New Zealand’s performance in the final T20 at Eden Park on Wednesday was so appalling it should have attracted the attention of the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit. That is not to say there was anything untoward with the result — only that, statistically and historically, it was an unprecedented choke.
In the interests of fairness and consistency, it should be investigated. The hosts required 25 runs from five overs with seven wickets in hand. Then they required 16 from the final four. Four runs an over. It was harder to lose than to win, yet they managed it.
The Springboks famously recovered from 23-nil down to beat the All Blacks 24-23 in the final minute at King’s Park in 1998, so remarkable results do happen. But in rugby terms, this one was more like winning from 43-nil down.
“It’s a hard one to explain,” said Proteas captain AB de Villiers. “It was an incredible effort from all 11 of us to come back from that, but still, they should never have lost from that position.”
It could be the start of something for which De Villiers could become remembered as a captain — making the impossible come true, or at the very least, the highly unexpected and the unusual. He was determined to do things his way when his leadership tenure finally started, but that enthusiastic determination also made him slow — if not reluctant — to seek the opinion of or advice from more experienced teammates.
He made some humorously clumsy decisions in the ODI series against Sri Lanka, born of his lack of experience, but was as enthusiastic about taking the blame for their failure as he was about making them in the first place. But there was rarely a dull moment — far fewer than in the average, formulaic ODI, anyway. Now, very quickly, he has accepted that some bowlers deserve the right to set their own fields and has been happy for Johan Botha to take charge of the field in certain situations.
Whereas Gary Kirsten is becoming very mildly irritated at the reluctance or inability of some observers to see — let alone understand — the purpose of the current flexibility of the selection strategy, the captain takes it in his stride. “We don’t want to be predictable and we want to get to the situation where we are all comfortable and happy with thinking on our feet and not relying on a plan we made in the change room before the game,” he said, with a simplicity that really should not be hard to comprehend.
The next couple of years will determine whether Kirsten and his management team succeed or fail, but they should be commended rather than cursed for having the courage to look at one-day cricket in a different way.
We all know that cricketers perform better when they are not playing for their place, but Kirsten believes that it should be a place in the squad rather than in the top XI. He also wonders why players should be limited to, and defined by, a particular role. Why not have more strings to the bow?
His own experience as an opening batsman taught him about the mental staleness that comes from the repetitive strain of doing the same job all the time. There is no easy job in international cricket, but some are harder than others and by sharing those responsibilities players remain mentally fresher for longer, develop new skills, challenge themselves to improve and become Âunpredictable and hard for the opposition to analyse.
At the core of Kirsten’s coaching philosophy lies the notion of personal responsibility. During his own playing career, which was characterised by an all-time high win-loss ratio but also a number of painfully high-Âprofile losses, the team functioned brilliantly as a unit for most of the time. But Kirsten wonders whether too many individuals relied on others to get the job done when the profile of the match was at its highest.
De Villiers’s assertion that his team “needs to start winning finals” before Wednesday’s T20 appeared to be a deliberate attempt to display his comfort with pressure situations and a demand that everybody else should feel the same way.
Rather than a team packed with brilliantly talented allrounders who could, and would, all rely on each other for victory to be achieved, as the team of the late 1990s and early 2000s did, the team of the early 2010s aims to be packed with Âindividuals who can multitask, but who also want to get the job done themselves without having the luxury of falling back on teammates or preconceived plans.
“Of course we have plans, but they don’t always work and that’s when we need to be able to think for ourselves and have the courage to make decisions on the field,” De Villiers said.
New Zealand’s cricket followers, meanwhile, spent much of the 48 hours following the T20 series loss tearing the Black Caps players to pieces and cursing their chances of winning another game on the entire tour. It could go either way — a dismal slide into increasing self-doubt and defeat, or a carefree arousal into even greater effort and determination.