CRICKET
Peter Robinson
Here’s one for collectors of trivia: who’s the New Zealand cricket coach? Don’t know? The answer is Denis Aberhart who, like South Africa’s Graham Ford and John Buchanan of Australia, had no personal experience of international cricket before being entrusted with his national team.
This is not a veiled criticism. There had been a tendency in recent years for international teams to move away from high-profile coaches, like Ray Illingworth and Bob Woolmer, to background men whose function is mainly technical. The real authority in international teams has been restored to the captains and wise old heads will probably agree that this is where it always should have been.
Captains, after all, have to make the decisions on the field. They have to rally the troops, turn the screw when the opposition is faltering and the very best of them have an almost uncanny knack of closing the stable door before the horse bolts. It comes with experience and feel and that intangible quality, perhaps best described by Jeff Thomson when speaking of England’s Mike Brearley, of having “a degree in people”.
At the same time, though, the modern coach is centrally involved with planning and strategy, the identification of opposition strengths and weaknesses, but he can’t get out there and bat or bowl or field for his team.
Which brings us back to Aberhart and New Zealand. The most curious aspect of the triangular in Australia, which climaxes this weekend with South Africa having to beat both New Zealand and Australia to reach the finals, has been the merry-go-round ridden by the three teams. In this series, Australia have usually lorded it over South Africa; South Africa have tended to maintain supremacy over New Zealand who, in turn, appear to have it over Australia, Michael Bevan’s two hours of genius on Tuesday notwithstanding.
How to account for this apparently odd state of affairs? Perhaps it’s as simple as this: New Zealand’s planning seems to have centred almost exclusively on matching Australia, the world Test and one-day champions. If they can beat the Aussies, then the matches against South Africa will take care of themselves.
That it hasn’t quite worked out is self-evident, leading to this weekend’s two knockout matches ahead of next week’s finals. And this, perhaps, is where the coaches get left behind and the skill and nerve of the captains and players make the difference.
South Africa, a little belatedly, ran into their best form against New Zealand in Adelaide last Sunday, for the first time looking like a team with the best record in one-day cricket of recent times. Can they carry this new-found confidence through onto the fast, bouncv Waca pitch in Perth this weekend? We shall see, but nagging away at the back of the mind must be the suspicion that Australia might have turned their own corner.
Self-absorbed as we often are with our own problems, South Africans sometimes assume that because we regard Australia as our fiercest rivals, the opposite must also be true. Like it or not, Australia have other opponents as desperate to do well against them as South Africa. The Australia-England contest is the oldest in international cricket and whatever other countries may think, the Ashes is the most prized trophy in the game. New Zealand have their own reasons for wanting to beat Australia, if for no other reason than they’re sick of being the butt of sheep jokes. The West Indies, too, have come to see Australia as the team they most want to beat, a rivalry gingered up during the 1990s by muttered hints of racism.
Australia have become accustomed to having their opponents going boots and all at them and this may well be the reason for their present ascendancy in the game.
And so to Shaun Pollock’s South Africans who have a chance of salvaging something from a bitterly disappointing tour. South Africa need to reach the finals and to do so they need to prove there is still something left in the tank and that last Sunday’s win wasn’t just a desperate spurt.
With the Australians arriving in South Africa next month and with the World Cup looming next year, this weekend’s games have taken on enormous importance for South African cricket. For everyone concerned with the game in this country and the consequences of victory or defeat this weekend could resonate right through to the 2003 World Cup.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa