Telford Vice Cricket
Four months after arriving at the World Cup as champions-in-waiting, the South African cricket team is floundering in a sea of insecurity.
The familiar, inspiring strut is gone, faded to slope-shouldered tolerance of the fact that the supposedly low key tour to Kenya has lurched into a harsh spotlight. That is the upshot of being thumped into abject defeat by India last Sunday.
Losing a game that should not have mattered in a tournament which no one outside Kenya will remember in six months’ time is not the problem. So India won a one-day international against Hansie Cronje and the boys for the first time since 1996. So what?
But the manner of that defeat offered inklings into a disturbing erosion of the team’s psychological well-being which, if allowed to deepen, could lead to long-term damage.
Beating Zimbabwe in emphatic fashion two days after the Indian disaster showed that the condition is far from irreversible, and Kenya should have provided little more than token resistance on Tuesday to a team within sight of Sunday’s final.
However, the way India were able to wipe their feet on South Africa warned that things could get markedly worse before they improve. When last, if ever, has a South African team played as if they would rather be anywhere else than on the field?
What has drained their passion to the point that they crashed to 117, the second lowest total in their history, and then served up 23 overs of nothingness that made bowling machines look threatening by comparison?
The pitch, a virtual beach with a token smattering of grass that turned a mediocre left-arm spinner like Sunil Joshi into a modern Bishen Bedi and handed him figures of 10-6-6-5, the best analysis achieved by any bowler against South Africa, was an obvious factor.
Another was that the Indians caught South Africa on the rebound. The diabolical yes-no-wait-oh-shit moment in the World Cup semi-final, and the circumstances that paved the way for that flash of madness, remain as raw and vulgar as a freshly slit throat.
The wounds were as obvious as ever last Thursday, a few hours after the South Africans arrived in Nairobi. What was to have been a moderately taxing afternoon practice dragged on into the unlit dusk as Cronje put the squad’s batsmen through a merciless set of shuttles until they stooped with exhaustion under the huge, yellow moon.
The meaning of his imminent appointment as Glamorgan coach hung in the air like the smoggy scent of an African city marking the end of another day, and Glamorgan was all the waiting media wanted to talk about when the captain finally called it a night.
“As long as it’s in our winter and out of our schedule I don’t think the United Cricket Board will have any problems with it,” Cronje sidestepped between gulps for whatever air there is to breath at 1 524m above sea level.
So your priority would still be captaining South Africa? “Look, South Africa only signs their players for one year. So come the end of April, it’s up to the selectors to decide what they want to do.”
And if you’re reappointed … “Well, I’ll have to look at it at the end of this summer and discuss it with my family and see where we want to go.”
Are you aiming to be around for … “As I said, it’s a long season and I haven’t looked past April.”
This from a man who until mere months ago knew exactly which part of the cricket world he would be visiting on any given day, and for years in advance. Clearly, Cronje was trying to say more than he felt he could. Just as clearly, his days as South Africa’s captain are numbered.
The mirror first cracked when neither Cronje nor coach Graham Ford were consulted by the selectors about the composition of the squad for Kenya. Then Cronje was appointed captain only until the second of the five Tests England will play in South Africa this summer, apparently as a reaction to his failure to bring home the World Cup.
He has not taken kindly to his suddenly unsure foothold, and has thrown down the gauntlet in response. “I don’t think they quite realise what they have done,” an insider said with reference to how the cricket establishment had treated Cronje, and by extension his team.
Some of the younger players in the squad have noticed a change in dressing room atmosphere, the warm co-operation that existed between senior and junior players replaced by frigid coolness as the seniors begin to decline to share their knowledge and experience with those they now view as a threat to their own positions.
If Cronje himself is in danger of being sidelined despite having compiled the most successful captaincy record in South African cricket history – and that at the age of 30 – who can be safe?
Perceived unclarity over the United Cricket Board’s transformation policy is reportedly another source of player dissatisfaction. All of which would seem to be repairable by improved communication between players, selectors and officials. It should be as simple as yes, no, wait.
ENDS
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