As if you hadn’t noticed, the business end of this summer has started to creep ever closer. The weeks, now, will be measured by how much time is left before February 9 when South Africa and the West Indies open the World Cup at Newlands.
To emphasise the point, the South African selectors are due to name a 30-man provisional World Cup squad on Saturday. Before this, though, they have to find themselves another squad, probably 14 strong, to complete the three one-day inter- nationals against Sri Lanka remaining after Friday’s game at Centurion.
The reason for the announcement of the 30-man squad is mainly administrative. It will allow World Cup organisers to get going on things like tournament brochures and guides. From another point of view, it is too early in the southern hemisphere summer to make these squads definitive, but it will allow groups of selectors around the world to suggest who’s in the frame and who isn’t.
When South Africa first undertook this type of exercise for the 1992 World Cup, a squad was named that excluded Clive Rice, Jimmy Cook and Peter Kirsten on the grounds that the three were too old to run around the vast expanses of Australian grounds. It didn’t half cause a fuss and in the end the selectors relented in the case of Kirsten, wisely, it was to prove.
The other Kirsten, Gary, now finds himself in a similar position. The suspicion seems to exist that, despite his pedigree, he may be past his best.
I don’t know. I’d have him in my 15-man squad without a second thought. The World Cup won’t be won by teams that wallop the minnows by a mile. It will be won by players who come through when things get tight.
Kirsten, in fact, would be one of my automatic choices, along with Shaun Pollock, Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs, Makhaya Ntini, Mark Boucher and Jonty Rhodes. There’s a second tier of players, most notably Allan Donald and Nicky Boje, who you’d want to have a look at just to convince yourself of their readiness for the tournament, but after this it all gets a little muddier.
Working on the assumption that the team that played at the Wanderers on Wednesday probably represented the selectors’ current first XI (with the exception of Justin Ontong who was standing in for Rhodes), this probably represents the core of the World Cup 15. The question marks, however, tend to hover not over those who played, but over those who didn’t.
From what you can gather, the selectors seem to have worked themselves into an either/or frame of mind: Andrew Hall or Lance Klusener, Boje or Robin Peterson, Boeta Dippenaar or Ontong or Neil McKenzie.
This is understandable, but the danger of this way of thinking is that you end up leaving out someone who could do a job for you because you’ve persuaded yourself that you’ve got all the bases covered.
Perhaps the longest debate will be reserved for Klusener, the hero of the 1999 World Cup. It would take a brave selection panel to leave out Klusener for the 2003 World Cup, but the fact is that the left-handed batsman hasn’t given the selectors very much to work with for some time now.
For all his heroics in England three years ago, opposing teams have thought long and hard about Klusener. He seldom gets much that is full or wide these days and opponents believe that if you frustrate him sufficiently he’ll get himself out.
Klusener, too, has not helped his own cause by withdrawing into a surly, truculent shell whenever he spots someone from the media looming on the horizon. There is no obvious correlation between performance on the field and behaviour off it, but the suspicion has grown that Klusener has become too self-absorbed for his own good.
In the either/or situation, Klusener seems to be up against Hall for the position of batsman-cum-fourth or fifth seamer. Hall, another self-made cricketer, fairly bristles with self- assurance these days and if you saw Hall eating breakfast with Klusener at the moment, you’d pick Hall for team simply on the basis of his body language.
Klusener would do well to take tips from Gary Kirsten, another who is uneasy under the spotlight and would prefer to let others get in front of the cameras. When Kirsten can’t avoid it, however, he endures his obligations with philosophical good humour and engaging frankness. There’s a lesson in this.