Neil Manthorp Cricket
Gary Kirsten-baiting season is back. It’s a national cricket lovers’ pastime that stems from an understandable desire to have Lance Klusener batting everywhere from one to nine and to have Nantie Hayward (or whoever else is flavour of the month) bowling from both ends.
Paying spectators have paid for the right to be entertained, but it is the entertainers’ right to decide how best they can produce the show. No circus contains jugglers, fire-eaters and acrobats alone. You need people to drive the bus and clear up the elephant crap.
Short of asking the England management to agree to a 12-a-side to celebrate the last Test of the mill … no, enough of that nonsense. Someone from the St George’s Park XI will have to miss out in order to play Paul Adams and the popular notion is that Kirsten deserves the chop.
Actually, no one “deserves” the chop but of the XI, he has done least to contribute to the 1-0 series lead. No one should be surprised to hear Kirsten agree with that: “Everyone else has played so well. Based on performances in the first couple of Tests then I’m the obvious exclusion,” he says candidly.
What is not quite so obvious is Kirsten’s replacement. Mark Boucher was the front runner until he withdrew from the race. “It’s ridiculous to suggest promoting me. I’d like to be promoted up the order but to six or seven, and I’ll have to earn my spot there,” he said this week. “It’s completely different batting in the top order. The pressure is so much greater.”
Klusener is the second suggestion, and Jacques Kallis the third. Coach Graham Ford is horrified at the prospect of either of them doing the job. “Zulu is much too valuable to us in the middle order and Jacques has established himself at number three. South Africa had problems for a long time finding a number three – I don’t think it would be very clever moving him now that we’ve found one, a very good one.”
One man who knows a bit about opening the batting, and about tolerating ongoing debate about the worth of his place, is Kirsten’s former partner Andrew Hudson. Never one to be outspoken, in fact hardly one to be spoken, Hudson nevertheless has strong feelings on the subject.
“You need specialists in Test cricket. If a makeshift opener was used it would adversely affect the balance of the side, not necessarily help it. If the selectors think Gary should be dropped then they should replace him with another opener,” Hudson says.
“Moving from the middle order to the top would be extremely difficult. There is the new ball, for a start. The fast bowlers are fresh, the field is at it’s most attacking, the pressure is at it’s greatest and you have to be extremely disciplined in your shot selection … very, very disciplined. It’s not easy.”
Ever the diplomat, Hudson described South Africa’s bowling attack at St.George’s as “a bit samey. Five right-arm-over seamers, you get used to that as a batsman. It becomes much easier to survive; we certainly needed some variation. Personally I think the selection was a bit of a blunder.”
“It wasn’t ideal,” admits Ford, “but everyone says it was a mistake and no one says what we ‘should’ have done. Leave out Zulu? Leave out Jonty? A lot of Test teams have to sacrifice something, they can’t have all the luxuries. No one will ever know whether a different team would have made a difference.”
Hudson, stressing a strictly personal viewpoint, very sensibly says: “Let’s lean on history a bit. No wicketkeeper has ever successfully batted at the top of the order in Test cricket. Neither has any great or genuine all rounder. It is a specialist job. Batting in the middle order is a specialist job. Being an all rounder is a specialist job and being a specialist bowler is, too. There’s no room for compromise in Test cricket.”
Ford says Boucher, technically, is up to the job – as long as someone else kept wicket! Klusener, he says, like Boucher, would not want the job and should be left alone.
“Personally I think it’s a bit sad that people are speculating about Gary. What he gives the side has to be measured in more than just runs. He’s had three hits, the first in hellish conditions at the Wanderers. Each ball there was a mission. He made 13 in 17 overs and it was a good as 50 in many ways. I thought he batted really well. Really, can’t people have a little faith? He deserves it … and he averages 40, by the way.”
The selection answer for the third Test, like for the second, will not be ideal. Everyone wants to see Hayward have a charge at England on a Kingsmead mamba but, unless the the tourists do agree to 12-a-side, he is unlikely to play.
“He had a fine, fine debut and he proved to everyone that he’s got what it takes. We’re going to be asking him to put in performances like that for South Africa a lot in the future, and I’ve no doubt that he can do it. It is a very comforting thought to know that we have him,” Ford says. “But I don’t think he’s a certainty in the side, yet. He could be left out.”
So in order for paying customers in Durban to see Daryll Cullinan juggling swords, Jonty riding bareback and Zulu eating fire, someone has to clean the cage and prepare the audience. Someone has to set the scene. Exactly the same happens with bowlers – ask Craig Matthews. Ask Klusener what job he has been asked to do in the last couple of Tests. It’s called donkey work.
But the very, very best news for South Africa is that the uncertainty surrounding his job is not affecting the man in question: “I’m not lying awake at night,” Kirsten says. “I know what I have done, and what I can do. I need a big score – maybe it’s a last chance – but you just have to play normally.”
A “normal” innings of 40 would be appreciated more than you or I could understand by the “glamour” performers who come after him.