It’s a relief that Hansie Cronje’s hand injury isn’t serious because the South African team needs his inspirational leadership as they go into a tough season
CRICKET:Jon Swift
IT IS a tough enough task which faces the national cricket team this summer, and the news that skipper Hansie Cronje starts the international season less than fully fit makes that task even tougher.
Thankfully, Cronje’s injury is nothing more serious than a strained ligament in his left hand, but it does raise the thought that the South African cricket side has relied as heavily on Cronje’s presence as on his cerebral yet joyous brand of captaincy.
It is hard to believe that Cronje has only just turned 27, so great has his on-and-off- field maturity showed itself to be.
It has been noted more than once over the past few seasons of this country’s journey back from the Outer Hebrides of the days of isolation that the national side has always leaned firmly on guts and determination. And while there can be no question that the South Africans will always be a difficult team to beat, it is as a team that they have played the game rather than as an assembly of individual stars.
One would tend to question parts of that assumption. We have, in many areas of the game, individuals to match if not better the names the rest of the world can offer. But in one area the argument remains a very valid one.
They have, in analysis, continued to provide the unassailable truth that cricket, imbued though it may be with a vast array of skill essential to playing the game at top level, remains a team effort.
In this respect, we have been extremely lucky in being able to call on the experience of first Clive Rice, then Kepler Wessels and now Cronje.
Rice, one still feels, got a raw deal after leading the team out of isolation. But it was Wessels, regardless of what his critics continue to say, who single-mindedly drove the side to new heights.
Yes, he had a dour and unspectacular captaincy style. But you cannot deny his fighting abilities. Or, for that matter, the spirit and self-belief he hammered into a group of players, many of whom had never been further north than Centurion Park or further east than St George’s Park.
Along with him went Cronje, captain of Free State at 21 and learning from Wessels every step of the way. He embraced all that was good in his mentor … and then grafted on to that a youthful exuberance and sheer inner feeling for the game that marked him as something special when the mantle of leadership passed to him.
What all that leads up to is the fact that, while we have a wealth of young talent just bursting to come through, there is no one at present ready to take over the reins from Cronje at the helm.
Craig Matthews is the vice-captain and a vastly experienced skipper at provincial level, and only the foolish would begin to believe that he has no capabilities as a skipper. But there is the nagging thought that, as one of the veterans of the team, the opportunity leading to the happy circumstance which elevated Cronje to the hot-seat so young is not evident in this case.
Doubtless Matthews will be the man to lead the South Africans in the ”one or two games” Ali Bacher is confident is all Cronje will have to sit out on the tour to Kenya which starts with the hosts playing would champions Sri Lanka in Nairobi this Saturday.
This means that Matthews will lead the side onto the field against Pakistan on Sunday and probably once again against Sri Lanka next Tuesday, without any shadow of doubt, the two toughest games in the quadrangular tournament.
Should Cronje’s problems persist, there is also the looming spectre of a gruelling tour to the Indian sub-continent which follows just a week after the end of the Kenyan safari on October 7.
This starts with an unenviable round of six one-day internationals in a triangular series involving India and Australia, with the possibility of a seventh should the side make the final on November 6. And then straight into a three-test series against the Indians, with matches at Ahemadebad(check??), Calcutta and Kanpur to think about with only a week’s break before the Indians arrive in this country for a mirror image series.
There is, given a glance at this arduous schedule, some room for fervent prayer that Cronje’s injury is as slight as the authorities say it is. We need him as a player… and even more so as a captain.