As the Australian batting gets better in the run-up to the first Test, the need for more than one of South Africa’s specialist batsmen to make big scores increases
CRICKET: Jon Swift
THE Austalians will always be this country’s biggest rivals on the cricket field. There is, quite simply, no side the South Africans want to beat more – coach Bob Woolmer has spelt this out more than once.
And, with the first Test at the Wanderers a little under a week away, Woolmer will be steeling himself and his side for the looming three-Test series. Woolmer and captain Hansie Cronje have a number of problems in getting the balance right against a side whose recent record is less than the Aussie public would like but which has been given an opportunity to bat themselves into form.
It is one of those ironies of modern professional sport that it is often better to play away from home than to perform in your own back yard. Certainly this must be true for Mark Taylor’s tourists.
In South Africa, they may not be the first choice as crowd favourites and their reputation for turning sledging at the crease into an art form has not always endeared them to our packed terraces.
But then there is a distinct feeling that Taylor has done much to blunt the harsher points of Australian play and there is no Merv Hughes to wave a threatening bat at the local yobs on this tour. Even the ultra-competitive Shane Warne is showing a clean-cut image and saying some diplomatic things.
We shall have to see if all this continues once the last of the warm-up games – a one- dayer against a Transvaal Invitation XI at the Soweto Oval next Tuesday – is out of the way and the real stuff begins in earnest.
With doubts over the match fitness of Brian McMillan and the growing confidence of the Australians at the crease, Woolmer will have to do some hasty rethinking. If the South Africans could not regularly blunt the front end of a weakened Indian attack in winning both the Test and one-day series just completed, there will be more than a few headaches in the weeks to come.
It is a case of not having more than one of the top order firing at once. Any combination of Andrew Hudson, Gary Kirsten, Adam Bacher, Daryll Cullinan and Jacques Kallis are capable of getting lots of runs on the board.
But too often it has been left to one of them – and too often for comfort a batsman like McMillan or Lance Klusener lower down the order – to do so. Cricket is, as Cronje is so fond of saying, a team game. It means everyone has to contribute.
We are tending to leave too much to our bowlers and placing a huge reliance on the aggression and speed of our fielders.
And, while on the subject of fielders, Jonty Rhodes must again be strongly in the frame for a Test recall. True, he does not bowl, but anyone who could have come close to that full-blooded cut from Sachin Tendulkar, let alone take what must be the most spectacular catch for several decades, while beginning to find the runs coming again at the same time, deserves careful consideration.
For it is all about runs on the board. Australian captain Taylor has started getting them again after a miserable run with the bat in the Frank Worrall Trophy series against the enigmatic West Indians. He has had none of the barracking of the Aussie crowds or been pilloried in the press and this has surely done much for his peace of mind and confidence.
Mark Waugh’s century against Boland this week and the runs gathered in quick time by Matthew Hayden and Matthew Elliot means that the Australians have the nucleus of a batting order that runs deep and strong.
Taylor is also happy with the pace and bounce of the wickets the tourists have played on thus far, something the Indians never truly came to terms with.
It promises to be an interesting series between the old rivals and provide a far better benchmark of this country’s position in the overall order of Test cricket than the series against the disarrayed Indians or any artificial rankings.
And, no matter which side eventually prevails, it will be a tough few weeks.