game
Tactics in the one-day game are constantly being updated and coach Bob Woolmer is making sure the South Africans stay ahead of the game
CRICKET: Mark Lamport-Stokes
SOUTH AFRICA’S national coach Bob Woolmer has earned a deserved reputation for being an innovative cricketing thinker and strategist.
nnnSince the former Kent and England all-rounder took charge of the team in late 1994, his close liaison with captain Hansie Cronje has resulted in South Africa becoming pace-setters at the highest level, instead of just being content to follow world trends in cricket.
South Africa’s impressive start to the 1996 World Cup, with five successive wins in Pakistan’s Group B, has only served to enhance this reputation.
Probably one of the most attractive aspects of Woolmer’s approach to the game is his emphasis on the positive.
“There’s a fine line in one-day cricket between fear of failure and just having an out-and-out slog and getting out,” Woolmer says. “But, despite that fine line, I’d far rather go the more positive way than the other way, and go back into the shell.
“I think it’s just a perception of thinking: if, for example, you’re playing for your place in the side and you’re worried about failure, then the team will fail. And there are too many people doing that in the game.
“If no one in the side worries about failure … failure’s not important, failure is normal … and anything they do that brings success to the team is a bonus, then I think you have a different mindset to the way you play one-day cricket.
“To fear failure is something which creates failure. So I think another mindset is to get away from that; go and enjoy it, go and play your shots, get stuck in and play the game. And if you get bowled out for 180, then so be it.”
Yet Woolmer is quick to point out that giving unrestrained licence to cricketers to play without the shackles of fear of failure should not bring with it any shirking of responsibility.
“People have to take responsibility,” Woolmer says. “If a guy gets in, plays brilliantly and gets to 70, then we expect him to go on and control an innings. When you’ve got to 70 and are seeing the ball big, you can actually score at four or five an over yourself without a big shot. Because the field’s spread, there’s a one almost everywhere. And, as long as your partner is giving you the strike, you keep going.”
Woolmer admits that South Africa have changed their approach to the one-day game considerably over the past 18 months.
“Since we came back from the triangular tournament in Pakistan in October 1994, it was quite clear that the strategies held by the South African side at the time were not good enough to cope with countries like Pakistan and Australia. We had to sit down and radically have a rethink as to how we played the game, how one-day cricket was played and where we could improve.
“We basically just looked at the types of things to improve and how we could take a leaf out of the book of the Australians and Pakistanis at the time. And, having looked at that, we decided we ought to try and get a step ahead and try to move to another level.”
As Woolmer stresses, thoughts on the one-day game are continually changing and being updated: “I think 18 months ago, we had a mindset that 220 was a good score. But on these wickets in these conditions — and especially here in Pakistan where the wickets are really flat and are good batting wickets — 220 is 30 to 40 runs below par and is 60 below a possible, gettable score … unless someone bowls really well and the team fields brilliantly.
“I remember talking to Intikhab Alam, the Pakistan coach at the time, and he said his team looked for 48 runs off 12 overs — and that was over 18 months ago. Yet 48 off 12 is no longer a benchmark. If you take the Sri Lankan batting against India in Delhi at this World Cup and our effort against Pakistan in Karachi, you’re looking at almost 100 runs off 15 overs. I think that’s probably going too far, but I would think that you’re certainly looking to get to five an over by the 15th over.”
Woolmer points out that the fielding restrictions for the first 15 overs – — with only two fielders out and two in close, catching positions — have created a major change in one-day thinking: “As a result, the opening bowlers aren’t able to bowl people out quite as easily as before because the batsmen have looked to attack them.
“Those first 15 overs are no longer a case of taking the new ball and believing that you’ll take wickets; instead, it’s a question of saying: ‘My God, how can we keep them under 75 here?’ So, you’re almost bowling at the death at the beginning of the game. Maybe not for the first six overs but, certainly, for the last seven or eight, you’re actually having to bowl as if someone’s sloggong you all over the place — and you haven’t got the fielders out.
“Clearly the odd game’s going to go the other way when wickets fall quickly and suddenly the side is 50 for five and … oops! … you’re then in the mire! But, especially when you are chasing, you’ve got to get away from creating the pressure for the lower order so that a chap comes in during the 35th over needing seven an over, and he’s struggling because he hasn’t got long enough to get in, to get started and then to start hitting.
“You’ve actually got to get that guy coming in with 15 overs to go needing four an over and, therefore, you need to put the runs on the board early — – and the fielding restrictions help you to do that. Then it’s just a matter of really batting well up the order.”
Woolmer, forever looking at the wider picture, clearly relishes the chameleon aspect of the one-day game whereby both bowler and batsman become involved in a chicken-and-egg scenario where each tries to stay a step ahead of the other.
“Every game you play, you think of something different, something new,” he says. “It might be very minor — how to play a certain type of bowler. For example, you come across a new bowler and, for a bit, he is dominant over you because you don’t know how to score off him and then you’ve got to work out a way … and off you go.
“Counter-productively, they work out how you play so you’ve got to go back to the drawingboard and see how you can bowl to them. And that’s how one- day cricket evolves.”
From the point of view of the fielding side, Woolmer stresses the importance of identifying the danger batsmen in the opposition conversely it is important to identify the opposition’s danger bowlers and how to score off them at a reasonable rate. As an example, Woolmer refers to South Africa’s excellent batting display in Karachi on February 29 when Pakistan leg-spinner Mushtaq Ahmed went for 54 runs in his 10 overs.
“In Karachi, we identified Mushtaq as being a danger bowler and we also identified that they only played two seamers. Therefore, whoever bowled, still had to have two people catching and only two people out.
“And it made sense not to sit there and just work Mushtaq for ones — it made sense to go after him and Andrew Hudson played brilliantly. He came down the wicket, swept him, swept him again and then laid back and cut him and he went for 16 off the first over. That unnerves any bowler — it doesn’t matter who you are.”
Woolmer highlights another example of shrewd captaincy by the fielding side which emerged during the South Africa- Pakistan game.
“A lot of the sides at this World Cup are still using the method of having one guy who bats through the innings, with the rest batting round him. That’s an old-fashioned way, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not going to work anymore because captains have become adept at moving that bloke away from the strike.
“In Karachi, Aamir Sohail batted superbly against us for his 111, but I think he did it in 158 balls, which means that he actually didn’t get the strike for quite a long time and we kept him away from it. And that’s good captaincy by any stretch of the imagination. Now, if he’d scored 158 off 111 balls, then we would have been struggling.”
Woolmer’s approach to the game is certainly innovative. He is always looking for fresh challenges and believes it is important for the whole team to become directly involved in the “think-tank” policies and strategies which are mapped out for every game that South Africa play.
But, when all is said and done, there is a clearcut logic about the Woolmer philosophy and, so far at the 1996 World Cup, that philosophy has been near flawless.