Andy Capostagno Cricket
South Africa’s selectors may be justified in believing that the first and most difficult hurdle has been surmounted. The four-wicket win against the West Indies at the Wanderers will have settled a lot of butterflies in a lot of stomachs.
If there was going to be a fast pitch in this series it would have been at the Wanderers. Heavy rain in the build-up to the match took the sting out of the surface, however, and Brian Lara was quite correct to leave out a pace bowler and play a spinner.
Unfortunately Rawl Lewis was not the right spinner; he bowled too many bad, pressure-relieving deliveries and the groin injury suffered by Carl Hooper on the first day robbed his captain of an alternative slow bowler.
So the Windies attack was overly reliant on Courtney Walsh, with Nixon McLean showing signs of nerves in only his 10th Test and Curtly Ambrose never able to summon the extra pace that has made him so feared for a decade. In the circumstances the most commendable cricket of the whole game was that which saw South Africa slide from 101 for one to 268 all out, leaving the home side with a first innings lead of seven where they might reasonably have expected to be pushing for an innings victory.
But hard as Walsh and company tried, there was no disguising the real problem in this Windies team; the batting. The middle order takes care of itself. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s first innings 78 was the highest individual score of the match, Hooper got runs in both innings despite being incapacitated, Lara’s runs will surely come and Stuart Williams looked a very capable player at number six.
But at the top and bottom of the order there are problems. Clayton Lambert has scored runs in South Africa before, but his newly opened stance may create more problems than it solves.
Principally, he has so far to come with his right foot as the bowler delivers that he can surely never know where his off stump is. He has an elaborate leave- alone shot worked out, but his first innings dismissal, slashing at a wide one from Pollock, is the kind of error which will go in the memory banks of all the South African bowlers.
Lambert’s partner, Philo Wallace, is simply not a Test player. He likes to biff the ball over mid-off and mid-on, a tactic which makes him invaluable in the one-day game, but smacks of naivety at this level. The selectors may have to dispense with him sooner rather than later, move Williams up to his preferred opening slot and hope that Floyd Reifer or Darren Ganga can slot in at six until Jimmy Adams is fit again.
That does not solve the lower order problem, however. Ridley Jacobs can take care of himself, but he is not a Test match number seven and below him come the bowlers. Sadly for the tourists, they do not have an all-rounder worthy of the name and it means that once the team is seven down they are effectively all out.
Compare that with South Africa who have a lower middle order of Shaun Pollock, Mark Boucher and Pat Symcox and you’ll get the idea.
Of the above three, the key at the moment seems to be Symcox. Pollock is not making the most of his batting just now and it is to be hoped that the psychological working over he received from Walsh in the first innings is not the beginning of a deep-seated wound.
Quite the best aspect of Pollock’s batting is his judgment of length, so his decision to play a flat-bat shot at a full length ball suggests a mind in turmoil.
Boucher is at a crossroads in his batting where he is not sure whether to play a shot a ball or none at all. His dismissal in the first innings, sweeping at Lewis, would not have seemed possible a year ago when his game was based upon sound defence and a ruthless dispatching of the bad ball. It is called growing up.
As for Symcox, it is not inconceivable that if the United Cricket Board had bowed to external pressures and picked Paul Adams instead, the result would have gone the other way. Symcox held the lower order together at precisely the moment when the game appeared to be moving towards the West Indies. Without Symcox’s 25 the tourists would have had a small, but significant first innings lead.
On top of that, Symcox bowled beautifully on the fourth day. He has been called a containing bowler, but give him a turning pitch and a few left-handers to go at and he becomes much more. This time last year Symcox was dropped after his century against Pakistan at the Wanderers. If he were to be dropped ahead of next week’s Port Elizabeth Test there would probably be a players’ strike, and damn the National Sports Council.