For better or worse South Africa fly off to Pakistan this weekend, a week behind schedule, but with perhaps a slightly less taxing itinerary ahead of them.
In the end South Africa had little option other than to proceed with the tour. If Karachi and Peshawar were seen as hot spots, then their removal from the schedule undercut South Africa’s professed reasons for staying at home.
With hindsight it might have been better for all concerned had the Pakistan board agreed to skip Karachi and Peshawar in the first place, thereby avoiding the dithering and brinkmanship that characterised last weekend and the early part of this week.
The United Cricket Board (UCB) has taken some stick this week for initially calling off the tour. In some respects the criticism was misguided. If the UCB was to err, then surely it had to be on the side of caution.
If risk assessment is to be used as a criterion for sports tours, then surely no risk whatsoever is a far more sensible measure than slightly risky. Perceptions, too, play a significant part in assessing risk.
New Zealand, for example, is a quiet, peaceful country where the weather, issues like bovine flatulence and the All Blacks’ World Cup prospects take on exaggerated importance. Yet hardly a New Zealand tour to the sub-continent during the past decade has taken place without bombs going off in uncomfortably close proximity.
When the New Zealand board decided to pass on their Nairobi World Cup fixture earlier this year — against, it should be noted, the wishes of several of their players — you could understand, if not sympathise with, the reasoning behind the decision. The difference between New Zealand not going to Nairobi and England refusing to play in Harare during the World Cup was, in the most basic terms, the difference between security and politics.
Politics, of the kind that forever swirls around international cricket, would have been at the back of the minds of South Africa’s administrators as they fretted over whether or not to tour. South Africa want the support of Pakistan at the International Cricket Council (ICC), particularly with reference to South Africa’s nomination for the ICC presidency next year.
Last weekend’s decision to call off the tour would not have been taken lightly. In all this, of course, Graeme Smith and his team have been buffeted to and fro. Now that the die has been cast, however, the matter of getting their heads around to the cricket might not be as difficult as some think.
South African teams have tended to be fairly robust travellers. They’ll grumble about facilities and seethe about umpiring decisions, but for the most part they have been able, outside considerations aside, when they get on the field.
There is no reason to believe that Smith’s side will be any different. In fact, the uncertainty about this tour may help the South Africans put the Oval out of their minds, allowing them to focus more clearly on the task immediately at hand.
There is a core of senior players — Sean Pollock, Jacques Kallis, Gary Kirsten, Mark Boucher — with experience of Pakistan conditions, while Smith and Eric Simons should have picked up a trick or two from the visit to Bangladesh that receded the England tour.
Like South Africa, Pakistan cleaned out the cupboard after a disappointing World Cup, but it might be fair to say that, on the available evidence, South Africa’s reconstruction has progressed more smoothly than that of Pakistan.
At the best of times Pakistan teams have dealt with stresses and strains largely of their own making. Having half-a-dozen ex-captains in a team, which seems to happen on a fairly regular basis, hardly allows for uncomplicated management and it is fair to say than since Imran Khan bullied his team into winning the 1992 World Cup, Pakistan have underachieved. Just this week Rashid Latif resigned as captain. Yet no country produces players of such quality as regularly as Pakistan. And neither should Pakistan’s contribution to the way cricket is now played be underestimated.
There was no end of suspicion when Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram perfected reverse-swing in the early 1990s, but the fact is that the Pakistani pair offered fast, full-length bowling as an alternative to the short-pitched bombardments served up by the West Indies during the previous 20 years. Cricket is all the better for having had Younis and Akram.
Pakistan struggled in their Test matches against Bangladesh, and the South Africans should feel that they have a better-than-even chance of recording their second successive Test series win on Pakistani soil.
In some respects this tour may be no more than a slightly unwelcome interlude between the England tour and the arrival of a reviving West Indies team in November, but at the very least, how South Africa cope in Pakistan should indicate whether the new era, ushered in by Smith’s captaincy, has legs.