The new Springbok management style has been a success on and off the field – so far
RUGBY:Andy Capostagno
TWO weeks into tour and still no banana skins. There were a few slippery moments in the first Test, but seven tries to two is a fairly emphatic victory in anyone’s language, and no one is betting on a dramatic Puma revival when the two teams reconvene at the Ferrocaril Oeste Stadium on Saturday.
In retrospect, the biggest threat to the Springboks in the first Test was not Argentina’s scrum, impressive though it was in the first half, but Scottish referee Jim Fleming. South Africa have encountered Fleming a number of times and have yet to come to terms with his interpretation of the rules.
It was pointed out that since Fleming had 27 Tests behind his name he was obviously doing something right. But the wag in the bar probably hit the nail on the head when he said: “He hasn’t had 27 Tests, he’s had one test 27 times.”
The most disappointing aspect of the game was how little Argentina brought to it, and how much Fleming allowed their negative tactics to impact on the flow. As assistant coach Nick Mallett said, “The new rules benefit the attacking side. If a referee doesn’t allow those benefits, you have a problem.”
One spectacular case in point was early in the game when the Springboks carried the ball 30m upfield through a series of three rucks. They got quick ball from each, but the third time Fleming’s whistle went as Joost van der Westhuizen was about to pass the ball to Henry Honiball. The reason? Kobus Wiese had fallen on to his knees at the front of the ruck.
“He’s off his feet,” said Fleming to a clearly mystified Gary Teichmann, and so he was. But the ball was five yards behind Wiese, whose drive had set up the quick ruck ball in the first place. Pedantry and a lack of sympathy for players trying to inject pace into the game were problems which Fleming never came to terms with.
But, if that was the disappointing aspect of the game, the most encouraging was the Springboks’ ability to keep their frustrations in check and to make their most eloquent statements with the ball in hand. Teichmann had much to do with keeping the lid on the simmering resentment of his side and it has become clear that whether by accident or design, the Springboks have found another outstanding leader.
But a great captain can’t win a Test on his own and it was due to a number of exceptional individual performances that the Springboks recorded their emphatic win. Ruben Kruger awoke from a long sleep and played his best Test since the World Cup, just when it was looking as if he might lose his place. Mark Andrews produced his best performance ever in the middle of the line and, after the game, Andre Markgraaff said that he had never seen Wiese play as well at any level of rugby.
And then there was Toks van der Linde. Toks made history by becoming the first official South African substitute. The new dispensation which allows all six benchmen to be used without the need for anyone to take an injury, produced spectacular results. A clearly exhausted Dawie Theron came off after an hour and for the final quarter Toks carried the ball over the advantage line with huge vigour. He probably received more passes during that time than Honiball.
In the old days we would simply have said that Toks has to start the game on Saturday. Now the management are grinning like Cheshire cats because they know that they have a super-sub who can change the course of a match when used in the right way. Toks said: “I was just told to go out there and do some damage.” And he did.
Toks was one of six members of the Test 21, as we will now have to get used to calling them, who flew with the dirt trackers to Mandoza for Tuesday night’s game against Cuyo. When we landed at the foot of the Andes on Sunday lunchtime, Toks said: “Upington. It looks like Upington.”
Not so long ago, such a statement could have been held up as a classic example of Afrikaner insularism, but Toks wasn’t saying he wished he was back home where they don’t speak Spanish, he was just pointing out that in a country where many things are unfamiliar, a few familiar aspects give you a nice perspective.
The next day we found Paarl. The squad and the media were driven into the foothills to a hotel that looks, for all the world, like it is perched in the middle of Paarl’s vineyards. Appropriately enough, since Mendoza is the wine growing capital of Argentina.
The players relaxed around a pool of mountain water, heated in the bowels of the earth to the temperature of a nice warm bath. Later a meal was served that assuaged even Toks’s craving for vleis, and the management chalked up another victory for the new policy of treating players like adults.
Mallett told me on the way back to town that his first tour as a player had been rather different. “I was part of a schoolboy team that toured France and we found ourselves in Paris on New Year’s Eve. We were all looking forward to celebrating when we were told by the manager that curfew was 10.30. 10.30 on New Year’s Eve!
“So a couple of us sneaked out and went to the Place Pigalle to see the new year in in style, and about 2:30 in the morning, who should come round the corner, but the manager. He walked straight past me and never said a word, but when I got back, there was a note under my door saying `See me now.’ So I went to his room and he said I would be on the first flight back to South Africa for disobeying curfew. But the players got together and said if I was sent home they were going too and he wouldn’t have a team to pick, so we got away with it after all.”
It is still too early to tell if the new management style is here to stay. It may be a fragile facade that will come tumbling down as soon as the team loses. But one suspects that Mallett, Hugh Reece-Edwards and the quiet motivator, Carel du Plessis, have enough about them to prop Markgraaff up in a crisis in a manner that will not resemble a knee-jerk reaction. That’s what we’re all hoping, anyway.
@`Reserve squad’Jets in to boost team in India
There will be welcome distraction for South Afirca’s cricketers on ther long and difficult tour of India when wives and girlfriends jet in for a visit
CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar
FOR most of the South African team the highlight of an arduous tour is coming next week. Not the Test series, you may be surprised to hear, but the arrival of their wives and girlfriends for a 10-day stay that will encompass most of the first Test and a few days of the second.
Few subjects prompt more passionate debate among cricket players, administrators and managers than the subject of family “participation” on overseas tours. In fact, in larger countries like India and South Africa, wives can be seen as part of a tour even in their own country when their husbands are flying from city to city, away from home for months at a time.
As easy as it would be to discuss the merits and demerits of professional cricketers having the company of their loved ones when they are working, the debate seems utterly futile. Surely, any self-respecting society must accept that repeated, long separations from a union made for life are not healthy. The only debate, therefore, is the best way to conduct (all be they brief) reunions.
Once again, as in so many other aspects of the game, the current South African squad and the United Cricket Board (UCB), have found the balance and paved the way forward for the rest of the cricketing world to follow.
“The visit really has come at just the right time. Goodness knows how I’d be feeling now if we had another five weeks to go … The prospect of seeing my wife for 10 days puts a big smile on my face. A lot of guys are feeling the same way,” says wicketkeeper Dave Richardson.
The cost of international and domestic flights, as well as a dozen more hotel rooms at $200 per night is substantial but the compromise on expenses reached between the players and the UCB has created mutual respect and reinforced the bond of transparent trust between the team and their bosses.
“A happy team is a successful team,” says Allan Donald, whose wife will be flying in from England to join the fast bowler a few days before the rest of the women arrive on the flight from Johannesburg. “Everybody reacts slightly differently to separation, but basically we’re all going to get a big lift at the same time when our better halves arrive. You’ve got to do as much as possible to keep your marriage, or relationship, together.”
Hansie Cronje, too, is adamant that the team will benefit from the visit and performances, far from suffering, will be enhanced. But the captain maintains his apparently irrepressible sense of humour (“I keep telling the whole team not to lose their sense of humour, so I have to lead from the front”) when he notes an additional bonus on the travel schedule mapped out for his wife Bertha and the rest of the visiting “reserve” squad. “They fly right through the night, arrive in Bombay at 1.30am and then have a six-hour wait for a connecting flight to Ahmedabad. By the time we see them they will be completely tired and grumpy… so they should fit right in with the rest of us!”
Mature, sensible adults should be treated as such, yet in so many ways, international cricketers still tour in the same way they did as 13-year-old schoolboys. They share bedrooms, for instance, which must create tension -even within this extraordinary South African squad that seem never to develop cliques.
Finance is the reason for such corner- cutting and, until the poorer countries are able to afford single rooms for everyone, then the current International Cricket Council guidelines for hosting tours will remain in place. But South Africa have circumvented this problem by organising a “team-room” in each hotel with a fridge full of South African beer, television, video and CD player with hundreds of discs. When one room-mate wants to rest, and the other wants to unwind, this can now be done without unnecessary clashes of personality.
Quite apart from their psychology-inspired mental preparation for this tour, (the twin arts of patience and stress-relief are crucial to surviving the most arduous cricket tour in the world) the practical planning of the squad should be blue-printed for use by every other nation in future.
Yet, far from doing that, the opposition seem determined to take as many steps backwards as the South African team take forward. England, apparently, have decided against inviting wives on any part of their forthcoming tour to Zimbabwe and New Zealand – despite the length (nearly three months) and timing (Christmas and New Year) of the away trip.
“Unbelievable,” says Donald, who knows a thing or two about the England team after his years with Warwickshire. “Trying to get some results by banning players’ wives from joining them, especially on a long tour, just doesn’t make sense.”
South Africa’s crushing win against India’s under-strength Ranji Trophy champions, Karnataka, did nothing to upset the team’s confidence, but all of the batsmen would have liked to spend more time on a wicket that was difficult but not dissimilar to what they can expect in the forthcoming three Test matches.
Lance Klusener’s match return of eight wickets simply confirmed Cronje’s assertion that he would be more effective in first- class cricket than in one-day cricket, but his persistent barrage of short-pitched deliveries will surely not be as effective against the Indian Test team as it was against an overawed and inexperienced Karnataka batting line-up.
Cronje would also have preferred Nicky Boje and Derek Crookes to have bowled more in a “head to head” contest for a Test place alongside Pat Symcox, but the captain was hardly likely to ask Donald and Klusener to take a back seat while they were taking wickets!
The second warm-up game, beginning on Friday against a Cricket Board President’s XI in Baroda, will be crucial for one reason above any other. All-rounder Brian McMillan must prove his fitness in order to preserve the entire balance of the South African Test team. Should he fail to survive the game against a collection of genuine Test hopefuls and international fringe players, then one might be tempted to suggest that the odds on the series will tilt significantly in India’s favour. Such is the value of genuine batsman/bowler cricketers: McMillan is as good as they come in world cricket.