As India struggle to find form, the whole South African team has contributed to a great winning percentage
CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar
‘CAN India stop the SA juggernaut?” intoned the local daily newspaper in Rajkot on the day before South Africa’s third game against the host nation before the visitors’ penultimate match in the round-robin phase of the Titan Cup. It was a hopeless plea, pissing against the wind, to use the Australian vernacular. South Africa have shoved the ”law of averages”, so long the saviour of millions of bookmakers’ souls, back down their throats.
”Even the West Indies,” confirms Fanie de Villiers, ”never came close to matching the South African winning percentage. At the height of their dominance their best winning average was 67%. We are currently averaging over 95% of wins.”
The Indian media has for many years, like the bookmakers, relied on the law of averages to balance their losses. Significantly, no one spoke about one-day cricket being a lottery in the early 1980s when the Indian side was good enough to beat any team in the world – and good enough to win the World Cup. All- rounders like Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev, Mohinder Armanath, Madan Lal and Roger Binny gave the team such depth that options were never limited and no single player carried a greater burden of expectation than any other.
Observers are rightly convinced that the boy- genius Sachin Tendulkar is becoming paralysed by the yoke around his neck. Only former captain Mohammed Azharrudin has the ability and experience to share the burden of scoring India’s runs but, so far, the damage has been done before, or soon after, Azhar’s arrival at the crease. None of this, quite rightly, bothers the South Africans but you can bet your house on the fact that they know exactly what is going on.
”Their mental attitude is all wrong,” says Allan Donald. ”I can’t believe they didn’t put Sachin at number three, or four, for one of the games against us. He seems to think that he would be hiding, but he doesn’t realise that we would then be thinking ‘shit they’ve still got Tendulkar to come …’ At the moment India rely way too much on him, and that makes it easy for the opposition to target the heart of the team.”
As much as India’s heart is open, South Africa’s is completely hidden. It is impossible to target the main area of strength or the main area of weakness, for the identification of either is the first step towards creating a winning strategy. The great Australian former captain, Ian Chappell, declared after South Africa’s opening brace of wins over India and Australia that ”Gary Kirsten must be stopped if either team is to upset Cronje’s men”. Kirsten failed in his next two matches, yet Daryll Cullinan scored 106 and 71 not out.
Jonty Rhodes, man-of-the-match with a vital 54 in the fifth victory, says simply: ”We dovetail. It’s a simple strategy … one of the top four batsmen aims to bat through 90% of the innings. But the guy at the other end must support him by taking a few risks on his behalf. Nobody is selfish. If a guy becomes well set, and is poised to go right through, then the batter at the other end must aim to take the pressure off him by picking up boundaries when they are needed.”
This concept is alien to the transitional Indian team who are so desperate to secure their place that risk-taking is the last thing on their minds. Witness opener Saurav Ganguly scoring 50 off 104 deliveries when India were chasing South Africa’s target of 250. At the same moment it was an innings that kept him in the team yet lost that game as surely as if he had made 0 in 100 balls.
One-day cricket may be a batsman’s game (every player who has ever bowled a ball for South Africa will tell you that) but surely it is a mistake to believe that Kirsten, Hudson, Cullinan, Cronje and Rhodes are playing the major role currently? Consider the following: while every supporter, writer and broadcaster was overtly aware of Kirsten’s extraordinary world record for the highest number of one-day runs in a calendar year, how many people were even aware that Allan Donald broke the bowlers’ equivalent during the Titan Cup? Only a handful of bowlers have ever averaged over two wickets per match in their one-day careers (Wasim Akram heads the list with 2,1 wickets per match and Waqar Younis has a fraction over 2). Donald, in his last nine games, has taken 29. In the year to date (not including Friday’s final league match against Australia in Guwahati) he has taken 49 wickets in 18 games. That is the finest strike rate that this form of the game has ever seen.
Even less celebrated are the exploits of Fanie de Villiers who comfortably heads the list of current players conceding fewer than four runs an over. In fact, it is a very short list – three. Of fast and medium-paced bowlers, Australia’s Glenn McGrath concedes 3,9 runs an over, his teammate Paul Reiffel goes for 3,85 and Fanie costs a mere 3,4 runs an over. Against India in Rajkot he bowled his first six overs for eight runs and eventually conceded 19 runs in nine overs.
De Villiers makes an interesting point: ”Take the last 250 one-day internationals played around the world, and analyse how many hundreds, fifties and four-wicket hauls there have been. Then, just for interest’s sake, count how many times a bowler has conceded less than 30 runs from his overs.” That De Villiers conceded less than 20 (albeit from nine overs) was rarer still. Much, much rarer than a half-century. And if only three quick bowlers concede less than four runs an over, the number is only slightly greater (five) amongst slow bowlers. Pat Symcox, needless to say, is amongst that elite group.
When South Africa beat India in Kajkot for the third time the local press castigated the Indian team for not ”taking advantage of an under-strength SA side”. But judging from the performances of Herschelle Gibbs and Lance Klusener, Cronje is handicapped only by their lack of experience – most certainly not by their lack of ability or talent. And as for the left-arm spinner Nicky Boje, he appears at least the equal of off-spinner Derek Crookes, and they are all more than useful batsmen.
And just like the Indian side of the early 1980s, the current South African squad contains seven players regarded as all- rounders (Cronje, MacMillan, Boje, Crookes, Klusener, Symcox and Richardson). This batting depth may not have been needed or tested yet, but the fact that it is there gives great heart to the top clutch of specialist batsmen.
So, to the question that every cricket lover in India has been asking – ”How do you stop the SA juggernaut?” – oddly enough, De Villiers provides the best clue. ”We win 75% of all our matches in the first 16 overs of each innings,” he states.
The answer, then, is to make sure De Villiers is not so economical and that Kirsten and co do not add 80. How to do that is another story altogether. Until the answer is found, the morning-after-the-day-before headlines are likely to stay the same as they were in Rajkot’s daily paper: ”SA juggernaut carries on!”