Neil Manthorp Cricket
Like a fat boy in a cake shop, South Africa waddled through the Test match against Zimbabwe randomly plucking scones and doughnuts off the shelf until, finally, the shop closed.
With no natural restraint offered by the visitors (other than to bowl so wide it was difficult to reach) the home side’s batsmen had to control their own diet. As a result it was almost more painful watching them perish in circumstances where every one of them knew they would never have a better chance of a Test hundred. It wasn’t as though it was Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
“Yeah, there were a few of us who fancied our chances,” admits Jacques Kallis with a smile. “But you have to give credit to the Zimbabweans. They didn’t have much of an armoury so they bowled wide of off stump and either waited for us to make a mistake or leave it.”
The options for a batsman in that situation are limited: hit it for four (riskily), hit it to a fielder, or leave it. Kallis opted to leave most of his. Adam Bacher and Daryll Cullinan would rather not talk about it.
“It was a horrible-looking scorecard. It’s really something that we take to heart, and something that we are going to work on. To see that many ‘starts’, 40s, 50s and 60s, without anyone taking it further, is not what the team has been working towards the past five years,” Kallis says.
But it wasn’t the most important problem. Not at all. South Africa’s batsmen aren’t century-shy any more; and besides, they still made 400. And won by an innings.
Far more troubling was the role given to, and played, by Lance Klusener. And Kallis, for that matter.
Watching a Test match for the first time since December 26 1993 (watching from the sidelines is very different to playing), opener Gary Kirsten spotted the problem almost immediately. “The balance is wrong. You can’t have a strike bowler with a heavy workload batting at number three. Jacques must either bat at six or we play another bowler,” Kirsten said with the air of a man seeing the wood for the first time after six years and 53 consecutive Tests in the trees.
“Yes, the balance of the side has been affected,” Kallis admits, surprisingly. Even more surprisingly he points directly to the reason. “It’s my fault. Being able to bowl the way I am at the moment, and bat at three, means we can get away with it [the imbalance].”
Not surprisingly, Kallis does not suggest that things be changed. “I’d really like to carry on batting at three, and bowling, for as long as my body is up to it, which I hope will be at least a couple more years. Then a move to five, or six, might be sensible.” Asked whether he might consider this side, were it Australia for example, to be lop-sided, Kallis says: “Yes, I’d probably say they were a batsman heavy and a bowler light.”
Let’s say Kallis loses form with the ball against England. Or, maybe Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain and Alec Stewart bat all day and the four-man pace attack of Alan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Kallis and Klusener isn’t enough. (Presumably Paul Adams will remain a non-factor until the fourth and fifth days). What then?
If Nantie Hayward doesn’t play against England this summer then new convenor of selectors Rushdie Magiet will be making life horribly difficult for himself in the AD years ahead, and “After Donald” could well be starting in about three months’ time.
Hayward is the only strike bowler in the country with the pace and potential to intimidate. David Terbrugge is another, albeit very different bowler, who needs encouragement and deserves another chance. Roger Telemachus is another. And Gary Gilder. And David Townsend. The cupboard is not bare.
As Kallis readily agrees, anyone from the Pollock, Klusener, Mark Boucher trio could bat at number six to make a space for the extra bowler. So drop Jonty Rhodes? Inconceivable. Forget the rubbish about national icons and role models, the man averages nearly 55 in the last 18 months of Test cricket.
If Rhodes isn’t the “luxury” player any more, then who is? The answer, appallingly, is Klusener. Even though a batsman needs to be omitted, Klusener is in the most dispensable position at present. No man, in any team, should be selected to bat at number eight. And in the Zimbabwean first innings his bowling – by captain’s request – was reduced to medium-pace trundlers designed to keep it tight. Like asking Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band to play a gig at Frikkie’s Boskroeg.
People probably didn’t even notice that Zulu failed to take a wicket against Zimbabwe, and those who did might not have appreciated that he was playing the ultimate team game and sacrificing personal performance for that of the team. But unless he is given the stage, at least some of the time, he could find that he is no longer in the cast.
“Hansie tells each of us what he wants before we start a spell. Sometimes he might want Lance to keep it tight, sometimes it could be Polly and sometimes me,” says Kallis. But with Kallis and Pollock bowling so well, and Donald used gingerly, Klusener’s acceptance of a “stock” role la Craig Matthews might be the equivalent of signing his own IRP5.
It’s a horrible, horrible thought, but if the Test side needs balancing then it could end up being Zulu-less.