The South African cricket team leave for the West Indies on Wednesday night for a tough eight-week tour that will include four Tests and five one-day internationals. South Africa have a good record against the West Indies, but team coach Ray Jennings has no intention of allowing the team to rest on their laurels.
”The past is history,” said Jennings. ”There’s no point sitting back and saying, ‘South Africa have a good record at the Wanderers,’ and then we lose a Test there. It’s the same with the West Indies.
”We have to approach each Test without thinking about what happened in the past. Conditions change, players change and records mean nothing. We will approach each match as a new challenge, and focus on what we have to do.”
Jennings conceded that touring the West Indies will be tough.
”Touring is always tough, with all the travelling we have to do — and that travelling includes getting to airports, sitting around waiting for flights, travelling to the hotels. And when your tour the West Indies, there is the additional problem of passport control and customs at each new island.
”And then each island is different,” he added. ”Touring the West Indies is like touring five or six countries on one tour. But we are all looking forward to it, and we want to come away with a series win. South Africa haven’t played well away from home recently, and we are determined to turn that around.”
The team will start the tour with a three-day camp in Antigua before heading for Guyana, where the first Test starts on Thursday March 31. Jennings said they will use the time in Antigua to become acclimatised to conditions in the Caribbean and to work out their game plans.
”We’ll be practising in those conditions and it will also give us a chance to iron out some of the niggles in the team,” he said.
He said Shaun Pollock’s absence for the first Test was a blow, but he believed this could create an opportunity for another player to stick his hand up and make a difference to the team.
”We don’t want any one player to dominate everything,” he said. ”Hopefully, everyone will play their part in the success of the team. I expect the senior players like Makhaya Ntini, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Herschelle Gibbs, who have been there before, to lead the way and help the other players get used to the conditions.”
Jennings said he hopes the problems within the West Indies camp, with six of their senior players involved in a sponsorship dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board, will be resolved.
”But whether it is or not will not affect how we approach the series,” he said. ”Obviously, we would like to play the strongest opposition, but we have to focus on our own performance and not allow the problems in the opposition camp to distract us.” — Sapa