As the storm clouds gather around South African cricket ? if you believe the Easter weekend papers both Shaun Pollock and Graham Ford are on the verge of being sacked.
ary Kirsten first played for South Africa in Sydney in 1993. He’d been flown to Australia as a replacement for Brian McMillan and he wasn’t an immediate success. Here’s the kicker, though. By current standards Kirsten was already a grand old man when he made his international debut at 26.
Eight years down the line, and now South Africa’s most successful one-day batsman after 174 matches, Kirsten has been dropped. He has made way for his Western Province teammate, the 21-year-old Graeme Smith who made 41 on his one-day debut in Bloemfontein last Saturday.
After four false starts in the first four one-day internationals (ODIs), some change to the top of the South African batting order was, perhaps, inevitable. In the four games before Kingsmead on Wednesday this week, South Africa were 1/0 and 2/2, 1/18 and 2/30, 1/11 and 2/27 and 1/7 and 2/14. It’s going to be difficult to stay with the World Cup champions if you don’t get starts.
Kirsten’s contributions before he was dropped were two, 21 and three; Herschelle Gibbs, who didn’t play in Bloemfontein but retained his place in the squad for the last three matches, also had three innings up to but not including Bloemfontein. He made zero, five and 10.
I suppose you could say that at least Gibbs was on an upwards curve, but to all intents and purposes there was little to choose between the two openers. Yet Kirsten was dropped and Gibbs wasn’t.
In the first three matches of the series, Australian captain Ricky Ponting totalled 17 runs. In the fourth he made a brilliant 129. Which just goes to show that your next big score might only be one innings away.
All of this, perhaps, does nothing more than underline the point made several times by Steve Waugh before he was packed off home after the Test series: that if you have a bad run in your 20s, people wait for you to come out of it. If you have the same run in your 30s, the knives start coming out.
The difference between Waugh and Kirsten, though, is that Waugh is four years older than Kirsten and that much closer to the end of his career. Kirsten, surely, must remain an integral part of South Africa’s Test future and also, surely, part of the World Cup plans. Assuming, of course, that there are any World Cup plans.
The only argument that can be made for dropping Kirsten is that it gave Smith a free run for the last one-day games. This is no bad thing, but it remains to be seen whether Smith can reproduce the consistency of Kirsten at the highest level.
It is hardly a secret that Australia have evolved their own method of bowling to Kirsten. Evolved, perhaps, is the wrong word. Since the Australians came here in 1994 they have been trying to tuck him up, mostly by bowling around the wicket at him in an attempt to deny his favoured bread-and-butter shots — the cut and the square drive.
Australia have the ideal tool to implement this plan in Glenn McGrath, who has dismissed the left-hander, both in Test and one-day cricket, more than any other bowler. Then again, as an opening batsman Kirsten has never had anywhere to hide and while his averages against Australia are lower than the overall figures, they remain respectable — 31,54 as opposed to 40,50 in ODIs and 34,46 against 41,69 in Tests.
It would have been interesting, for example, to see what Lance Klusener’s record against Australia might have looked like had he been required to open the batting.
Whether you agree with Kirsten’s axing or not, though, it surely cannot be argued that South Africa are a better team without him. Equally, it is to be hoped that the selectors still see a place in the scheme of things for him and, as importantly, have let him know this. Far too many players this season have not been accorded the courtesy of an explanation from Rushdi Magiet when they have been left out and the absence of these phone calls has played a significant part in the undermining of team morale.
As the storm clouds gather around South African cricket — if you believe the Easter weekend papers both Shaun Pollock and Graham Ford are on the verge of being sacked — the first real victim of South Africa’s disastrous summer has been Kirsten (although Allan Donald, who has no idea of where he stands, Jacques Rudolph, Justin Ontong and Elworthy are also strong candidates). All we can hope for is that between now and next season the United Cricket Board will be overcome by an attack of common sense. And that Kirsten will still be around next summer and Magiet won’t.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa