Pat McDermott : Cricket
Australia in Australia are, as any touring team who has visited the home of sledging, the hand-held frosty and unremitting competitiveness on the field of play will tell you, remains a cricketing journey beyond the reach of the faint-hearted or the foolhardy.
And while Hansie Cronje’s South Africans approach their 11-week sojourn Down Under with the knowledge that they can indeed bat and bowl themselves to victory on the Indian sub-continent, beating Mark Taylor’s Aussies is a different level of sporting endeavour.
It is perhaps germane at this point to look back at the heroics of four years ago in this respect and examine the make-up of the South African side which left on Wednesday for their date with the uncrowned world champions of the game.
Then, Fanie de Villiers was the undoubted lynchpin of the drawn series, scattering Aussie wickets before him in that epic victory and giving the tourists a human face by using his now famous radio- controlled model bakkie.
This time De Villiers sits it out at home as Makhaya Ntini gets the nod as a member of the South African seam attack. Roger Telemachus was the first choice, but after he pulled out Ntini was drafted in. It is a choice which has not been greeted with overwhelming approbation and – in some quarters – DeVilliers has been portrayed as the wounded party.
Much has been made of the young bowler’s colour as having played a major part in his selection. It is an observation which is both uncalled for and unfair. Ntini has served his time in the provincial competition, played for the emerging South African side without demonstrating that he is anything but what he claims to be, a bowler who wants to scale the heights.
It must also be said that the world’s most glorious game relies on the feeding in one end of young blood and the phasing out at the other of the veterans. In this, Ntini represents a taste of the future. Whether he manages to grasp the nettle offered him as a cricketer, remains in his own hands. But taking him before De Villiers is less of a gamble than the armchair cynics would have you believe.
No one would argue that Vinnige Fanie’s huge heart does not beat as strongly as it always did, his studied and cerebral use of the ball after being called up as a replacement for the one-day side in Pakistan would make any hint of this a mockery of reality.
But it is debatable that, with a pace battery of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener and Brian McMillan, whether De Villiers would make the Test side. Weighing against him is the fact that Donald is without peer and that McMillan, Pollock and Klusener can be counted as exceptional all-rounders. De Villiers would have slotted in at number five in this imperial pecking order, no matter his claims as a bowler. For, sadly, the old order doth change, regardless of sentiment.
Four years ago, De Villiers was a matchwinner. It does not necessarily follow that this is the case today. In this regard, the same holds true for the batting talents of Daryll Cullinan, who was turned on the wrist of Shane Warne from being one of the world’s most elegant strokemakers into a quivering shadow of his true potential.
Cullinan deserves every ounce of credit available for forcing his way back from a slough so deep the light must have seemed an eternity away. Yet he again travels to Australia with the expectations of his team which look to him to get the runs that will keep the snarling Aussies at bay.
It is, as the current vernacular would have it, a big ask. Cullinan comes off a mediocre tour of Pakistan – where, admittedly, all the umpiring decisions did not exactly go his way – to face down his nemesis and his memories of past humiliation. He has also to live down the less than savoury slagging of a member of the touring media, for, as reasonable as this mayhave seemed to Cullinan at the time of the incident – and the verdict on why he did what he did must remain open – it is something that will live with him as much as will the record of his capitulation to the wiles of Warne.
The enigma that is Cullinan is perhaps encapsulated in that blow-up. He is an inward man, a loner and a thinker on the game. He also owns an almost poetically pure talent for making strokes that are at once effortless and deadly. But equally, he can disappoint as easily as delight, drop seemingly simple catching chances as quick as snap up some superb slip opportunities. Yet he remains a cricketer with that special, in-built magic which is gifted to so very few.
It is a gift so rare that it needs constant nurturing and safeguarding. Cullinan, for all his propensity to fade at times like a blossom before the gale, is a priceless asset in many ways. The sheer personal force of playing under Cronje has surely helped him. So, too, the constant mother- hen protectiveness of coach Bob Woolmer. In Australia, all this will count for nothing if he does not make runs.
With young Hershelle Gibbs reinstated to the South African party after missing out for Pakistan, Cullinan must know this more keenly than anyone. Gibbs, like Telemachus, represents the future of the game for this country. And, after four scattered and largely unsuccessful Tests and the owner of an average just nudging past 15 at this level, Gibbs will be equally aware that, should Cullinan not produce, he will have to stand in and do so.
More especially since Gibbs has felt the rough-end of the national selection process first hand. In many ways, he has been poorly treated as the heir apparent to the pivotal spot in the top of the South African batting. Gibbs has been shuffled up and down the order, yo-yoed in and out of the side. It has been a hard start to his international apprenticeship and far too early to give hasty judgment on what should be a long career at the top.
The same holds true for Mark Boucher, there to back up the evergreen Dave Richardson on what could very well be the long-serving wicketkeeper’s last tour. Boucher is perhaps lucky to have got the nod ahead of the in-form Nic Pothas – and Pothas has shown that he is not going to give up without a huge fight – as the second wicketkeeper on tour.
True, Boucher was called to Pakistan when Richardson did the almost unthinkable and injured himself and had an undistinguished debut where he scored six in the rained-out second Test. So he is the man in the saddle. But the national selectors are on record as saying that they have not forgotten either Pothas or young Paul Kirsten in the search for a successor for Richardson.
Boucher has much to prove on tour and a pace to go before his slot in the South African side can be cemented with any real confidence.
But then our last tour to Australia showed that, given the chance, the younger players can succeed. It was the making of Gary Kirsten as an opening batsman no selector would hesitate to have. A gutsy fighter who never lies down and is the ideal foil for the emerging talents of Adam Bacher as the men to face off the new ball for this country.
It also brought to the fore at international level the signal talents of Cronje as a captain to be respected and admired. For many he was considered a callow youth when he assumed the mantle of leadership from Kepler Wessels. That notion he hastily dispatched by blending the considered and unforgiving relentlessness of Wessels with a brand of seasoning drawn from his own adventurous nature. It is a recipe that has worked admirably for the man and the country he leads in both victory and defeat.
Perhaps all of Ntini, Gibbs and Boucher will show on this trip. Perhaps they won’t. But then in four year’s time, we will all be able to sit and judge the patterns of what this tour will add or subtract from the vast fabric of cricket, without the pressing needs of the present.