/ 30 March 2007

Who’s too slow now?

There are many reasons why Australia will continue to be better at cricket than South Africa for the foreseeable future. Most of them have to do with the psychological, emotional and intellectual differences between the white populations of our two countries; but sometimes the chasm can seem infinitely wide.

Consider, for instance, last week’s palpitations in the local media over the selection of Jacques Kallis. That seems so long ago, and so silly, after the cleansing hell-fires of Guyana on Wednesday afternoon, but in case those four searing deliveries had erased your memory, their gist was as follows. Kallis had, the media insisted, lost us the game against Australia last weekend by batting too slowly. Where bravado was needed, Kallis had opted for the barn door. On and on it went and with every fresh headline and every stale argument, one saw in ever clearer detail just how far we have to go to beat Australia.

Of course, idiot punditry is not a South African preserve. Australians can be startlingly thick. But one doubts whether they would have been so quick to condemn Kallis, had the tables been turned. Indeed, one has to suggest that they would have identified the real culprits with the clean efficiency that is the hallmark of their game. They would have given Kallis a ”well tried, mate”, and turned on their bowlers. Fair dinkum.

Kallis can thank the Wanderers for his pillorying. The 872-run circus that took place there just over a year ago has forever warped South African perceptions about what is possible, and therefore about what is owed us. Had that run-orgy not happened, and convinced us that no total is unreachable, last Saturday’s game would not have been regarded as a failed batting effort, but rather the nadir of South Africa’s bowling fortunes. We would have agreed that 377 was a stupidly large ask, and Kallis’s name wouldn’t even have come up.

That Kallis scored at less than a run a ball was not worrying: with wickets falling at the other end, a slog would have been foolish. Kallis is not the problem. The problem is that Shaun Pollock went for 83 runs in 10 overs against Australia; that the Proteas’ three frontline bowlers conceded 233 between them — a useful total in itself. The problem is that Charl Langeveldt was swept like a mediocre spinner, and Makhaya Ntini charged like a carthorse trundler, because the Australians were picking the delivery before it even entered the bowlers’ minds. Matthew Hayden played some ludicrous strokes, but why wouldn’t he, when he had glimpsed the script in the first two overs? Enter Proteas, stage left: medium-fast, full-ish, on and outside off-stump. All day. Exit ball, roof right.

Naturally Wednesday’s win (if dodging a bullet by nicking it to third man can ever be called that) will have eased many of those worries. In fact, most pundits would have viewed it as redemption for Kallis, and nothing else; and even those who saw how badly the Proteas’ attack was exposed by the Australians would have been comforted. Ntini was nasty; Langeveldt bowled quite beautifully; and Robin Peterson didn’t look awful.

But what to say about Pollock? That he finished well? That he didn’t lose his cool while bleeding boundaries? Has it really come to this, hunting for euphemisms and highlights amid the carnage? And, more upsettingly, has it really come to this so soon?

Pollock is one of the three best one-day bowlers in the world. He’s the Ginger Ninja, dammit. Which makes his sudden implosion all the more shocking. The discovery that he has become a massive liability with the new ball at this tournament has come terribly quickly — too quickly in fact to process: Graeme Smith didn’t quite seem to understand what was going on as Hayden and then Sanath Jayasuriya flayed his champion to all parts, and his response — keeping Pollock on — was one of numb faith rather than canny logic.

But, whatever its causes, this sudden slump is something for which nobody, least of all Pollock, Smith and coach Mickey Arthur, can be blamed. Almost nobody saw it coming, and the few scribes who whispered heresy late last year were ignored.

But if the South Africans are to fulfil their World Cup destiny (losing to Australia in the final), they must work hard and fast at solving the new-ball poser. And Kallis must be left alone to bat. Heaven knows, he’ll need to do plenty more of that.