“It starts getting tough when you ask the boys for something and it just doesn’t happen.” – Quinton de Kock feels the cares of captaincy.
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
TWO hours before the start of the third T20I between South Africa and Australia at Newlands on Wednesday, Steve Smith was in the nets; fidgeting and jerking and bobbing and weaving and itching and scratching his way through a session of throwdowns from Michael Hussey, whose arms gleamed with sunshine and sweat as he let fly with grooved grace. How Smith manages to middle the ball so often and with such pointed power despite looking as if he is facing grenades lobbed at him from the other side of a busy highway is a miracle of the modern game.
Simultaneously, two nets away, Robin Peterson provided the same service to Faf du Plessis, who seemed happier than he has been in weeks. Calm at the crease is at the core of Du Plessis’ game. The storm after that calm is a tautly controlled explosion of mind and muscle, and all over in an eyeblink. With Du Plessis’ every emphatic dismissal of the flung offerings into the roof of the net, Peterson smiled the smile he couldn’t smile while Brian Lara was taking 28 runs off one of his overs, the last of the day, at the Wanderers in December 2014. Watching Smith and Du Plessis separately from the distance of the boundary cannot capture the vast contrast between their approaches. Watching them at close quarters and separated only by the width of a net is as close to sensory overload as cricket should be allowed to get.
Once Smith and Du Plessis were opposing captains, steering two of cricket’s greatest ships. Now they are opponents only, each looking to do their best for their team.
Smith got that right on Wednesday after coming in with 30 balls left in the innings. He faced half of them and hit an unbeaten 30 — all of 20 in a last over bowled by Anrich Nortjé, whose economy rate for the match boomed from 8.67 to 11.5 in the process — that took Australia to 193/5. Du Plessis’ boundaryless five off seven balls was far from the only failure in a gutless batting display that was put out of its misery at 15.3 overs with only 96 runs scored — the second time in three games that South Africa have been shot out for fewer than 100. The team who had fought back from nowhere to win at St George’s Park on Sunday had vanished. Instead South Africa were again the side who were utterly without fight at the Wanderers on Friday. Why had they chosen to field first, like they had in Johannesburg, when they were so much better at defending in Port Elizabeth? Did the fact that they had beaten England in the first ODI at Newlands despite batting under lights at a ground were that is famously difficult — only nine sides have won batting second in the 33 day/night ODIs there — influence their thinking too much? South Africa were able to bat for two hours before sunset against England and for less than half-an-hour against Australia. When darkness descended fully against England, South Africa had nine wickets in hand and needed only 94 more runs off the remaining 20 overs: an asking rate of 4.7. Against Australia, night arrived with the South Africans two down and requiring 153 off 15: 10.2 an over. Crucially, by then Quinton de Kock was out. Against England he batted into the 36th over for his 107. The comparisons only become more painful — at the Wanderers on Friday, De Kock was bowled by the third ball of the innings, a sniping outswinger from Mitchell Starc. At Newlands on Wednesday, De Kock was bowled by the fourth ball of the innings, another sniping outswinger from Starc.
But it would be unfair to pick on South Africa’s captain, even if it is his job to explain what had gone so wrong for his team for the second time in six days: “I’m not really sure because I’m not in the other batsmen’s minds.” Was that anger? No-one has scored more runs than De Kock in five of South Africa’s last six series across the formats. And they haven’t won any of them. Who could blame De Kock if he was growing resentful at doing more than his fair share of the batting and, despite that, the team having nothing to show for his efforts? Can the rest of you pull your weight already, dammit? But players aren’t supposed to ask those questions, and certainly not when they’re also the captain. Or are they? “It starts getting tough when you ask the boys for something and it just doesn’t happen,” De Kock said.
He had arrived for his press conference looking like a country song: his truck had been stolen, his dog had died, his wife had left him. Surely. Six minutes later he sauntered out, still sad-eyed. Aaron Finch swanned in fresh from a Broadway musical, sat down and immediately made himself useful. “Do you want that up a little bit, mate,” he asked a camera person in the scrum whose microphone on the top table had drooped. “Yeah. Thanks mate,” came the reply. Finch duly did the needful. Then he provided a sound check: “One, two, three, one, two three … hello?” He was even of service explaining the South Africans’ failure to launch: “Anytime you’re chasing 10s from the start, it’s so hard. When [the pitch is] going to get slower and slower and our spinners have been super accurate … whether you lose by one run or a hundred doesn’t make much difference. It’s all about risk and reward, and when that runrate goes up it’s so hard. You know you’ve got to try and preserve a couple of wickets but if you have two bad overs the rate goes to 15.”
Nice try, Mr Finch, but South Africa’s problems have leapt from the physical to the metaphysical. Why did dangerous players like Andile Phehlukwayo and Jon-Jon Smuts get only one game against the Aussies? Why did the consistently underwhelming Dwaine Pretorius play two? What has happened to South Africa’s technique and temperament against spin? They averaged 9.62 facing Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa, who took 13 of the 24 wickets that fell to Australia’s six bowlers. Where has the bowling and fielding discipline gone? After the first six overs of Australia’s innings on Wednesday, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortjé, Lungi Ngidi and Pretorius were all sailing at two runs per ball, not least because their support in the field reduced them to trying to catch water in a colander.
Deep in the darkness of Wednesday night at Newlands, long after the match had been won and lost, two starkly different figures, as players and as people, would have been united on one front: the relief that they no longer needed to explain the why and wherefore of poor performances by the teams they play for to themselves, the press or anyone else.
Freed from that yoke, Smith and Du Plessis have better things to with their time. Like take to the nets hours before the start of a game. And bat as if their lives do not depend on it.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 