Peter Robinson cricket
It’s not a question likely to have kept Shaun Pollock or Graham Ford awake at night, but there will have been times during the past few weeks when the South African captain and coach have wondered how well their team has been playing.
Well enough to take care of most Test-playing nations? Probably. Well enough to take on Australia? Possibly. The nagging little doubt that exists, however, comes from the fact that neither New Zealand nor Sri Lanka has provided consistently competitive opposition this summer.
The New Zealanders arrived with a crippling injury list that grew the longer the Kiwis were in South Africa. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, managed to handicap themselves by requesting a daft itinerary that shuffled between one-day and Test cricket and never managed to settle. Their batsmen have struggled in South Africa and, Muttiah Muralitharan aside, none of the bowlers has looked capable of bowling South Africa out once, let along twice.
In a sense, the summer has been so one-sided that even Pollock and Ford might occasionally have wished for stiffer opposition, if only to see how the team performed under more pressure.
All of which brings us to the third Test match which starts at Centurion Park on Saturday. With Sri Lanka looking such a dejected and demoralised lot, it requires almost a conscious effort of will to remember that the tourists could still salvage something from this campaign if they win their last game in South Africa.
For any country, a drawn Test series in South Africa is a major achievement. For a side from the sub-continent, to draw here amounts to mission accomplished. From time to time calls go up in India and Sri Lanka for faster pitches to be prepared at home in order to better equip teams for conditions when they travel abroad.
It’s a laudable sentiment, but not one that’s likely to be paid much heed, not for the foreseeable future, anyway. There’s too much at stake at home for the likes of India and Sri Lanka to start handing the advantage to touring teams, and in any case it’s important for the game to have widely differing conditions in different parts of the world.
If you’re going to claim to be the complete team, you have to be able to win anywhere. Australia’s record on the sub-continent in recent years is quite possibly all that stands between them and greatness.
So Sri Lanka have all the motivation they could wish for going into the third Test. Whether they have the will, not to mention the resources, to put one over the South Africans is an entirely different matter.
And, with the best will in the world, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to see the Sri Lankans coming back. For all that Sanath Jayasuriya has come across as a thoroughly decent bloke on this tour, he has increasingly seemed at a loss to explain why his side simply can’t get going.
Far from adapting to the conditions, some of the batsmen like Mahela Jayawardene seem to have gone backwards and the orchestrated appealing that is a hallmark of sub-continental teams has often sounded half-hearted. And that takes into account Muralitharan’s feline yowl.
So all the pressure in this Test match is on the Sri Lankans to produce the type of spirit that has been lacking on this tour. South Africa have some problems mostly to do with injury but they should be able to get through this one.
The long-term view, however, is a little more worrying. Allan Donald has struggled to get through this summer and Pollock has demonstrated astonishing resilience to keep going while Mfuneko Ngam, sadly, has the type of injury which could stifle a promising career.
Six months ago South Africa might have looked to David Terbrugge and Nantie Hayward, but both have gone off the boil. Terbrugge has suffered in a poor Highveld Strikers team while Hayward appears to be going through one of those periods when he can’t remember what he’s there for.
It’s too early to talk of a crisis and there is a fair bit of talent still around, most of it untested but picking a squad for the West Indies is going to be a testing exercise for the selectors. More immediately, though, there’s the third Test and Sri Lanka’s last chance. Perhaps even Pollock and Ford might secretly be hoping for tougher opposition.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa