Neil Manthorp : Cricket
South Africa’s coach Bob Woolmer is getting closer and closer to achieving his “dream team”. “If I could I would have all the all-rounders in the one-day side. Why not? Ten bowlers and 11 batsmen able to adapt to different requirements. The more options the better. The more bowling depth the better and the deeper the batting goes, the better.”
Whatever people may have said about Woolmer, no one has ever said he’s stupid when it comes to cricket. Accept, then, that he is using hyperbole, slightly, to help make a point. As the game changes, as gentlemen become cricketers and cricketers become athletes, there is less and less of a case for “specialists” in the game.
Lord “Fotheringham-Smythe” used to bat because he was too stout to bowl and used to tire in the field. Harold Larwood used to bowl because he was used to “bluddy ‘ard wurk in t’mine” and he was used to not complaining.
Seriously, batting and bowling were class- orientated hobbies for a century or more. If a gentleman did bowl, he would invariably contrive some variety of artful spin rather than risk perspiring into his fresh, cream flannels.
Just in case you think that ended with the Douglas Jardin/Harold Larwood era, look at England as recently as the 1980s. There were exceptions, of course, like Mike Gatting who came from an honest grammar school background, but mostly David Gower’s public school accent and elegantly flowing willow symbolised the divide between the batsman and the toiling , sweaty bowlers with counties accents.
South Africa, too, had different classes of batsmen and bowlers, aside from their ability. The point is that now is the time to merge. It has become almost a prerequisite in the South African side to have a second string to your bow. Specialists have their heads on the block the moment someone else arrives with a similar amount of talent in their field. The first two victims of the South African quest for “options” in the one-day game are Adam Bacher and Herschelle Gibbs.
Ironically, both have had their moments with the ball in recent seasons and, at slightly different times, were considered to be “contributors” with the ball. Gibbs, a bit bizarrely, finished top of the bowling averages on the South African A tour to England two seasons ago after returning figures of 2-14 from a handful of overs. Bacher has delivered only 24 balls in “proper” cricket.
In one-dayers the plot is even thinner. Bacher has delivered 18 balls and Gibbs just six. Right, so they are batsmen, nothing else – except good fielders. In Gibbs’s case, very good.
Whether or not they are considered to be Jacques Kallis’s class as batsmen, they would not have been considered ahead of him to open the innings in the first day-night world series game against Australia in Sydney yesterday because Kallis bowls.
Kallis, in fact, would almost certainly have made the starting line-up even if Gibbs or Bacher had partnered Kirsten at the top of the order. Inconceivable as it sounds, the “biggest” all-rounder of them all, Brian McMillan, would probably have stepped aside.
In Bacher’s case the problem of all- roundering is one that he has been made aware of: “Hansie spoke to me at the beginning of the tour and said the next 10 or 11 weeks would be a good opportunity to work on my bowling, to turn it into something that could be of use to the team.”
Incidentally, ask Bacher whether he thinks his batting might suffer as a result of bowling too long in the nets and you will receive a look that hovers between disdain and incredulity. Bacher is at the forefront of a generation of young men who play cricket for a living seven to 10 hours a day, 11 months a year.
“The ironic thing is,” Bacher continues, “I started bowling leg-spin in the nets at the Wanderers one day and I was spinning the ball like Shane Warne. Seriously, I was unplayable. Dipping through the air, hitting a length and turning sharply. Jimmy Cook saw this and thought, `hello, we’re on to something here’. So he encouraged me to practise and work on this new skill. So I practised and practised, arriving at nets early and leaving late, bowling and bowling. And the more I practised the worse I got until, finally, I was bowling full tosses straight onto the golf course and it was costing the club too much in lost balls.”
Bacher has now reverted to a more-than- honest brand of medium pace with a useful suggestion of away swing.
It’ll probably never be enough to win matches, but on some ground, in some part of the world, on a slowish pitch with the wind in the right direction, on some day maybe soon, Cronje might think: “This is perfect for Bacher’s bowling. I must get him in the side.”
Gibbs has been seen as Jonty Rhodes’s heir apparent at backward point for some time now, but he is also capable of delivering some quicker-than-expected off-cutters and arm balls. He seems less inclined than Bacher to develop this skill and he may well be right provided he works hard at his fielding. As good as he is, he is a long way from reaching Rhodes’s standard and he must first accept that fact before beginning the ascent to fielding greatness.
Batsman/specialist fielder is the rarest kind of all-rounder in the world. How many players, in every cricket-playing nation in the world, could legitimately have their prowess in the field seriously considered during a national selection meeting? I suggest Rhodes could chair the meeting of such men around a small coffee table.
As for the notion, once popular, of keeping a young batsman “pure” for Test cricket and not sullying his technique or temperament with the hurly-burly of the one-day game, Bacher dismisses the notion. Not out-of- hand but with sensible assessment: “I came to prominence with my form for Transvaal in one-dayers. I like to think I’m a good one- day batsman. I’ve scored four hundreds [in 14 matches]. The trouble with not playing regularly is that you inevitably lose touch.
“Ideally every batsman would like to play all the time although, obviously, that’s not possible either. But if you can’t adapt between the two different forms of the game then you’re probably missing something as a player. At least that’s how I feel.”
South Africa’s policy of selecting all- rounders, incidentally, is only successful because of the remarkable quality of the players involved. Australian coach Geoff Marsh was asked what he thought of the South African starting XI. “They’re very strong, very talented. They’re going to be a handful,” he replied, before asking what the likely starting line-up was. When told, he seemed to reconsider his judgment: “Bloody hell, they’re not short of options , are they? Mmm … goodness, that is a very good side. McMillan could be coming in at eight.”
So the days of the specialist are numbered. Gone in fact. At least as far as one-day internationals are concerned. Gary Kirsten and Allan Donald, that’s it. And Daryll Cullinan if you disregard his still youthful off-breaks. But then “specialisation” has changed meaning, too. Instead of specialising in one department of the game, South Africans are now specialising in two.