one ODI, a World Cup qualifier between Canada and the Netherlands at the beginning of this year.

It is a town of motels, caravan and camp sites, diner-style restaurants and a fine beach. Kayaking, sailing, fishing and surfing – with a bit of skydiving and golf thrown in – are the major activities that attract visitors to Mount Maunganui. There will undoubtedly be a crowd for the two matches against South Africa, but the majority will have driven from Auckland or nearby Hamilton (which hosts the third match), or they will be there out of curiosity rather than fanaticism.

Crowd size and “atmosphere” have tended not to matter in series between these teams, most of which have generated enough heat to warm the few thousand blanket-wrapped spectators who witnessed the three previous ones in New Zealand.

Destabilising
Vettori was still a teenager when Lance Klusener hit the last ball of the fifth match from Dion Nash straight back over the bowler’s head for six to win by two wickets in 1999 – and, with the sixth match washed out, the tourists clinched the series 3-2.

Four years later it was a very different story indeed. Captain Stephen Fleming infamously ripped into a young Graeme Smith, unsettling the captain and destabilising his team. Having won the first game, the Proteas were gradually but ruthlessly picked apart, disturbed as much by the weather as anything else, which reached its nadir when the fourth of six matches, in Dunedin, was washed out – by sleet and snow –in temperatures that plummeted to a single degree.

There was little appetite for the game when it was replayed on the reserve day and the series plunged to even further depths when the tourists crashed to 119-9 in the final game, in Napier, only to be rescued by a career best 42 not out by number 11 Makhaya Ntini. Strange, but true. They still lost the match and the series 5-1.

Seven years later, in the 2011-2012 season, AB de Villiers was making his captaincy debut and led from the front with an unbeaten century in the first match to put the Proteas on course for a 3-0 win. It was the start of the De Villiers-Hashim Amla dynasty, as the bearded one contributed 92 and 76 in the second and third games.

But, whereas Black Caps teams in the past have all contained two or three stars among a majority of honest triers, the current XI may be their best ever.

Captain Brendon McCullum and senior batsman Ross Taylor share more than 350 caps and 14 centuries and are proven match winners, as is 24-year-old Kane Williamson, whose career best 145 not out was made against South Africa in Kimberley several years ago when the tourists won their only series to date away from home.

There is an embarrassment of riches in the all-rounder department with Jimmy Neesham, Trent Boult and Tim Southee capable of rapid runs in the lower order while Corey Anderson is the genuine beast, happy batting in the top order and bowling at any stage.

Fierce reputation
At just 23 years old and with just 12 caps to his credit, Anderson has already earned a fierce reputation after blasting the fastest-ever ODI century, from just 36 deliveries, against the West Indies in another holiday town, Queenstown, at the beginning of the year.

Mitchell McClenaghan is a left-arm seamer with the happy habit of taking regular wickets (48 in just 22 matches is a remarkable strike rate) and 35-year-old Kyle Mills has improved with age and remains one of the most economical seamers in the world.

If Vettori’s fragile body rebels again, Ish Sodhi and Nathan McCullum provide adequate cover with leg and off spin respectively.

When De Villiers said on arrival in Auckland on Wednesday that New Zealand were “among the favourites” for the World Cup to be held in New Zealand and Australia in February and March, he wasn’t ingratiating himself with his hosts. He meant it. And, when he said he was expecting “an extremely tough and competitive series”, he meant that, too.

There are five more ODIs against Australia to follow these three but this is no hors d’ouvre.

Anybody who doubted the veracity of the Proteas beating Zimbabwe and a rusty Australia in August will gain a very clear idea of how good De Villiers’s team really is over the next week.