Neil’s Diary – Week 5
4 FEBRUARY
Quinton de Kock scoffed at the extra burden of captaincy the day before the first ODI and said open the batting was “what I do” and the keeping wicket was important to both his batting and his captaincy. What an emphatic and glorious way to prove it with his 15th ODI century as both he and his team defied the odds and expectations of the majority of viewers with an emphatic victory.
It is human nature to ask questions of the opposition when such a new-look, inexperienced team beats the world champions but the reality is that De Kock’s team bowled and fielded superbly to first reduce England to 108-5 and then restrict them to 258-8 in 50 overs on a blameless pitch offering slow turn but no seam movement, decent pace and reliable bounce.
It is easy to say that an England team including Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler might have made well over 300, and that the inclusion of Mark Wood and Jofra Archer might have made their run chase a great deal more difficult, but it’s speculation and conjecture. This was England against South Africa. And the home side “completely outplayed us in every aspect of the game,” admitted Eoin Morgan afterwards.
The Proteas also omitted four important players from their own squad – Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Dwaine Pretorius and Faf du Plessis – and the result was the longest batting tail in recent memory. Beuran Hendricks at No 8 (!) followed by Lungi Ngidi, Lutho Sipamla and Tabraiz Shamsi makes for a lot of responsibility on the top six. The ‘specialist’ route is a gamble that many teams have taken in the past but there remains a compelling argument to suggest that it works. Especially in the absence of genuine allrounders rather than batsmen who ‘bowl a bit’ and bowlers who ‘bat a bit.’
Newlands put on a freakish, natural light display tonight with the last of the day’s sunshine pushing through dark, but not ominous, grey clouds gathering over the top of the mountain. It was a dramatic sight not lost on the English visitors who had bought hundreds of one-off tickets in the many otherwise unpopulated hospitality suites.
Kingsmead awaits. Changes and even more new faces, perhaps? Janneman Malan is too exciting a player not to be used at some stage although the dry and spin-friendly surface at Kingsmead might mean a place for Bjorn Fortuin ahead of Lutho Sipamla whose debut performance today was a solid pass. Enough of the analysis. England were thrashed and it had far more to do with the home side’s excellence than the visitors' errors. Celebrate and enjoy that.
2 FEBRUARY
As expected, not everybody was best-pleased with me apparently maligning the decision to hold a 'conditioning camp' mid-season and send some of the country's best players to it instead of playing actual games of cricket. I apologise. I never intended to question the importance of such camps, especially when they are run by Adrian le Roux, one of the very finest fitness, physiotherapy and biokinetic experts ever to have worked in the game. Cricketers in this country are lucky to have him.
The question was purely about timing. Such camps, I suggested, might be better held during the off-season, allowing players to maximise their game-time. But then, what is the 'off-season' these days? The first of three T20Is against Australia takes place four days after the England tour finishes and the first of three ODIs in India takes place four days after the Aussies leave. Then it's the IPL.
Tabraiz Shamsi, Jon-Jon Smuts and Lungi Ngidi – who spoke after training at Newlands today – were all given a graduation certificate and will take their place in the squad against England. Sisanda Magala did not pass but has remained with the squad anyway, in a non-playing capacity.
Ngidi said he'd been "very happy working on conditioning, running, gyming and bowling…although it's always frustrating not playing for the national team. It's difficult during the season to get that work done," Ngidi said.
With Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje rested, Ngidi knows he will be leading the attack: "I'm comfortable with that and I've done it before. It would be massive for us to win this series after the tests didn't go as we would have liked. I pride myself on how I bounce back from injury setbacks. I'm a bit bigger than most other guys so it takes a bit more out of my body – it's just a question of getting the balance right," Ngidi said.
So, did he lose weight under the supervision of the excellent Le Roux? Obviously "conditioning" isn't only about weight but, let's be honest…
"Of course I did, you're bound to after two or three weeks training. Four or five kilos. We worked with strength and conditioning coaches to find the right balance between losing weight and maintaining strength. There's a lot more that goes into it behind the scenes, you need to limit the tings that are harmful to your body being a professional sportsman," Ngidi said, without specifying what they might be.
Meanwhile, the Kolpak debate heated up even further with the news that the ECB had recently informed its 18 counties that they will no longer be able to employ players on Kolpak contracts beyond 2020 – even if they have long-term contracts. That ruling will certainly be challenged under Labour Law and Restraint of Trade, but it is, if nothing else, a frightening shot across the bows of both clubs and players.
For me there was one last opportunity to escape before the ODI series begins in earnest. Three Dutch exchange students didn't quite know what they were in for with a hike up to the Steenberg mast – but the swim in Silvermine dam on the way back made it all worthwhile.
1 FEBRUARY
Fascinating day at Boland Park today on which the concept of 'practise matches' took a new twist. Having lashed the SA Invitation XI bowlers to the tune of 346 for seven with Jonny Bairstow (100* from 83 balls), Joe Root (91) and Joe Denly (85 from 63 balls) filling their boots, the tourists asked their understandably outclassed hosts whether they would like some 'role play' cricket after reducing them to 193 for six in 30 overs.
So a new game was arranged with England defending a total of 85 from 10 overs. It was described as "high-pressure training" for the visitors.
And it was – these days you'd give the batting side a 90 per cent chance of victory. Sure enough, the reassembled Invitation XI got home with two balls to spare and six wickets in hand.
There is no doubt the players on both sides benefitted more than they would have by playing out a meaningless game without List ‘A’ status.
Congratulations, nonetheless, to openers Jacques Snyman (67 from 45 balls, 8x3, 3x6) and 22-year-old Easterns batsman, Kabelo Sekhukhune (54 from 60 balls, 4x4, 1x6) for the impression they made against a world-class attack.
The Proteas started their preparations with a net session at Newlands involving the players who weren't required for the first round of the Momentum One-day Cup fixtures (they really should all have played…why not?)
Still, there appears to be as much desire to remove the best players from domestic cricket at the moment as there is to include them.
Strange. Training and/or conditioning camps are fine in theory but the same players and coaches who run them have spent decades telling us "there is no substitute for game time."
Another Under-19 World Cup, another wretched SA display and another 'Mankad; controversy. Afghani spinner Noor Ahmed ran out Pakistan opener Muhammad Huraira at the non-strikers end with the batsman at least half a metre out of his crease.
And people throw their arms up in despair at the temerity of it. How can a batsman so flagrantly cheat and then be dismissed, fairly and within the full confines of the game's laws, by such an unsportsmanlike bowler?
Pretty much everyone who reads this will have a view so I won't bother justifying mine. But just to say: attempting to 'steal' an extra metre or so while running from the non-striker's end is absolutely fine.
More than that, a batsman is obliged to do whatever he can to maximise his team's chances of winning.
The bowler, too, is obliged to do whatever he or she can to prevent the batsmen from 'stealing' anything, from a centimetre to a metre.
It’s time to properly celebrate Vinoo Mankad for the exceptional cricketer he was, and to recognise the ultra-gentlemanly bevaviour he displayed before finally appealing for a dismissal.
His name has been sullied for too long and all the wrong reasons. He was a brilliant and fair cricketer. He had no problem with batsmen setting off early for a quick single, but they should not have a problem if they’re caught.
31 JANUARY
After an exhausting test series, it was important for as many of the players as possible to escape cricket as emphatically and completely as possible, if only for a few days. Switch on – switch off. It’s a part of every job, I suppose.
So many of the players involved in the test series are either test specialists or have been rested from the ODI series so I guess they have been able to switch off and stay switched off, but unfortunately, we have yet to develop specialist categories of cricket writer or commentator. So it was just two days off for me.
I escape to Noordhoek beach to watch the surfers and run the dogs. What makes them able to take a day off and spend it in the ocean? One man told me he “got lucky in an informal silver mine in South America” and now he lives a comfortable life in a fine house on the beach and surfs whenever the waves are good. The waves were excellent today.
Meanwhile, a lot continues to happen on the domestic front. English county Durham are in a ‘rebuilding phase’ which doesn’t mean they are utilising the talent from their academy.
It means, of course, they have been shopping in South Africa. Farhaan Behardien is a significant loss to the Titans but, at 36, the time is appropriate. He is fit and strong and in as good a vein of form as he has ever been.
In other news, two of the three players who were withdrawn from the latest round of four-day games in order to attend a CSA ‘conditioning camp’ have been cleared to play in the forthcoming ODI series against England.
‘Conditioning’ is a polite word for ‘image’. Tabraiz Shamsi and Jon-Jon Smuts appear to have shed sufficient to pass the appropriate look for the Proteas. The immensely talented Sisanda Magala, meanwhile, would never have shed 10 kilos if he had run a half marathon a day and eaten lettuce stalks. But he has been retained in the squad.
As DoC Graeme Smith said, he will be a valuable addition to the national squad. I’m reliably informed, he trains and works harder than most and does nothing off the field to excess, but his very considerable frame simply refuses to yield.
It’s good to get perspective. For all the problems in SA, imagine being in Wuhan Province in China. The coronavirus has left hundreds of thousands of people in ‘lockdown’, unable to leave the country and too scared to leave their houses. Whatever we may be experiencing, it can’t be worse than wearing a cut-off plastic bottle over your head or wrapping your infants in clingfilm just to get to the local shop – which has almost run out of food.
28 JANUARY
I spent the most of the 1990s and 2000s watching and writing about South African teams being beaten, repeatedly, by Australian teams. There was the famous drawn series in Australia in 1994 when Fanie de Villiers helped win the great New Year test in Sydney but after that it was all downhill, repeatedly. Shane Warne called Graeme Smith’s 2005 team, which lost the test series 2-0, “the worst ever to visit Australian shores.”
Three years later Smith returned to Australia to become the first South African captain to win in Australia – ever. Chased down 414 to win at the WACA in Perth and then triumphed in the most ‘unwinnable’ game in SA test history in the Boxing Day test at the MCG to clinch the series.
I walked down the steps from the media centre to conduct interviews with a range of emotions I had never experienced before. It was like standing on a bridge with bungee ropes attached to your ankles for the first time. When I reached the outfield the first man I bumped into was long-serving team manager, Goolam Rajah. He had tears in his eyes, which meant I was immediately wiping them away from my own.
Having done the radio interviews and completed my duties, it was obvious that the players weren’t leaving any time soon. “Look at this place,” said Smith, gesturing at one of the greatest sporting arenas on earth. He also had a tear in his eye. I lost my adherence to the professional media code of conduct, momentarily, and hugged Smith. “Sorry about that,” I said, “but this has been a long time coming…” Not just in Smith’s time, but for almost a century before. “No problem, Manners,” he said as I walked away.
It happened again, in almost equally dramatic fashion four years later in 2012 and then again, most emphatically, in 2016. Two years ago Faf du Plessis led South Africa in the country’s greatest home summer of all time. Not just victory against the best team in the world, India, but a 3-1 win against Australia – the first on home soil in the modern era. Glorious, happy, memorable days.
The price to pay for such triumphs is what we are experiencing now. The good times are paid for by the bad times.
Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje and Lungi Ngidi will form a pace attack to challenge any batting line-up in world cricket. Keshav Maharaj, at his best, is among the best spinners in the world. Dwaine Pretorius did more than enough to show he can stitch the batting and bowling together at No 7. Now it’s time to find the new members of the top six. That should be exciting, not dispiriting. So let’s suck up the pain in lieu of the good times to come.
If that isn’t already too much to ask, how about we raise a glass to the opposition who arrived here with as many questions about their own team as we had about ours. Well done. Perhaps the intensity of their celebrations should be taken as a compliment? Winning in South Africa is “one of the great achievements in the game” said captain Joe Root.
Fortunes will change on the field, but much more quickly if they change off it. The remaining CSA board members will have to recognise and appreciate the negative effect their tenure is having on the players. Not until everyone is pulling in the same direction will rebuilding and improvement reach optimum pace.
Root’s affection for the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy was obvious. He thought it looked better with his sunhat on. In years to come, the South African captain will have the chance to put his cap on Basil’s head. That’s the way it works.
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