“Dean Elgar won’t come out batting right-handed, or anything like that.” – Jacques Kallis assures South Africans that not everything about cricket has changed.
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
MARK Boucher and Jacques Kallis. For all but 19 of the 156 men’s Tests South Africa played from October 1997 to March 2012, there was no separating them: behind the stumps, Boucher; at second slip, Kallis. They batted together 33 times and shared 1,157 runs, among them two century stands. They felt South Africa’s pain together at the 1999, 2003 and 2007 editions of the World Cup.
Where one went the other was sure to follow, on and off the field. Sometimes they seemed to be two halves of the same person. Boucher had enough brashness for the both of them. Kallis’ sheer stature seemed to add a foot to Boucher’s height. Boucher did almost all of the talking, Kallis almost all of the listening. At least, that’s how it looked from outside their bubble.
The partnership was broken, on the field, at Taunton on July 9, 2012, when a bail tumbled into Boucher’s left eye, ending his playing career. Off the field, the bond was seamless. They lived close to each other. They produced a brand of wine together. They were bestmen at each other’s weddings.
And, as of Wednesday, they are back in South Africa’s dressingroom. Boucher’s appointment as coach and Kallis’ acquisition, for the summer, as the batting consultant are the biggest pieces in the puzzle Graeme Smith is trying to solve since his own enlistment as acting director of cricket last Saturday. With those three giants has come some of the belief that has been seeping out of South Africa’s cause since Smith’s retirement in March 2014. Add Charl Langeveldt as the bowling consultant — he has had a previous and successful coaching stint with the team — and there are reasons to be cheerful that rise above even Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) shambolic administration.
Or are there? The jury in the court of public opinion would seem to be out. In captioning a photograph of Boucher, Kallis and Langeveldt on social media, Boeta Dippenaar connected the dots to the ills of South Africa’s wider society: “Are these gentlemen the answer to CSA’s problems? The short answer is no. Why? Because years of neglect got us to where we are today. A systematic breakdown of structures is the root cause. It’s politics, it’s about ‘me’ and not the game. CSA is a reflection of what we see happening at SOE’s [state owned enterprises] and most local municipalities. The appointment of the three gentlemen represents a small step in the right direction. That brought Vince van der Bijl into the conversation: “African proverb … How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We have started the meal.” Soon Barry Richards was at it: “Cricket sense from a cricketer. Right direction of course. But the elephant is still in the room.”
The elephant is CSA and its gift for losing money and stumbling down dark alleys in governance terms. At board level, that is — the appointment of the respected Jacques Faul as acting chief executive, to replace Thabang Moroe, who has been suspended, elicited almost audible sighs of relief. Moroe’s removal was required to get Smith aboard, and here we are a week later with a newly minted coaching staff and rather more than we previously had of the precious metal Dippenaar referenced to end his post: “#hope”. But there are no honeymoons after shotgun marriages, and South Africa’s new regime will hit the ground running in a Test series against England that starts at Centurion on Thursday.
“Two weeks ago I thought I was going to be in St Francis [a resort on South Africa’s east coast] over Christmas, maybe take a little trip to Fancourt for some golf,” Boucher told reporters in Centurion on Friday, where South Africa’s camp was in full swing with him directing operations. “Things have changed …” Things like the people in top jobs: “I had faith that the guys who had been put in those leadership positions would be able to take care of certain things and I would be able to focus on this job and try to take this group of players forward.”
Something else that would seem to have changed is that Kallis isn’t letting Boucher do all of the talking anymore: “Jacques mentioned in the changeroom the other day about preparing for an exam. If you go into an exam and you don’t feel prepared, you are not going to have the confidence. That’s what we are trying to do — get the guys’ confidence back and make sure we have ticked every box possible, so that when they do get into the Test match they feel they are ready.”
While Boucher is calculating and canny, Kallis is as close to instinct on legs as it is possible to be for someone steeped in the complexities of cricket. He thinks, but he doesn’t let thought get in the way of action. “I’m just trying to get to know the individuals,” Kallis said. “‘Bouch’ and Enoch [Nkwe, the assistant coach] have worked with a lot of the guys so they know them pretty well. I’m trying to get a relationship with the players and see how they are thinking and trying to give them game plans. I’m not a big one for changing too many things. Dean Elgar won’t come out batting right-handed, or anything like that. I’m just trying to give the guys options and ideas and make them realise you can’t bat the same way every time you walk out to bat. You have to adapt your game. I’m trying to get them to know their game plan a lot better so they can try and adapt while they are batting. It’s not the spoonfeeding of coaching; it’s trying to educate them so they can educate themselves while they are out in the middle. It’s a lot of off-the-field stuff, the mind stuff, along with the technical stuff.”
Kallis has come a long way since his playing days, when you could look into his eyes and see not a flicker of life if he wasn’t interested in what was going on around him. Boucher, too, has become a proper human being compared to the time when his primary ambition was to, he used to say, “walk onto the field as if you own the place”. Losing half his sight may have helped make him see things more accurately, or at least in a light favourable for more positive, less competitive interaction with his world. “I’ve learnt a lot of lessons along the way,” Boucher said. “I learnt that my way is not always the right way. There were times in my career where I used to go out there and be quite aggressive and try and impose myself on teammates. This is what I have learnt on diversity within a set-up. Sometimes you won’t get the best out of the players if you are trying to get them to be like you. My biggest lesson is to let people be who they are and let them be natural. I played at my best when I was natural but my natural wasn’t the same as AB’s [De Villiers] natural or Jacques’ natural. That’s a big lesson I have learnt with regards to leading individuals. Whenever I make a decision, I ask myself, ‘Is it a good cricketing decision?’. And if I can answer yes, then I go with it and I tap into other knowledge in the dressingroom to back that up. And then we go full steam ahead with that. The last thing you want to do is second-guess yourself.”
Some things don’t change. Boucher is still a hard bastard. Kallis is still a colossus who owns any room he steps into. Other things do change: they’ve learnt how to be themselves better. For the rest of us, that’s called growing up. For people like Boucher and Kallis, who aren’t allowed the time and space to mature naturally, it’s called success. If they can get that into their charges’ heads, nothing will stop South Africa.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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