South Africa’s specialist batsmen will have to perform more consistently in the tough one-day series and against the competitive Australians
CRICKET: Jon Swift
TO properly quantify the true shape of a Test match, it is perhaps necessary to examine the best of the batting, how comfortable, confident and collected it manifested itself to be, and where that batting emerges from the order.
This is especially true of the 2-0 series victory Hansie Cronje and his men managed against Sachin Tendulkar’s touring Indians. Even more so when you consider the impact the bowlers had on the three Tests.
For India, somewhat sparsely endowed in numbers in this department, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad laboured long, hard and largely fruitfully against the South Africans. These are seamers of great worth and a credit to the fact that they have emerged from a system – and a ground mindset on their particular patch of the sub-continent – that militates against the holders of the new ball.
But, from the look of the way they have been harnessed in the six tests the two nations have just completed, and the knowledge that they will doubtless be called into similar back-breaking service against the West Indians when that series gets underway, Srinath and Prasad are in danger of being bowled into the same variety of doldrums that currently besets Anil Kumble.
Kumble is undoubtedly a world-class bowler, but there is a distinct feeling that he has been called on to turn his arm over far too often in the past year. It showed against South Africa.
On the same tack, it is also worthy of note that Allan Donald was deservedly awarded the Man of the Series accolade ahead of all the other claimants. There can be few qualms about the major portion of the bowling served up. It was consistently good and largely of an extremely high calibre. Of the batting though, there was a far less consistent feel, and it is in this area that the examination must really be held.
With both sides contesting the final Test at the Wanderers given this examination, South Africa were found severely wanting; India proving themselves to be a better combination than their previous two outings in the series showed them to be.
If it is true that the runs must come from the specialist batsmen, then national coach Bob Woolmer needs some introspective thought. The top order has proved, for the major slice of the series, to be of an uncomprehendingly brittle nature.
True, Andrew Hudson did more than enough with the bat at Kingsmead to justify the thinking that he is indeed a class act. Brian McMillan in the lower middle order, too, showed yet again that he is the selectors’ pivotal point; surely a case of slot the big man in and then fill out the side around him.
But it is equally worthy of note that at the Wanderers it took the talents of an emerging all-rounder, picked at present more for his bowling than his ability with the bat, to show up the specialists and save the first innings from looming disaster.
Shaun Pollock’s face-saving 78 came at a time when South Africa had crumbled to 147 for five and were staring down the twin barrels of an Indian attack with its tail up and the threat of being forced into the indignity of a follow-on.
It was an innings of immense value and one that could rightly be compared to the marvellously patient and professional 148 from Rahul Dravid that had been at the heart of the Indian first innings of 410.
Dravid’s knock – aligned to the solid contributions from the elegant Saurav Ganguly – gave the Indians the edge, even when their mainstays Tendulkar and the disdainfully wristy Mohammad Azharuddin showed a seeming disregard for the run- making talents they both own in such abundance.
Like South Africa, the Indians have had problems at the top of the order, struggling to find an opening pair to steer them through the fire of those first 70 runs. They have persevered though and at the Wanderers it came good.
In contrast, for South Africa it unravelled and but for a superb century from Daryll Cullinan, the recalcitrance of the umpires in retaking the field after rain halted proceedings and a fortuitous weakening of the light, could have truly proved calamitous.
When Cullinan and a visibly relieved Donald were made the offer of calling it a day as the pewter sky lowered over Corlett Drive, it must have taken all the self-control the South African pair had not to sprint off the field.
Cullinan’s innings was a thing of rare beauty and was one that he truly owed his captain and his side. For, while it is patently obvious that he is the one most qualified to get the bulk of any South African innings, Cullinan remains a thorough enigma, leaving himself stranded in the no-man’s land of the 40s or 60s so often without reaching that step up and making the landmark so tangibly within his reach, that you have almost come to expect it of him.
This, and the inconsistency of the batters above him on the team sheet, has meant that South Africa have too often had to rely on the McMillans, the Pollocks, the Dave Richardsons and the Lance Kluseners at the foot of that same list to rescue them.
We are blessed with three top-order batsmen of talent in Hudson, Gary Kirsten and young Adam Bacher. But there must surely be some concern about the fact that they rarely managed to operate simultaneously. The ability of at least two of them to perform simultaneously is a matter that needs to be looked at with some urgency.
This aspect has led to a contention – espoused most forcibly by one knowledgeable and vociferous follower of South Africa’s fortunes we shall call Big George to save him from the wrath of his peers – that the South African batting has no bottle.
Nothing really could be further from the truth. They may not be a team of superstars, but this is a side that has continued to guts it out in a way that must surely even engender a smile on the stony countenance of former captain Kepler Wessels, the man who showed his country what fighting it out to the finish really means.
In this, the debt to Wessels mounts, but the time will surely come when heart and heroics both fail and the job at hand has to be completed according to the greater scheme of things that the glorious game demands of its players at this level.
Ahead lies a gruelling round of one-day encounters involving an Indian side bolstered by a home Test series win and the psychological victory at the Wanderers, and newly endowed with the knowledge that the South Africans are indeed human.
It is also well not to discount Alistair Campbell’s Zimbabweans who make up the third side of this cricketing triangle. Having handed the luckless Mike Atherton and his band of Poms a thrashing in the one-dayers north of the Limpopo, the Zimbabweans will be looking to carry on where they left off.
And before the final rolls around in mid- February, shake off any lingering thoughts that the so-called minnows of world cricket are unworthy opponents. Like the Indians, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And, it must be added, have a distinct and emerging pattern to the side they select and the way they go about the business of cricket at the top level.
It is this natural shape to the game that South Africa is seemingly fighting against at present. It is a shape that Woolmer would dearly love to emerge from his charges on the field and perhaps even on his personal laptop computer.
In the coming one-day series and the Tests against Australia which follow almost immediately, the form will surely have to come back into the pre-ordained line or we shall have immeasurable problems.
ENDS