Andy Capostagno : Cricket
First of all, the apologies. Last week I suggested that the national selectors were myopic baboons who could not differentiate a class off-spinner from a kicked in car door. I also managed to retire Brian McMillan somewhat prematurely. My only excuse is that newspaper deadlines coincide with important announcements about as frequently as MacDonald’s serves a medium- rare burger. The team was announced on Friday morning. The paper was put to bed on Thursday night. Sorry.
It’s actually been something of a year for apologies in South African cricket. Pat Symcox and Fanie de Villiers apologised to various different people for nothing in particular, but as yet no one from the United Cricket Board has apologised for the mundane fare served up in the name of first-class cricket in the Supersport Series.
That Free State were able to win the series without Hansie Cronje and Allan Donald for the vast majority of the time suggests one of two things. Either Free State has suddenly become a hotbed of cricketing talent so awesome that its provincial selection can well do without two of the best players in the world, or the standard of the opposition has slid to new lows.
It is normally the case that, given two or three batsmen who can hold an end up, the team that wins any first-class competition around the world is the one with the best bowling attack. Free State have conquered all with a seam attack (sans Donald) of Herman Bakkes, Sarel Cilliers and Chris Craven.
Bakkes is a developing all rounder who well deserves his place on the A tour to Sri Lanka. But he is not much more than an honest medium pace in-swing bowler. Cilliers is a little quicker, but a lot less accurate. Craven is probably the pick of the bunch, mainly because he swings the ball away from the bat. But he too is some way short of terrifying and, in the long run, his bowling will probably fall away as his batting develops.
The spin-bowling department consists of Nicky Boje and Kosie Venter. Boje’s slow left arm has been promising for a while now, without actually delivering too much. He too deserves his place on the A tour and against Sri Lankan batsmen less rooted to the crease than their South African counterparts, Boje will need to think hard about his line of attack. It could be the making of him, it could also be the breaking of him.
I have got myself in trouble in the past for describing Kosie Venter’s off-spin as “flighted filth”, presumably because, translated into Afrikaans, it comes out as vliende kak. Actually, where I come from the phrase is a backhanded compliment to a bowler not scared to give it air and hang the consequences. And I once played with a west-countryman afflicted by Spoonerisms who called it “filted flyth”.
Kosie Venter is a good cricketer. Free State at the moment are well served for good cricketers, most of whom are young. They could even afford the gifted Boeta Dippenaar to have a shocking season at the top of the order as they discovered fresh and precocious talent in Morne van Wyk. But if Free State are a juggernaut, Oprah Winfrey hides her light under a bushel.
And therein lies the problem. Even Free State’s greatest supporter (Ewie Cronje, Hansie’s dad) will admit that there is something wrong when they win the Supersport Series with a match to spare.
The old Currie Cup may have excluded players from the disadvantaged communities, but it was at least strength against strength. It is a laudable ambition of the United Cricket Board to take cricket to the country, including the likes of Boland and Griqualand West, but at the end of the day it is diluting the first-class game in South Africa. There are not enough quality players to go around, which goes some way to explaining how HD Ackerman was able to break Barry Richards’s record season run aggregate.
It also goes some way to explaining how Kepler Wessels can commentate on radio and television, write for the newspapers and still make a century in the Supersport Series pretty much on demand. Richards could do that as well, but against somewhat classier attacks than those currently on offer around the country. Which is not to deny that Kepler is still the best number- three bat in this country, who would send rather more tremors of apprehension through the England attack were he, and not Jacques Kallis, to walk down the steps at Edgbaston at first drop in two months time.
It may all seem like sour grapes. There are many more talented young cricketers in this country right now than there were at the time of readmission six years ago. You only need to study the make-up of the A team to appreciate that. But is this because of an expanded first class set up, or despite it?
The time is coming when the United Cricket Board will have to think long and hard about pruning the first-class structure, for as any gardener will tell you, that’s the only way to ensure that the new growth is strong enough to cope with the big, wide world.
ENDS