To win the Test series in India South Africa don’t just need `good’ cricketers, they need match winners – and Paul Adams fits that description
CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar
A FANTASTIC gamble – or a simple case of common sense. Paul Adams, on one hand, was asked to join the South African squad in India on the strength of a one-innings performance for Western Province against Boland. His first top-level provincial outing of the season. On the other hand, he was, and still is, the incumbent test match spinner, so why drop him when he has done nothing wrong?
The wisdom of his inclusion in the first Test will, by now, probably be known already. But the tourists must take enormous credit for finally destroying the last lingering images of introversion and defence-first, attack-later Test cricket with which they were once associated.
Indian captain Sachin Tendulkar had absolutely no doubt that Adams would play from the moment he was told that the young enigma would be flying into Bombay in the company of the South African selection convenor Peter Pollock: “Did you really think they would fly him over here to carry drinks?”, he replied to Indian journalists.
Pollock, meanwhile, held court with the touring journalists and explained the decision to bring Adams here: “Look at the great West Indian teams of the past, and the great Australian teams too. Examine their approach to Test cricket and you will see that they took to the field expecting to win every match. They picked players who were match winners, not just `good’ cricketers. And if a match winner was also a bit of a risk, then so be it.”
South African vice-captain Gary Kirsten admitted that the pre-match selection meeting had been the most difficult, by a very long way, on the tour so far. But eventually the players’ belief in themselves and desire to create history, had pushed them towards including the left-arm deliverer of googlies and chinamen ahead of the cheerfully vicious pace of Lance Klusener.
The winning habit, and the expectation of victory, is something that takes a long time to arrive, explains Pollock.
“It’s all very well sitting in a lecture theatre listening to a sports psychologist telling you to be positive, but it must start happening as well. For this team it has started happening, and we must give ourselves every possible chance of carrying it on.”
The selection, it appears, was based on one assumption and one very, very old rule that holds as true today as it did when WG Grace uttered the words in the last century.
The first assumption was that the wicket would deteriorate towards the end of the second day, and begin to crumble on the third. By the end of the third day, and then in the fourth, it would literally begin to disintegrate, with the spinning ball tearing parts of dust out of a surface offering nothing reliable at all for the batsmen. Bounce, inevitably, would vary between 10cm and 1,5m. Batting fourth and chasing 150 would, at best, be a 50-50 toss-up between batsmen and bowlers (but probably favouring India if South Africa were batting). At least Adams, the biggest spinner in the Republic, with movement both ways, would even those odds.
The rule, as Grace described it, was: if your top five batsmen can’t score all the runs you need, then don’t bother expecting anyone else to try.
In short, Kirsten, Andrew Hudson, Daryll Cullinan, Cronje and Jonty Rhodes will be placed under enormous pressure, and they will be expected to respond with a strong freestyle and not a desperate doggy-paddle. Of course, with Brian McMillan coming in at number six, there is an insurance policy that Tendulkar happily admits he would give a year’s salary to have in his team
But with the world’s most complete all- rounder occupying the role of third seamer, and not fourth, in this game, his bowling boots will be the most important item in his Test match coffin. The top five batsmen must score at least 300 between them. Accepting that at least one of them will receive a good ball early and will perish cheaply, that means a half century is required from four of them or centuries from two. Maybe, just maybe, someone will even be able to score the double-hundred that has eluded the national side since their return to international cricket five years ago.
Klusener and left-arm spinner Nicky Boje would, undeniably, add a comforting look of depth to the batting order were they to have made the line-up, but, judged purely as bowlers, they are not the best match-winners on current form and in current conditions. Their time seems certain to come, but they must either be judged (and therefore selected) as all-rounders, or they must earn their selection as bowlers and then regard their batting ability as a bonus … albeit an extremely sweet bonus.
“Many people see the contest as a showdown between their pace bowlers and our spinners,” said Tendulkar before the match. So how does he see it? “Err, actually mainly the same way!” laughed an amazingly relaxed looking “little maestro”.
“But we haven’t faced Adams before and I know, after what happened to England, that he is very dangerous when he is bowling to teams for the first time. We must concentrate on him very hard because it is no good working him out in time for the second or third Tests if he has already given them an advantage in the series by then. We have Donald and De Villiers to worry about first, because they can take wickets in any conditions, and then we will have to worry about him (Adams).”
Tendulkar was asked if he would have preferred Boje or Klusener to have been selected in the South African team. He ruffled his hand through those famous curly locks and furrowed his brow, thinking of what the best serious answer would be. But he didn’t think for too long … his mouth was soon split by the equally famous boyish grin that makes grown teenagers weep, and he said nothing. It was a pretty silly question, really, and the journalists knew it. But sometimes the obvious questions bring the best responses.
Surely in South Africa, like every other country that spawns an unpredictable and unprecedented talent (in whatever sport), there must be detractors of Adams. But if they ever need a good reason for his selection after a single night’s sleep out of three before the Test, they will never have a better one than this. Because India would rather have faced someone else.
Two footnotes to the arrival of the man from Cape Town. His nickname, which is somewhat beyond the pronunciation (let alone comprehension) of most Indian cricket journalists, has been explained by the South Africans on a number of occasions. But, alas, he will not be known as Gogga in Ahmedabad or anywhere else over here. He has, however, quickly become known as “the bug”.
And finally, the little man caused considerable muttering and coughing amongst his team-mates and management when he stripped down to his shorts to begin nets on the day befre the Test started. “The fat little bugger …” cried one squad member. True to say and see, Adams’s rise to the top (and subsequent long “rest” there) had, indeed, caused a significant ripple of surplus energy to reside around his middle. There was plenty of mirth … but also a grim determination that it would not last long!