“We really went overboard to prepare the guys for what we think they’re going to face.” – Mark Boucher
Telford Vice | Cape Town
WERE South Africa a more successful Test team in the subcontinent during Mark Boucher’s playing career? Yes. And by some distance. Now that Boucher is back in Asia as his team’s coach, expectations are sure to rise that he will guide them back to the kind of glory that is fading from his compatriots’ memory.
Boucher made his debut in October 1997 in South Africa’s first Test series win in Pakistan. By April 2003 he had also been part of inaugural victories in India and Bangladesh along with a drawn rubber in Sri Lanka. In all in Asia, Boucher figured in five Test rubber successes and three defeats. Four series were drawn. He played 24 Tests in the subcontinent of which South Africa won 10 and lost six.
Since Boucher was forced into retirement by an eye injury in July 2012, South Africa have contested six Test series in the United Arab Emirates and in Asia. They have prevailed in only one of them — in Sri Lanka in July 2014 — and lost three. They’ve won two matches and lost nine. Importantly, South Africa drew eight Tests in the subcontinent during his career. Since he hung up his gloves and pads, they have drawn only four.
Boucher told an online press conference on Monday, the eve of the first Test in Karachi, that his generation of South Africans had “learnt the tough way” how to survive and prosper in the unfamiliar conditions they encountered in the subcontinent during a tour to Sri Lanka in August 2004. Mahela Jayawardene scored 237 in the drawn first Test in Galle. At the SSC in Colombo, Kumar Sangakkara made 232 and Sanath Jayasuriya took 5/34 and Chaminda Vaas 6/29 to power the Lankans to victory by 313 runs. That trend continued in the ODIs, where Sri Lanka racked up 10 half-centuries. Jacques Kallis made the series’ only century, but South Africans scored only five 50s. Sri Lanka won all five games. “We went through some hard lessons in Sri Lanka, where we got beat badly,” Boucher said. “We sat down there and took a few lessons going forward.”
Experience, Boucher said, helped the South Africans play their way to better results: “We had a couple of senior batters who had played a lot of cricket. That’s where our success came from. But a lot of those guys have retired and the guys haven’t spent a lot of time playing cricket in the subcontinent. The more you come here the better you get.”
Graeme Smith, Kallis, Hashim Amla and JP Duminy would be some of the players Boucher was referencing. None of them are still in action. But Boucher saw an opportunity for the current crop to do something similar to the South Africans who were in Sri Lanka in 2004. “One or two of these guys have seen the bad side of the subcontinent before,” he said. “The challenge is to try and change that now.”
Pitches on South Africa’s last two tours to India, in November 2015 and October 2019, have drawn criticism for favouring the home side. But Boucher expected fairer surfaces in Pakistan: “I don’t think the wickets are going to be as severe as what we saw in India on the latest Test team tour. I think they’re going to be better to bat on. We had some facilities in our practices where we really went overboard to prepare the guys for what we think they’re going to face.”
Not that Boucher was trying to say pitches should be unreasonably tweaked: “I haven’t asked any groundsman to prepare certain sorts of wickets for different opposition. I’m not sure what happens in different countries. I think you have a feel for where you want to play the games. For instance, we played against Sri Lanka [in December and January] on the Highveld, where we know the ball’s going to seam around and bounce a bit. Would they struggle to play there rather than in the coastal areas of our country? Yes, probably. We didn’t ask anyone to doctor the wickets, but we knew there might be more pace and bounce there.” South Africa won those matches by an innings and by 10 wickets. In February 2019, Kingsmead and St George’s Park — the slowest pitches in the country — hosted the Sri Lankan, who won by one wicket and eight wickets to become the first Asian team to claim a series in South Africa.
“If we come to the subcontinent and we’re used to pace and bounce and maybe a bit of seam movement, they probably won’t send us to pitches they know are pretty similar,” Boucher said. “They’ll probably send us to places where they know the ball is going to turn square. It’s not doctoring. It’s more about being smart where you play your opposition and choosing to try and drive home an advantage where you see a weakness in your opposition. I’m all for it. That’s what you’ve got home ground advantage for. You must use it. We’re game for it.”
Boucher and his players knew the first Test was coming, ready or not. The South Africans would look to put their hard work into action as their next step. Doing so successfully didn’t involve looking backwards.
“Now it’s just the mental challenge of getting out there and not overthinking things,” Boucher said. “And not playing according to what’s happened in the past. You’ve got to learn from the past but going into [Tuesday’s] game we’ve got to treat it as fresh and try to get the guys to trust themselves and trust that they’ve ticked all the boxes.”
First published by Cricbuzz.
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