Like all truly naughty schoolboys, Herschelle Gibbs has made an art of dodging accountability by playing the village idiot.
He agreed to help throw an international match: for revealing the acting skills of Marlon Brando and the memory of a goldfish he was given a holiday. He showboated Australia back into the 1999 World Cup: we eventually shook our heads and grinned.
He got high, he got drunk, he threw up: he got a pay increase. That Hersch, what a guy, we said. Not so hot on constitutional law or the later poetry of TS Eliot, but hell he can bat. It seems we’ll forgive anyone anything as long as he doesn’t think he’s cleverer than us. Like Hansie Cronje did.
It might seem grossly uncharitable to accuse a batsman with his glittering statistics of being irresponsible, but Gibbs, for all his flair and breathtaking strokeplay, still seems unable to exude the calm assurance — the maturity — of his top-order colleagues. It comes as a surprise to many people that Gibbs, the eternal man-child with his freckles and pranks and teen dialect, is approaching 30.
Lance Klusener, neither corruptible nor forgetful nor inebriated, must have wondered recently how his name has been all but stricken from the rolls while Gibbs’s remains spotless. Someone, it seems, is looking after Herschelle Gibbs.
And that someone is Gary Kirsten. Statistically the veteran left-hander is worth 10 runs an inning to Gibbs when they bat together. With Kirsten backing up, having a word, giving a cautionary glare, his average nudges 50.
Without him, marooned and abandoned to the introspective bubble of Jacques Kallis or the intense solipsism of Graeme Smith, Gibbs relaxes into the everyday world of mortal batsmen who average under 40. Ten runs seems a trifle — a cut, a nick past the slips and a timed cover-drive — but to an opening batsman they translate into a vital 20 or 30 minutes of occupation of the crease, deeper concentration and a softer duller ball.
Kirsten’s influence on Gibbs was never more plain than at the Oval this year, as the senior pro expertly bullied and coaxed his younger partner towards 183. At Chittagong in April, and with Kirsten nowhere in sight, Gibbs looked lost. He scratched 17, leaving Boeta Dippenaar and Jacques Rudolph to tuck into 429 unbeaten runs.Â
Kirsten will not play in the first Test at the Wanderers but, more importantly, he is unlikely to play any Tests at all after February. Gibbs will certainly slap a rollicking century or two over the next three months, but now he must confirm that he no longer needs that steadying word in his ear.
He must demonstrate that if and when he gets the urge to assault the spinner, he can resist having a heave without wanting a consolation boundary in the next over. In short, he must grow up.
But Gibbs is by no means the only player who needs to provide evidence of an unglamorous yet vital work ethic. It has been more than two years since a South African number five or six scored a Test century, the last one going to some bloke by the name of Klusener.
Neil McKenzie has batted his eyelashes at the three-figure mark since then, with a coy 99 and a couple of matronly half-centuries, but somehow it’s just not the same as a good old-fashioned 150 sculpted over seven hours. Half-centuries pad scorecards, but in the bigger scheme, the quest for excellence, they must henceforth be regarded as disappointments.
Such demands on Gibbs and the lower-middle order clearly place them in a no-win situation, but in many respects the home team as a whole faces such a quandary. If they beat the West Indies in Johannesburg, they will merely have dispatched one of the worst touring teams in the world. If they lose — well, heaven forbid.
And where, the abovementioned beleaguered batsmen cry, are the bowlers in all of this? Why interrogate the stars and overlook the Achilles heel of the team?
The answer, sadly, is that there is not a lot to say about the attack. Gibbs and McKenzie can do better: the attack, one fears, can’t. One could evaluate the merits of Andre Nel against those of Andrew Hall; ponder the value of spinner Robin Peterson and speculate on whether Kallis’s inswinger is hibernating or dead, but all of this is fairly irrelevant.
Pollock and Makhaya Ntini will each have to take eight wickets at the Wanderers. Knowing them they will try very hard to do this, and given the frailty of the tourists against aggressive fast bowling, there is no reason why they shouldn’t. Enough said.
For Smith as captain, for Gibbs as self-motivator, for the middle-order, it’s time for the training wheels to come off.