At some point in every established player’s career he becomes responsible for his own selection. But those who think that Graeme Smith’s decision to return to the game, after a six-month injury lay-off, with a pair of T20 internationals against Australia was his and his alone are sadly uninformed.
The former one-day captain could have played a low-key, four-day game for the Cobras instead of the three-hour helter-skelters, and he thought long and hard about it, but — with strong input from Gary Kirsten — he believed that an immediate re-acquaintance with the atmosphere of international cricket was in the best interests of the team.
Kirsten, no doubt, would have pointed out that the Proteas have just seven more T20s before that format’s World Cup in Sri Lanka next year and the team needs to settle as soon as possible.
A great deal is made of technique in cricket, and understandably so. Propelling a ball with a straight arm is a very unnatural biokinetic movement and hitting it with a bat held vertically rather than horizontally is equally odd. Give a kid a stick and a stone and he’ll hit like a baseballer, not a cricketer.
But once the mechanics are sorted and the kid becomes a man and starts playing for his country, the most important biokinetic movement takes place between the ears. “Too many coaching techniques in the past were based on the premise that you take pressure off sportsmen by making decisions for them,” says Kirsten’s sidekick, Paddy Upton, the team’s psychologist. “But that adversely affects their entire decision-making process. The best cricketers are thinking cricketers, not robots who follow orders.”
“The best way to help a sportsman make the best decision for him and the team is to get him to really think about it and not fall into the trap of reverting to convention, doing what he has ‘always done’ or acting in a way because it is expected of him. A lot of decisions in sport are compromised by habit and convention,” Upton says.
So Kirsten asked Smith what he wanted to do and Smith, apparently, took a good deal longer than he might have done earlier in his career to reach his decision. It did not look like a very good decision after his first three innings against the Australians but he started looking like his old self again in Port Elizabeth with an innings of 57 which started as gravel but finished like beach sand. Perhaps Smith made the right decision after all. Supporters’ expectations of him might exceed those of any other player, but they are no greater than those of his own.
From the first day
As J-P Duminy said in the build-up to today’s deciding ODI at Kingsmead, “Gary told us from the very first day we got together that he doesn’t have a magic formula or a silver bullet to make us win — only the players have that. We just need to make the right decisions and the right choices to give ourselves the best chance.”
One factor which will undoubtedly count in the home team’s favour is the inexperience of the Australian bowling attack, which surprised the South African top order as much for their lack of acquaintance with it as for the pace and precision with which it operated.
Now, however, thanks to the advancement of video analysis technology, the mysterious Pat Cummins slower ball has been unravelled and Xavier Doherty’s left-arm spin unpacked. David Warner’s anxiety to be taken seriously as a “proper” cricketer rather than a primitive but effective slogger was beautifully preyed upon during the second game at St George’s Park as struggled to 74 from 97 balls against bowlers who dared him to take the risks he was so studiously trying to avoid.
As much as the batting of David Miller, Smith, Duminy and the ageless Jacques Kallis brought a smile to the face — and the bowling of the brilliant Morné Morkel a very wide grin — it wasn’t enough to wipe away the reality of the dire depths to which the game has sunk behind the stage.
If Cricket South Africa (CSA) cannot attract a sponsor for T20 and ODI series against Australia on home soil, when will they entice the corporate world to associate their brands with the game?
The lack of accountability, honesty and care for the game at the top of the administration has continued down the pyramid to the departments of marketing and communication. Potential sponsors have been frightened away not only by the legal spat between the chief executive and the former president, but by the apparent disdain with which they have treated the game’s reputation.
And while the press releases continue to spew forth from CSA assuring everyone that all is normal and life goes on just fine, the men and women in charge of attracting new investment continue to demand sponsorship fees so outrageously high they elicit not anger but hilarity — followed by bewilderment and then sadness. Still, as always, victory on the field will apply another effective sticking plaster. For now.