Peter Robinson cricket
At least one school of thought about Test cricket holds that the only way to go about the business is to win your home series and cross your fingers and hope not to be beaten when you travel abroad.
This view is not so much defeatist as pragmatic. Different conditions, different food, innumerable hotel rooms and endless hours in airports and on planes can make touring a joyless chore and if things go wrong, they go very wrong.
The point is that going abroad is often a tough old grind for cricketers, a fact not always clearly communicated by television. And as much as South Africans might fret about the inability of Shaun Pollock’s team to dominate the West Indies, they would do well to reflect on how difficult Australia have suddenly found it in Australia.
It is hard, I admit, to feel sympathy for an Australian cricket team, but even as we chortle at Shane Warne’s new haircut and what seems to have become a permanently fixed expression of bemusement on his face as he contemplates bowling figures in the region of 1/140, there will be a few South African players about who nod their heads sagely and murmur, “It’s not as easy as it looks.”
And it isn’t, which is why the two best Test teams in the world have been pushed to the limit by opponents whose recent records suggest they should have been pushovers.
Again, the evidence of television is an unreliable guide former England football manager Bobby Robson once said that watching sport on television is like watching sex through a keyhole: you can see some of the interesting bits, but you don’t really get the whole picture but for long periods the South Africans seem to have been below par in the Caribbean.
The tail has not wagged in three innings for South Africa. This might just be one of those things all batsmen go through slumps, and here we seem to have two or three of them at the same time but too many wickets have been given away with loose, frustrated shots. The problem is likely to be more mental than technical, but you would hope that the likes of Nicky Boje, Lance Klusener and Neil McKenzie are pushed up the order to try and bat themselves into form against a West Indies Cricket Board XI this weekend.
Of perhaps more significance, though, was the South African fielding which, up until Wednesday, was poor. It is to Pollock’s credit he chivvied and cajoled his team back to order to pull off one of the tightest Test victories South Africa has been involved in.
The fielding and lower order batting are fairly obvious problems, but hopefully the win on Wednesday will settle the self-doubt that can grip a team on tour. When you’re far from home and things start going awry on tour, it’s often more difficult to sort them out than it would be, say, in Cape Town or Johannesburg. At its best, touring bonds a team, but this closeness can work against a side when the wheels start coming off.
While all this is going on, the KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins are off to Perth next week for The Champions Cup a quadrangular tournament also involving Western Asutralia, Mumbai and New Zealand’s Central Districts.
It’s difficult to assess the strengths of provincial (or state or county) teams across borders, but this competition should provide some kind of a guide. I suspect the Dolphins also won’t find it easy overseas, but we shall see.
And we shall also see, by the end of the weekend, whether the Western Province resurgence is complete or whether Border’s perseverance is finally rewarded with the SuperSport Series crown. Good luck to whoever prevails, but what is of concern is the fact that both KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng didn’t even qualify for the Super 8 stage of the competition.
These are two of South Africa’s traditional powers. Their decline should have set alarm bells ringing at the United Cricket Board offices.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa (www.cricket.co.za)