Scandal and retirements have changed the face of the South African team – but not its heart
Peter Robinson
Not everyone will see it this way, but common sense at last managed to infect the South African team this week when Daryll Cullinan and Jonty Rhodes were allowed to take decisions that affected their own futures.
In Rhodes’s case, his retirement from Test cricket was unexpected, but only in so far as the player himself has always yearned to prove himself at that level. Rhodes took a long time to fully establish himself as a Test batsman and there was a period during the mid-1990s when his presence in the side seemed to owe more to his prowess in the field and value as a talisman than it did to his average.
He rehabilitated himself, however, scoring a Test century at Lord’s in 1998 and his average today stands at 35,66 after 52 Tests, a record of which all but the very best players would be pleased.
Rhodes feels if he played both forms of the game, he wouldn’t have made it through to 2003 and the World Cup. He probably won’t be fielding at backward point for Natal in the future, but if he avoids injury over the next three years, he should be an integral part of South Africa’s fourth assault on the one-day world championship.
Cullinan, meanwhile, has been trying to get out of the one-day game since the beginning of the year, but it has taken until now for the powers-that-be to take him seriously. It is a pity that in his last few games he was used as an opener, a position to which he is temperamentally unsuited. The experiment was hopelessly misguided and made the player look foolish. As someone who has never won the full affection of the public, the last thing he needed was to be seen to be struggling.
Clearly, though, he remains a fine Test player and with both Rhodes and Hansie Cronje out of the Test side, his presence in the middle order is more necessary than ever. A year ago, the four, five and six positions were settled, as was the opening pair. Hansiegate and Rhodes’s retirement now means that there are places opening up and in the long term this may be no bad thing.
When Herschelle Gibbs was withdrawn from the squad for Sri Lanka in June, Boeta Dippenaar was drafted in as his replacement. Neil McKenzie, however, was asked to open in the three Test matches, a selection that was fair on neither player. Six months later, however, the selectors have a chance to do what they should have done in the first place – pick Dippenaar to open against New Zealand and allow McKenzie a run in the middle order, preferably batting behind Cullinan with Mark Boucher and Lance Klusener, in that order, following him.
Boucher is a good enough player to bat at five, but six would take into account his wicketkeeping duties while Klusener could be floated up or down the order as the situation demands. The South Africans floated everyone everywhere during the one-dayers – and a 5-0 winning margin suggests they got it right more often than not – but they need to settle down in the Test matches.
Indeed, apart from the folly of opening with Cullinan, South Africa played slick, professional cricket throughout the one-day series. As ever, the strength of the side lay in its abundance of effective all-rounders, but, more to the point, the South Africans looked to have put the Cronje era behind them.
As a unit, the South Africans pulled together wonderfully well, with one player after another taking responsibility for seeing things through. In the early matches Nicky Boje took the New Zealanders on, in the later games Klusener savaged the touring bowlers, winning the last two matches with his explosive hitting.
Throughout, though, Gary Kirsten and Jacques Kallis were in terrific form, Rhodes scored quick runs when required and Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and Roger Telemachus allowed the New Zealand batsmen very little latitude.
You cannot usually take significant pointers from one type of the game to the other, but in this New Zealand tour you’d have to say that the South Africans have established a powerful psychological advantage. New Zealand always expected to be more competitive in the one-day games and what was, to all intents and purposes, a whitewash has set their campaign back on its heels.
The loss of Chris Cairns is a massive blow and the only all-rounder they now have to call on might well be Scott Styris, who is a better batsman than his form in the one-dayers might suggest. But by and large the tourists are up against it. If they came to South Africa believing South Africans are susceptible to spin, they are likely to be proven horribly wrong, especially if the injury to Paul Wiseman leaves them with only young legspinner Brooke Walker to call upon.
If South Africa pick the obvious Test match combination, it is hard to see New Zealand living with them over three games.
Likely South African team: Gary Kirsten, Boeta Dippenaar, Jacques Kallis, Daryll Cullinan, Neil McKenzie, Mark Boucher, Lance Klusener, Nicky Boje, Shaun Pollock (capt), Roger Telemachus, Allan Donald.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa