CRICKET: Jon Swift
THE rightful flurry of concern which has surrounded the injury to Brian McMillan is illustrative of the immense pressures on the modern day Test cricketer.
At the heart of the issue which has kept everyone on tenterhooks for the past week, is the fact convenor of the national selectors Peter Pollock has put forward on more than one occasion.
“Brian is vitally important to the side,” is — with variations on the same theme — the way Pollock has typified the role of the big Western Province
But the team will have to do without McMillan’s talents in New Zealand as his stomach injury was found to be too severe for him to take part. Fiery Transvaal bowler Steven Jack will take his place.
The pressures at Test level showed quite clearly in the intensity of McMillan’s play during the historic victory over Pakistan at the Wanderers.
McMillan was banging the ball in with all the heart and fire of gold, proving the very valid point that dropping him from the one-day squad had only managed to get the big man’s anger up.
McMillan took that same intensity directly out of a taxing international schedule into the provincial competitions.
Which leads to the other demands on McMillan’s abilities. Big Mac is just as important a cog — perhaps mainspring more closely approaches his role — in the Western Province machinery.
And there was no possible way that the provincial selectors would have gone into a game McMillan was both fit for and free of national duties. They needed him. They chose him.
Something had to give. And did. For nowhere is the strain on physical limits more sharply delineated than in the business of seam bowling.
All bowlers — at no matter what level — carry the knowledge that injury is going to sideline them somewhere along the line.
It is one of those suppressed subliminal realities which lurk frighteningly under the surface of success.
This has much to do with the unnatural action and sheer sweat and toil involved in sending them down at pace and demands a special brand of stamina and strength.
As a contracted player to both the national side and Western Province, McMillan has done more than fulfill his commitments.
He has, in short, played to the point of breakdown.
Which raises the question of just why so important a member of the national squad could not have been given an easier road before the upcoming tour to New Zealand.
Surely, the needs of the national selectors — and indeed the national interest — should have prevailed and, much as McMillan would have wanted to carry his Test form through in provincial competition, the single Test against New Zealand in Auckland become the priority.
The last thing the selectors, the spectators and undoubtedly, the players, would want is to be wrapped in cotton wool.
But, with Allan Donald and Craig Matthews just coming back from injury, McMillan’s role on the short tour to the Land of the Great White Cloud became even more crucial to the success or failure of the venture.
It really all boils down to one of those arguments which is difficult to debate on either the pro or con side. To play at international level, you have to play on all the rungs leading up to this elevated plateau.
Sometimes though — and McMillan is a case in point — perhaps it might be advisable to pack the ladder away for a week or two.