Elgar makes a plea for Test cricket

An incident at the end of South Africa’s cricket Test against India at Newlands spoke volumes.

Trying to loft over the infield, Rohit Sharma skied a catch to Tony de Zorzi at cover. It was De Zorzi’s ball, but he frantically back-pedalled in an attempt to leave it to the slips. When no one responded, he spilled the catch in a way that made you cringe.

Of course, it made no difference to a match that had been lost in South Africa’s first innings. 

But the loss of nerve, the abrogation of responsibility, was an insult to the bowler, the masterful Kagiso Rabada, and a tradition that includes such never-say-die contenders as Makhaya Ntini, Ashwell Prince and Faf du Plessis.

It would be wrong to pin the blame entirely on De Zorzi. The funked catch was of a piece with his sub-par performance in a series in which he made 29 runs and dropped a sitter off Virat Kohli — yes, Virat Kohli.

Everything about the incident spoke of the desertion of his self-belief. One must ask why, with a mere two Tests behind him, he was  asked to bat at the pivotal position of three rather than down the order.

He looked out of his depth. Instead of Dean Elgar’s meaty driving and pulling, most of his runs seemed to squirt from the outside edge.

Cricket SA’s (CSA) lamentable practice of throwing young players in at the deep end, generally for racial reasons, was even more starkly highlighted by the treatment of Tristan Stubbs. A 23-year-old with just 16 first-class games under his belt, Stubbs had the unusual distinction of getting out twice in one day — for three and one — on an impossible Newlands surface.

A large part of the problem is the debility of SA’s domestic four-day game and the misleading picture it paints of players’ strengths and readiness for international competition. Stubbs’s first-class average is 40.72. 

In a recent Mail & Guardian piece, Luke Alfred offered an elegant dissection of the muddle at leadership level which asked: ‘Why does Test cricket matter?’ And how does one shield it from the relentless encroachment of the 20-over format?

Batting is the crisp issue — no newcomers have emerged to replace the Big Five of Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla and Du Plessis. 

During its heyday, 2008 to 2017, South Africa achieved a unique 4-2 scorecard of series wins against Australia, two in enemy territory.

Shukri Conrad, the South African coach, claims that the new Indian Professional League-driven SA20 cricket league is the “cornerstone for the sustenance and growth of South African cricket”. But for Dean Elgar, the ultimate Test bat, who dismisses the short form as “the fast food of cricket”, the two formats “should not be mentioned in the same sentence”. 

“For Test batting you have to learn when to hit and when to go more carefully. You need patience; how to bat time. And how to read the game, for example, to cash in on a bowler’s third or fourth spell.” 

Exposure, both time in the middle and to more experienced players, is the key. It took Herschelle Gibbs 20 innings to reach his first Test 50. But cushioning him was the accumulated know-how of the Kirsten-Cullinan-Donald generation and foreign players and coaches.

The row over the third-rate Test side sent to New Zealand to ensure that star players are available for the SA20 is not new. Last season Western Province’s Kyle Verreynne complained of “a massive disconnect between CSA and the domestic first-class game”, underscored by a scheduling clash between the SA20 final and a first-class fixture. 

Also much lamented was the relegation of Free State — former home of Allan Donald, Farhaan Behardien and Elgar himself — from Division One. Verreynne remarked that players’ distrust of the CSA’s intentions towards domestic cricket persist. 

CSA notched up a R119 million loss last year, with the main casualties professional and amateur cricket, where spending was cut by R41 million and R40 million, respectively.

Tests are so named for a reason — regarded by the players themselves as the apex format, their purpose is to test the longer-term power balance between cricketing nations. 

Who can name the previous or even current T-20 world champion? Very few, one suspects, because as a Roman-style circus with a large admixture of Bollywood, the short form means little to serious cricket lovers. 

A T-20 match is a forgettable quickie, designed for instant gratification, as opposed to a lasting and meaningful engagement. 

Tests, essentially unchanged for 120 years, also provide an unbroken, vital link with the game’s history. 

South Africa’s threadbare selection for the New Zealand tour draws added significance, for example, from knowing that, in 93 years, the Kiwis have never won a series against us. Our T-20 record against them? Who knows or needs to know?

Test matches touch the parts other formats don’t reach, trying the total organism — not just the eye, but the brain, heart and guts. 

Think of South Africa’s remarkable rearguard against Michael Clarke’s Australians to hold the 2012/13 series at nil-all. Du Plessis made 110 not out from 376 balls, while the usually belligerent De Villiers preceded him with 33 from 220. South Africa won that series 1-0 with two draws. 

The draw — impossible in the shorter versions — gives added spice through the option of a fighting retreat. In this way, Tests more closely mirror the real world, where not every nose-to-nose results in a win for one side.

The need to prize one’s wicket for a honed defensive technique and stubborn crease occupation also bring the Test game closer to real warfare. Knowing when to hang in and not to play the ball lies at the heart of Test batting — in T-20 it is the wanton dissipation of a scoring opportunity.

Because of its unique duration, the Test format also offers the possibility of long, slow fluctuations of fortune, such as the remarkable fight-back by England against India’s initial upper hand in the recent Hyderabad test.

Elgar is surely right to insist that such a unique format cannot be built on the foundation of another. 

Pointing to the handsome turnout for both tests against India, he also rejects the idea that the short form is cricket’s financial salvation because fans want it. Indeed, as the 50% stockholder in the SA20, CSA garnered a profit from the 20-over bonanza of just R32 million last year, compared with projected proceeds of R1 billion from an Indian tour to which the Test series was central.

“Luckily, Tests remain part of our cricketing culture,” he remarked.

It is paradoxical, in that context, that CSA shows so little commitment to the five-day format and its feeder, domestic first-class cricket. This season the regions will each play just seven first-class matches, compared to the erstwhile ten; after this month there will be an eight-month hiatus before the next Test series at home. 

Further sign of official neglect and disinterest is the state of Test wickets — Newlands lacks a full-time groundsman, while the Wanderers, once fast and bouncy, now spins like a  top — and the scheduling of just two Tests per series, starving players and fans of the exposure the format critically needs. 

Former spinner Paul Harris has attacked the unsustainable approach of basing South Africa’s continued five-day competitiveness on “good fast bowling and rubbish pitches”. 

Writer Niren Tolsi sees a parallel between colonial extractive industry and the Indian board’s mining of South African pace to feed the $2 billion octopus of the Indian Professional League.

It has been proposed cricket should follow football by scheduling specific windows for international matches, to avert fixture clashes with clubs. 

Elgar argues the increasingly clogged international schedule could be decongested to accommodate more Tests by dumping 50-over matches, which “the players don’t like anyway”. 

Financially, he argues, the answer lies in rebuilding the sponsorship base lost in 2019 to 2020 during cricket’s intractable governance imbroglio, when Standard Bank and Momentum walked away after CSA’s chief executive was sacked, its president stepped down, journalists were de-accredited and players sued the administration.

To circumvent the damage to the brand, Elgar is known to have suggested during his captaincy senior players should be used to woo potential sponsors from the business world. 

“Offer them a round of golf with Rabada or [Aiden] Markram and they would salivate,” he said.

It appears the suggestion has never been acted on. We can’t have mere players taking over from the bureaucrats of the CSA, can we?

An incident at the end of South Africa’s cricket test against India at Newlands spoke volumes

Trying to loft over the infield, Rohit Sharma skied a catch to Tony di Zorzi at cover. It was Di Zorzi’s ball, but he frantically back-pedalled in an attempt to leave it to the slips. When no one responded, he spilled the catch in a way that made one cringe.

Of course, it made no difference to a match that had been lost in South Africa’s first innings. But the loss of nerve, the abrogation of responsibility, was an insult to the bowler, the masterful Kagiso Rabada, and a tradition that includes such never-say-die contenders as Makhaya Ntini, Ashwell Prince and Faf du Plessis.

It would be wrong to pin the blame entirely on Di Zorzi. The funked catch was of a piece with his sub-par performance in a series in which he made 29 runs and dropped a sitter off Virat Kohli – yes, Virat Kohli.

Everything about the incident spoke of the desertion of Di Zorzi’s self-belief. One must ask: why, with a mere two tests behind him, he was  asked to bat at the pivotal position of three rather than down the order He looked out of his depth: Instead of Dean Elgar’s meaty driving and pulling, most of his runs seemed to squirt from the outside edge.

Cricket SA’s (CSA) lamentable practice of throwing young players in at the deep end, generally for racial reasons, was even more starkly highlighted by the treatment of Tristan Stubbs. A 23-year-old with just 16 first-class games under his belt, Stubbs had the unusual distinction of getting out twice in one day — for three and one – on an impossible Newlands surface.

A large part of the problem is the debility of South Africa’s domestic four-day game and the misleading picture it paints of players’ strengths and readiness for international competition. Stubbs’s first-class average is 40.72. 

In a recent Mail & Guardian, Luke Alfred offered an elegant dissection of the muddle at leadership level which asked: why does test cricket matter? And how does one shield it from the relentless encroachment of the 20-over format?

Batting is the crisp issue: no newcomers have emerged to replace the Big Five of Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla and Du Plessis. During their heyday, 2008–2017, South Africa achieved a unique 4-2 scorecard of series wins against, Australia, two in enemy territory.

Shukri Conrad, the South African coach, claims that the new Indian Professional League (IPL)-driven SA20 cricket league is the “cornerstone for the sustenance and growth of South African cricket”. For Dean Elgar, the ultimate test bat who dismisses the short form as “the fast food of cricket”, the two formats “should not be mentioned in the same sentence”. 

“For test batting you have to learn when to hit and when to go more carefully. You need patience, how to bat time. And how to read the game, for example to cash in on a bowler’s third or fourth spell.” 

Exposure, both time in the middle and to more experienced players, is the key. It took Herschelle Gibbs 20 innings to reach his first test 50. But cushioning him was the accumulated know-how of the Kirsten-Cullinan-Donald generation and foreign players and coaches.

The row over the third-rate test side sent to New Zealand to ensure that star players are available for the SA20, is not new. Last season Western Province’s Kyle Verreyne complained of “a massive disconnect between CSA and the domestic first-class game”, underscored by a scheduling clash between the SA20 final and a first-class fixture. 

Also much lamented was the relegation of Free State – former home of Allan Donald, Farhaan Behardien and Elgar himself – from Division One. Verreyne remarked that players’ distrust of the CSA’s intentions towards domestic cricket persist. 

CSA notched up a R119-loss in 2023, with the main casualties professional and amateur cricket, where spending was cut by R41-million and R40-million respectively.

Tests are so named for a reason – regarded by the players themselves as the apex format, their purpose is to test the longer-term power balance between cricketing nations. Who can name the previous, or even current T-20 world champion? Very few, one suspects, because as a Roman-style circus with a large admixture of Bollywood, the short form means little to cricket lovers. A T-20 match is a forgettable quickie, designed for instant gratification, as opposed to a lasting and meaningful engagement. 

Tests, essentially unchanged for 120 years, also provide an unbroken, vital link with the game’s history. South Africa’s threadbare selection for the New Zealand tour draws added significance, for example, from knowing that in 93 years the Kiwis have never won a series against us. Our T-20 record against them? Who knows or needs to know?

Test matches touch the parts other formats don’t reach, trying the total organism – not just the eye, but the brain, heart and guts. Think of South Africa’s remarkable rearguard against Michael Clarke’s Australians to hold the 2012/13 series at nil-all. Du Plessis made 110 not out from 376 balls, while the usually belligerent De Villiers preceded him with 33 from 220. That series was drawn 1-1. 

The draw – impossible in the shorter versions – gives added spice through the option of a fighting retreat. In this way, tests more closely mirror the real world, where not every nose-to-nose results in a win for one side.

The need to prize one’s wicket, for a honed defensive technique and stubborn crease occupation also bring the test game closer to real warfare. Knowing when to hang in and not to play the ball lies at the heart of test batting – in T-20 it is the wanton dissipation of a scoring opportunity.

Because of its unique duration, the test format also offers the possibility of long, slow fluctuations of fortune, such as the remarkable fight-back by England against India’s initial upper hand in the recent Hyderabad test.

Elgar is surely right to insist that such a unique format cannot be built on the foundation of another. Pointing to the handsome turnout for both tests against India, he also rejects the idea that the short form is cricket’s financial salvation because fans want it. Indeed, as the 50% stockholder in the SA20, CSA garnered a profit from the 20-over bonanza of just R32-million last year, compared with projected proceeds of R1-billion from an Indian tour to which the test series was central.

“Luckily, tests remain part of our cricketing culture,” he remarked.

It is paradoxical, in that context, that CSA shows so little commitment to the five-day format and its feeder, domestic first-class cricket. This season the regions will each play just seven first-class matches, compared to the erstwhile ten; after February there will be an eight-month hiatus before the next test series at home, 

Further signs of official neglect and disinterest are the state of test wickets – Newlands lacks a full-time groundsman, while the Wanderers, once fast and bouncy, now spins like a  top — and the scheduling of just two tests per series, starving players and fans of the exposure the format critically needs. 

Former South African spinner Paul Harris has attacked the unsustainable approach of basing South Africa’s continued five-day competitiveness on “good fast bowling and rubbish pitches”. Writer Niren Tolsi sees a parallel between colonial extractive industry and the Indian board’s mining of South African pace to feed the $2-billion octopus of the IPL.

It has been proposed that cricket should follow football by scheduling specific windows for international matches, to avert fixture clashes with clubs. Elgar argues that the increasingly clogged international schedule could be decongested to accommodate more tests by dumping 50-over matches, which “the players don’t like anyway”. 

Financially, he argues that the answer lies in rebuilding the sponsorship base lost in 1919-20 during cricket’s intractable governance imbroglio, when Standard Bank and Momentum walked away after CSA’s chief executive was sacked, its president stepped down, journalists were de-accredited and players sued the administration.

To circumvent the damage to the brand, Elgar is known to have suggested during his captaincy that senior players should be used to woo potential sponsors from the business world. “Offer them a round of golf with Rabada or Markram and they would salivate,” he said.

The suggestion has never been acted on.