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The fight is goneSouth Africa’s national cricket team has plummeted from the summit of the world test rankings to number three. Moreover, a team once universally respected for its focus, high intensity and ruthless execution, has become tentative and full of doubt. What has gone wrong since the glory of the Australian tour?
The falloff in intensity is reflected in the results. Where South Africa won eleven out of 15 tests in 2008, it lost four out of six in 2009. Graeme Smith ’s boys were only victorious in a dead rubber of the series against Australia at home in March 2009.
Australia won that test series 2-1, and England is on the verge of securing a home series win against the Proteas in January 2010.
Why? It is because South Africa has lost that intense hunger to stay at the top of the pile. The management and the team became lackadaisical and complacent.
The team lost perspective, sharpness and ruthlessness as a result, and the meticulous planning that have made South Africa the best in the world, suffered.
Let’s start with planning. South Africa knew in September/October that Makhaya Ntini was a pale shadow of the Mdingi Express that ran through sides with contemptuous ease from 2003 to 2007.
He captured only 11 SuperSport wickets in seven matches. Yet, after securing his 100th test cap, they persisted with Ntini, in spite of the fact that he took only two wickets. To add insult to injury, two more bowlers who started with the woefully-out-of-form Ntini in Durban, had not bowled for a month in the middle prior to the Kingsmead test.
South Africa relied on Morné Morkel and Paul Harris (or a wing and a prayer) to bring home the bacon. They failed miserably and England won comfortably.
South Africa invested in a high performance coach in April 2009, yet for all the fanfare with which Corrie van Zyl was selected, the structures to attend to the bowlers of the A-team and others that are emerging, have been strangely absent.
In fact, Wayne Parnell, Albie Morkel, Johan Botha, Lonwabo Tsotsobe and CJ de Villiers have been off the boil for the greatest part of the pre-test campaign. The queue that is supposed to press for higher honours, has been misfiring badly.
Furthermore, the leg-spinner Imran Tahir who is seen as a possible successor to Harris and who has qualified for the national team in April 2009, was selected without Cricket South Africa ensuring that he is in possession of a passport, 10 months after qualifying to be a South African player.
The lack of the planning was also evident in the way the Protea-camp prepared for the English onslaught.
During the Ashes-series in 2009, two men ran the Australians ragged.
The one was the topsy-turvy and inconsistent Stuart Broad. Sure, there is ebb and flow with Broad, but when he is hot, you need the whole Western Cape fire brigade on standby. He captured 18 wickets in the series and won it for England by capturing five wickets in one session in the final test at the Oval.
The other danger man was the off-spinner Graeme Swann, who finished with 14 wickets in that series.
He captured 14 wickets in the first two tests against South Africa and sky-rocketed to number three in the world rankings for bowlers.
Did South Africa underestimate him? Definitely!
South Africa lacked sharpness and ruthlessness.
In 2008, three members of the top-six secured a thousand test runs in a calendar year. The fourth member, Ashwell Prince, slammed 900 runs at an average of 64.
But while the top-six was ruthless in transforming useful scores into match-winning centuries, they retreated into sloppiness in late 2009.
AB de Villiers was a case in point, playing the same sort of instinctive brand of high-risk cricket that has made him a frustrating under-achiever in the team for most of 2006 and 2007.
JP Duminy only managed 279 runs in seven tests since his match-winning 166 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in December 2008. The champ has become a chump.
Prince has become a pauper, a reluctant opening batsman whose natural stubbornness is left unexploited at the top of the order.
What can South Africa do to return to the top of the pile in world cricket? They will have to rediscover the will and the ruthlessness to dominate world cricket.
Without the intense hunger to dominate, tragedy might follow triumph, as it has done so painfully and dramatically since the remarkable test series win Down Under in January 2009.
All is not lost. South Africa will start the final test at the Wanderers against England with a faint chance of winning it and squaring the series.
The phrase ‘a faint chance’ is apt, simply because the batting is slightly disjointed right now, and the team has lost its aura of invincibility in the bowling department.
England has neutralised Harris by disallowing him to settle and frustrate their top-order, thereby forcing Smith to ‘over bowl’ his fast bowlers like Dale Steyn, Morkel and Jacques Kallis. Forced to do that, they lose their hostility and sharpness after the third or fourth spell.
The selectors have possibly stumbled onto a winning option with Tahir. The 30-year old bowler of the Titans and Hampshire was born and bred in Pakistan. He married a South African and might yet play for South Africa.
What has excited Mickey Arthur, and even a legend like Shane Warne, is that Tahir possesses all the different varieties that can bamboozle and humiliate the very best of batsmen.
Warne once helped to fine-tune Tahir’s actions and his flipper in the nets at Lord’s.
Tahir helped to repay Warne for his generosity by taking 45 wickets in seven matches for Hampshire.
What South Africa needs, says Richard Pybus, a former Pakistan-coach and former Titans mentor of Tahir, is to give the bowler accurate game plans and to communicate clearly with him.
“Manage him well and he could be a match-winner for South Africa,” he says.
What Pybus has requested, has actually been South Africa’s singular greatest shortcoming since January 2009, and the series wins away from home against England and Australia – their inability to ‘manage well’.
1. Cricket success is about great batting, bowling and fielding by the TEAM [as well as Leadership of course] in the 1st place - on the day of play! Having good management or backup players in the wings is secondary on that day. All these aspects must have focus all the time and perform consistently to achieve continued success
2. The failure in Durban was a disgrace by the TEAM - not Management or the players in the wings.
3. The Team should have a reward/penalty scheme in place that rewards "consistent" player performance and hurts in the pocket when they fail ~ the performance curve must always be either flat [meeting our high expectations] or upward [improving on the last performance]
4. Bowling consistent "rubbish" which the opposition can ignore is of no value to the TEAM, they don't even have to field these deliveries! All the bowlers did that, not just Ntini! He was only picked by the selector's to satisfy the media and give him his 100th+ game, his previous 5 games performance certainly did not warrant his selection. This was Management's [the SELECTOR'S] error, not the TEAM!
4. Throwing your wicket away by poor shot selection is also of no help to anyone - this is what the TEAM did in Durban - no excuses. If England can hang on for two days in Centurion and Cape Town, up to and including the tail-enders - where is the SA TEAM's focus
5. Dropping catches and poor fielding is unacceptable - ALL THE TIME!
6. We have to get everything right - not just a single aspect of the great game!