Pakistan tour on cards

If security is stable South Africa will play three T20s in the country.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

SOUTH Africa could soon be on their way to Pakistan, where no team representing their country has set foot in almost 13 years. A mooted tour there in March would form part of the preparation for the T20 World Cup in Australia in October and November.

Cricbuzz has learnt that a delegation of security experts from South Africa is to visit Pakistan to gather intelligence on the country’s suitability for a visit by the national side. If the situation is deemed stable enough the Proteas will arrive after their tour to India, which ends on March 18, to play three T20s.

South Africa, who were last in Pakistan in October 2007 for two Tests and five one-day internationals, have played seven Tests and 26 ODIs in the country. No international teams went there for more than six years after a terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore on March 3, 2009 — which killed eight and wounded nine, including six Lankan players. Tours resumed in May 2015, when Zimbabwe played two T20s and three ODIs. Sri Lanka, West Indies and Bangladesh have also since visited, all without incident.

South Africans have been to Pakistan in recent years, but only as individuals. A World XI that played three T20s in Lahore in September 2017 included Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis, David Miller, Imran Tahir and Morné Morkel. Rilee Rossouw, JP Duminy, Cameron Delport, David Wiese and Colin Ingram have featured in Pakistan Super League matches in Karachi and Lahore.

Before any trip to Asia or anywhere else comes into focus, South Africa will have to find a way past World Cup champions England in three ODIs starting at Newlands on Tuesday. Quinton de Kock will be at the helm for the first time as the appointed captain, and his squad includes exciting prospects like medium pacer Lutho Sipamla, left-arm spinner Bjorn Fortuin, opening batter Janneman Malan — brother of Test opener Pieter Malan — and wicketkeeper-batter Kyle Verreynne. The absence of Du Plessis and Kagiso Rabada, who have been rested for the series, will only add to the newness of De Kock’s team.

Batter Jon-Jon Smuts, Fast bowler Lungi Ngidi and left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi came through a fitness camp well enough to keep their places in the squad, but fast bowler Sisanda Magala didn’t make the grade. “It’s been a tough assignment and the guys have really put in the work with the ambition to get into the green and gold in mind,” a release quoted acting director of cricket Graeme Smith as saying. “That’s the kind of commitment and grit we’re looking for in our national team. I’m pleased that Lungi, Tabraiz and Jon-Jon have been declared fully fit to join the ODI squad and I’m confident that Sisanda will be in that circle soon enough. He has put in an immense amount of work over a short period of time and we want to ensure he has the tools to deal with the high demands of international cricket when the opportunity arises.”

Magala, who took 11 wickets in nine games for the Cape Town Blitz in this year’s Mzansi Super League, will remain with the national squad and could yet play in the T20 series against England that will follow the ODIs.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Small performances by big players hurting South Africa

The damage runs deep, and it will take a lot more of doing the right thing to repair it.  

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

ONE of your team’s batters tops the list of run-scorers in a series. Another has been the most successful bowler. Two more are in the top five in each category. You’ve won the rubber, surely. Or have at least done well enough for your supporters to be satisfied that you are on the right track as a team. Not if you’re South Africa, whose 3-1 Test series drubbing by England was completed at the Wanderers on Monday.

No-one scored more runs than Quinton de Kock’s series total of 380, or took more wickets than Anrich Nortjé’s 18. Rassie van der Dussen’s aggregate of 274 and Kagiso Rabada’s 14 strikes — matching Stuart Broad for the series’ second-biggest haul — were also up there. 

But the devil is in other details. Not one of the three centuries scored was for South Africa, who owned only one of the five century stands — despite banking 12 of the 28 partnerships of at least 50. If a score of 30 is accepted as a good start, South Africans made 23 of the 53 that were registered. Only 10 were converted into half-centuries. England turned 12 of their 30s into 50s, and Dom Sibley, Ollie Pope and Ben Stokes made them count still more by going on to centuries.

This kind of disappointment is becoming an unhappy habit for South Africa. Not since the first Test against India in Visakhapatnam in October, when Dean Elgar made 160 and De Kock 111, has any of the 120 trips to the crease their players have begun reached three figures. South Africa have gone 28 innings, stretching back to March 2018, without making a declaration. Only twice in those innings have they not been dismissed. Batting unit, you have a problem.

Hashim Amla’s removal from the Test equation after the home series against Sri Lanka in February last year is an obvious factor in South Africa’s decline, but even this great player’s contribution wasn’t worth a century in his last 27 completed innings. Closer to the truth is that the remaining senior batters — bar De Kock — are faltering.

Famously, the Lankans became the first Asian team to win a series in South Africa — and inflicted the first of the eight defeats Faf du Plessis’ team have suffered in their last nine Tests. In the same period Elgar and Du Plessis have performed significantly below their optimum levels. Elgar has scored 519 runs at 30.52 with one century in his 18 innings. His career average is 38.49. Du Plessis has batted more than 10 points below his overall average — 29.00 versus 39.80 — for his 493 runs, also in 18 trips to the crease, in which he hasn’t made a century. Only the other old hand, De Kock, has pulled his weight, scoring a hundred and averaging 42.11 — better than his career mark of 39.12 — and racking up 758 runs in 18 innings. That’s 239 more runs than Elgar and 265 more than Du Plessis, and from the same number of opportunities.

And while newer members of the batting line-up like Van der Dussen and Pieter Malan have made decent beginnings at this level, and Temba Bavuma has returned after re-affirming his credentials at franchise level, whatever progress they make will be blunted by the struggles of the established players. Nortjé, who bowled his heart out and batted with courage and discipline against England, will not get all of the praise he deserves because the bigger picture is too dark to allow his light to shine fully.

Not that the bowlers are without blame: the next time Rabada fails to control his emotions on the field, Cricket South Africa shouldn’t wait for the ICC to act. They should dock their hotheaded ace his entire match fee and a month’s salary, and tell him that punishment will double the time after that.

It’s one thing for inexperienced players to be able to harden their game in the protective shadow of those who have been around the block, quite another for them to have to carry the side in the absence of responsible performances by their elders and, supposedly, betters.  

But before we disappear down a rabbithole of gloom, let’s show what has been earned: respect. Elgar and Du Plessis have stood rock solid for South Africa, as players and fine examples for others to follow, for years. They are at the heart of a team who, 11 months before the start of their current slide, became the first South Africa side to take a home Test series off Australia in one of the most dramatic rubbers yet played. Generations from now, cricket tragics will still talk of the Sandpapergate series.

Also, let’s not expect the effect of months of shambolic administration — as things stand, the players are taking the board to court over a plan to restructure the domestic system that would lead to job losses — to be resolved by the appointment of respected figures like Smith. The damage runs deep, and it will take a lot more of doing the right thing to repair it.  

Even so, it is a worry that Du Plessis not only employed tactics during the England series that were at times difficult to credit, but defended them. Elgar, meanwhile, has succumbed to increasingly ragged strokes. At the Wanderers, he unleashed a wild flap to point and, in the second innings, a looping hook back to the bowler that was worthy of a lower order player.

Once were warriors. Indeed, they always will be. But, while they’re playing, they need to perform. As the freshly retired Vernon Philander could tell them, the adulation comes only after you call it a career. For now, all that matters is runs.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Batting, bowling and boorishness

“Hit him again!” – a Wanderers spectator as Zak Crawley prepared to face his first delivery after being felled by a bouncer to the head from Anrich Nortjé.

TELFORD VICE at The Wanderers

DROPS dripped. That’s a sentence, complete and perfect, from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It was just as true about the Wanderers on Friday. Drops started dripping, in their millions, late on Thursday night and continued unabated until the afternoon. Drops also dripped, in singles, from the pressbox ceiling around the time of the scheduled 10am start. A bucket placed beneath caught them apologetically. You might say it was a sorry sight all round. And you might also have made a decent dent in reading War and Peace as the dreary nothingness of the morning wore on towards a lost day.

But, at 1.20pm, Vernon Philander stood at the top of his mark at the Golf Course End on one of cricket’s fastest drying outfields, Zak Crawley awaited him, and away we went. And for the best part of the next three hours not a lot happened. For South Africa, anyway. The closest they came to putting anything like a dent in England’s batting was in the third over before tea, when Crawley missed a pull and Anrich Nortjé dinged him on the helmet with a bouncer timed at 149 kilometres per hour. Play was held up for eight minutes while Crawley was medically assessed and tried several replacement helmets on for size before being allowed to continue. When he did, up went a cry from the country’s most raucous crowd: “Hit him again!” That followed Dom Sibley winning a reprieve after being given out caught behind to a legside delivery from Beuran Hendricks that flicked a pad, and surviving being caught in the gully because Philander had bowled a no-ball.   

Aside from those minor spikes the Richter scale readout of the first half of Friday’s play was a serenely level line. On the meanest junkyard dog of a pitch in the land, and having opted to fling five fast bowlers into the fray, South Africa looked as if they had brought a plastic straw to a lightsabre fight. Hendricks, instead of Nortjé, sharing the new ball with Philander looked too much like the blunder of Dane Paterson, instead of the now banned Kagiso Rabada, doing so at St George’s Park. But there was poignance in the fact that Philander is playing his last Test and Hendricks his first. “I’m always tuning into ‘Vern’, making sure I can get enough info out of him,” Hendricks said after stumps.” Even so, their shortish length and widish line allowed Crawley and Sibley to select balls to hit as if they were picking their favourite bits out of a salad.

Crawley drove straight with aplomb — once almost sawing Sibley in half — and Sibley repeatedly showcased his mastery of one of the most challenging strokes in the game, the on-drive.

The last ball before tea, a legside effort from Nortjé that Sibley smeared to fine leg for four, took England to 100 without loss. That marked the third time in succession in the series that South Africa’s bowlers had failed to strike in the opening session of a match. It also sealed the only occasion in the 16 Wanderers Tests since Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs put on 149 against West Indies in December 2003 that a pair of openers have shared a century in the very first innings of a match here, only the third time it’s happened at all in the 41 Wanderers Tests, and the first time it’s been accomplished by the visiting team.

The Wanderers is an ominous 13th on the list of all 121 Test grounds in terms of the lowest average for the first wicket: 31.51, or marginally outside the top 10 percentile. If that doesn’t get the point across, this should: the Wanderers is a damnably difficult place to bat, and exponentially more so on a fresh pitch against well-rested bowlers armed with a new ball.

Clearly, no-one told Crawley and Sibley, who seemed as at home as if they were having a laugh on the Kent and Surrey featherbeds of their youth. “They left well and didn’t play at anything that was loose,” Hendricks said. “I was surprised at how comfortable they looked.” By now, someone has told them that no England pair had shared a century stand in the first innings of a Test since Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook put up 196 against Australia at Lord’s in July 2009.

They did so with too much help from their friends in the other dressingroom. “We told ourselves [at tea] that we were better than what we bowled,” Hendricks said. He took that seriously, and in the third over after the resumption another of his scrambled seam legside stranglers did for Sibley. Sixteen balls later Crawley played a weird, lazy hybrid between a stroke and a leave and was taken behind. Then came two grassed chances in the space of 23 deliveries by Pieter Malan and Dwaine Pretorius, neither of them straightforward. Drops dripped, you might say. Only for Joe Denly and Ben Stokes to be dismissed 16 balls apart, and a match that had listed heavily in one side’s favour less than two hours previously had been yanked back to something like level with all the rudeness that is visited on pedestrians who dare try cross Johannesburg’s car-centric, pavement-poor streets.

And the Wanderers, like Stokes discovered as he stalked off, is this city congealed into one wet spot; the kind of place were boorishness comes standard. Even the umpires, Rod Tucker and Joel Wilson, weren’t spared when they called time for bad light. They were booed all the way off the ground and assailed by a loud and clear, “Fuck you!” Welcome, gentlemen, neither to war nor peace, but to Joburg.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Hello and goodbyes for South Africa

“If you leave the team when they need you most, that’s not my style.” – Faf du Plessis

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

BRACE yourself, Wanderers, for Vernon Philander’s final Test. And for Temba Bavuma’s return. And for something else. Asked on Monday if the fourth Test against England, which starts at the Wanderers on Friday, could be his last on home soil, Faf du Plessis said, “Yes, most definitely. It is a possibility.”

Philander’s retirement, announced before the series, is old news. Bavuma’s comeback was all but assured when he followed first-class scores of nine and 17 with 180. But Du Plessis seemed as secure in the captain’s saddle as he could be at the helm of a team who have lost seven of their last eight Tests. Not least because there is no viable alternative for the leadership. Even so, or perhaps because of that, it’s not easy being Du Plessis. Half the country is on his back about his batting — he scored the last of his nine centuries 16 innings ago — and the other half about his leadership. Wouldn’t life be better if he walked away from all that? “The worst thing a leader can do is pull the plug mid-series and say, ‘Sorry boys, I’m out. I’ve had enough.’ I don’t think that’s what leadership is about. You have to stick through the tough times as well.” Hashim Amla’s ears must be on fire: he quit the captaincy in January 2016, midway through England’s previous series in South Africa. Du Plessis, it seems, is made of different stuff. “I felt that the team has needed a leader to stand up and try and guide the ship through a difficult time. If you leave the team when they need you most, that’s not my style. I have been under pressure a lot of times as a player and I’ve come through those times. In tough circumstances, I’ve played my best innings under pressure. I think that speaks for itself that I can’t leave the team when they need me most, as one of the leaders in the team. I can’t do it forever and it has been chipping away at my character. For now, that’s what we need. I think it will make it worse if I say I’m out.”

Fine words from a thoroughly good bloke, but there’s no doubting that Test cricket is currently Du Plessis’ weakest suit. Only Quinton de Kock scored more runs than he did in whites in 2019. Since Boxing Day, De Kock, Dean Elgar, Rassie van der Dussen, Philander and Pieter Malan have all been more successful than their captain. In his trips to the crease after his most recent Test hundred, 103 against Pakistan at Newlands in January 2019, Du Plessis averages 30.33 — more than 10 points below his career mark of 40.23. His one-day average in the same period, 67.83, is almost 20 points above his overall figure of 47.47. He has played only two T20s in that time, scoring 58 and 23. “After the T20 World Cup [in Australia in October and November], I’ll reassess where I am. But Test cricket is the format that takes the most out of you and takes you way from home the most. And if, I’m brutally honest with myself, at the moment white-ball cricket is where I am most successful. One-day cricket my stats are up there with the best in the world. T20 cricket, my stats are up there. But, in Test cricket, my stats are not where they need to be. As a batting unit, the standards need to be better and I am not meeting the standards as a player.”

So here’s what, probably, happens: Du Plessis relinquishes the one-day captaincy as soon as Tuesday, when the squad for the three matches in that format against England is due to be named. He hangs onto the T20 leadership until the World Cup. The Test captaincy? After the Wanderers, South Africa’s next engagement is two matches in West Indies in July. In other words, Du Plessis — and the suits — don’t need to think about that now. “I have committed until the T20 World Cup. There isn’t a lot of Test cricket left this year; one massive Test where we need everyone to be as strong as possible to try and draw the series, and after that there is quite a big gap, and I have said before there is an opportunity then to release some of the captaincy when it comes to giving guys opportunities, especially in one-day cricket, to make sure we look forward to the future. Probably after [the West Indies series] Test cricket will be something that won’t see me. That’s a decision I will only fully will make then. For me now it’s to be as mentally strong as possible because we need our leaders, our senior players in the team. We need to be strong. It’s a tough time for all of us and we need to make sure we fight. Personally, from a runs point of view, I am not up to the level that I should be but I still have a huge role to play as a captain to make sure I lift these guys up to win a Test match in the next game.”

Ah, the next game. About that: “[Bavuma] did what we said he should do: he scored runs. So we’ll have to see how we are going to get him back into the team because we lack confidence in our batting line-up. And about Philander: “We haven’t yet spoken to the Wanderers groundsman, but we’re looking for something that will keep Vernon in the game. As we saw [at St George’s Park], he wasn’t really a factor because the pitch was too slow.” Philander bowled only 16 of the 152 overs South Africa sent down in Port Elizabeth and went wicketless for 41. The Wanderers, where his bowling average, 15.69, or the lowest among all the grounds where he has played more than five Tests, will serve him better. It is also Bavuma’s home ground. What will it give Du Plessis? South Africa have won two of the three Wanderers Tests they have played under him and he has scored two centuries there. Brace yourself, Wanderers. You may never have this chance again.

First published by Cricbuzz.

South Africa’s truth in black and white

“I’m not going to beat around the bush – it’s been a challenge, especially when it all unfolded.” – Enoch Nkwe on his demotion.

TELFORD VICE in Port Elizabeth

IN the white corner, Temba Bavuma. And in the black corner, Faf du Plessis. Ladies, gentlemen and others, let’s get ready to stumble down a rabbit hole drilled deep into the faultlines of South Africa’s society by racially charged doublespeak and innuendo that will set your head spinning with confusion and frustration. Best, then, we get this straight from the outset: Bavuma and Du Plessis have been hopelessly miscast, by the spluttering classes, as the ultimate hero and the incorrigible villain of a saga exponentially more complex than anything two mere players could engineer. They are lightning rods on churches as opposed dogmatically as they are diametrically, and they are being struck with alarming frequency by ill-aimed, poorly-reasoned bolts of idiocy.

Outrage at Bavuma being dropped before the second Test against England, after he missed the first match with a hip injury in the wake of a string of low scores, has focused on increasingly outlandish criticism of Du Plessis — not least because South Africa’s captain said “we do not see colour” when he was asked what message Bavuma’s axing would send to black South Africans, who comprise South Africa’s majority in both demographic and cricketminded terms. South Africans voted democratically for the first time in 1994, but they are decades away from achieving democracy. If you’re South African and you think you don’t see colour, best you have your eyes tested, or consider the level of privilege you enjoy that allows you to say something so bizarre, or both.

Du Plessis is white in a society still heavily skewed in his race’s favour on almost every front, particularly socially and economically. Bavuma is black, and although he is solidly middleclass he is a totem for the struggles of mostly poor black players — batters in particular — to advance in the game. His sidelining was, for many, the last straw in the steady whitening, in recent weeks, of a sport that has spent the best part of the past 30 years trying, not always sincerely, to make itself look more like the nation it purports to represent. That the installation in important positions of Jacques Faul, Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis — all of them white — followed the dismal failure of Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) black-led operations arm, led by now suspended chief executive Thabang Moroe, and board, where Chris Nenzani has somehow clung to the presidency, only fuels the racial polarisation. The black voices now questioning the slew of white appointments most loudly were oddly silent for the months that Moroe and Nenzani spent making damaging decisions that brought cricket perilously close to disaster as a professional and cultural enterprise. Consequently those voices have no credibility. Conversely, too many whites have heralded the new appointments without interrogating the suitability of some of the new brooms in either cricket or political terms. All that matters, to them, is that those new brooms are white.

Besides Bavuma, another victim of all that, from the black perspective, is Enoch Nkwe, who went to India as South Africa’s interim team director — or head coach — in September and returned in October with a drawn T20 series and a 3-0 thrashing in the Tests. He was replaced, permanently, by Boucher and, worse yet, if you adhere to this narrative, demoted to serve as his assistant. And that despite the fact that Nkwe is the more qualified of the two. “I’m not going to beat around the bush — it’s been a challenge, especially when it all unfolded,” Nkwe said on Tuesday. “But I believe I’m mature enough to deal with the situation. By the time we got to the camp [before the current Test series against England] I felt very strong and confident I can make a massive impact in a different role. I’ve enjoyed the role. Boucher has been very supportive. He’s given me the platform to make a difference in the team, to contribute as much as possible; whether it’s in team routines or in training. We’ve worked closely together. I’m enjoying the partnership. He’s very relaxed. As much as he’s intense when it comes to business time — just like any other coach — he cares a lot about the team.

“It wasn’t an easy call to make but when I met with [CSA acting chief executive] Jacques Faul and ‘Bouch’ and Graeme [Smith, the acting director of cricket], it was pretty clear. They were very realistic in terms of what has happened. They showed a lot of care. For me, it’s always been about the country. It’s never been about me. My playing days are gone. I am here to coach human beings. I am here to coach cricketers to get better. Unfortunately things happened the way they happened and I had to put my ego aside and focus on what the country needs, and I felt that even in this capacity I can make an impact.” 

How did Nkwe feel about the reaction to the downward kink in his career path? “I appreciate the support the South African people have given me. They’ve been behind me. I can gaurantee them that I’m going to give it my full, 100% effort. I’ll make sure we do our utmost not to let the country down. Yes, there’s different energies and different minds. But there hasn’t been a hierarchy. We all pull in the same direction. Boucher’s been superb in that — he includes everybody in terms of going in a certain direction. He’s made it clear from the start which direction we need to go.”

At least Nkwe is still in the dressingroom. Bavuma has been sent down to franchise level to play for the Lions. But, Nkwe said, although Bavuma was out of sight he was not out of mind: “I strongly believe he’s a good player, and he’s in the process of making sure that — from a mental, emotional and skills point of view — when he gets an opportunity to come back, whether it’s in the next Test match or in a different format, he takes ownership of his position and does 10 times more than what he has done. We’re confident and believe in him. Boucher is the same, and the rest of the team. All I’m going to ask is that we are more patient.

“If maybe a bit of luck went his way he would have got two or three more hundreds, but those things we’ve put behind us. I know that, having spoken to him recently, he is someone that actually looks forward to getting that opportunity. He wants to be in this environment and hopefully in the future he performs well enough and he can lead the team because I know having worked with him, he is a strong leader, very smart. He is able to lead a massive group to greater heights.”

That sounded like an endorsement for Bavuma as a future captain. Could he do the job, and do it well? “In my mind, yes. I can see that happening. But he does understand that he needs to put in some performances. The future could be in a year’s time, it could be in two years’ time. We don’t know. But, having worked with him in the last year-and-a-half, he has got the qualities, there’s no question around that. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after Faf, he takes over.”

For that to happen, especially in the eyes of their detractors, the new regime will have to prove their transformation credentials beyond what they have done so far. Apart from their cricketing claims to a place in the team, the three debutants in the first two Tests against England — Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Pieter Malan — are all white. But Nkwe argued otherwise: “[Transformation is] not something that has been ignored. It just so happens that things have turned out this way. We are really working hard behind the scenes to build a strong pool of players to come through. We’ve looked at the high performance system to make sure that we can produce and make sure we are a well transformed team in the future, a true rainbow nation. And there’s no doubt that’s going to happen in the very near future. I have had a chat with Graeme and he is fully behind it. People maybe might not see it but he really cares and he has put in a lot of processes and a lot of plans behind the scenes to make sure that, in the near future, there are no questions on that topic.” Tell that to the many inquisitors aching to know why Bavuma has been cast aside but not Du Plessis. They will doubtless shift their opportunistic focus onto Nkwe to slur him as an Uncle Tom and a sellout.

It is true that Du Plessis has gone seven innings without a half-century and last made a century 16 innings ago. So where does he get off saying Bavuma will need “weight of runs” for the Lions to regain his place in South Africa’s team? But the bigger picture captures a more relevant reality. In his 65 Test innings, Bavuma has scored 1,812 runs with a sole century. Sixty-five trips to the crease into Du Plessis’ Test career, he had six hundreds among his 2,508 runs. His most recent 65 innings have brought 2,167 runs and five centuries. Leaving aside the disruption that dropping a tough, seasoned, inspirational leader would do to the confidence of a dressingroom that has only just emerged from the gloom of the World Cup and the tour of India by beating England in the first Test of the since levelled series, dispensing with Du Plessis on the grounds of his recent batting form — which has been some of the best in his team — would be lunacy. And who would replace him? Bavuma, a fine player who will rediscover himself, but who has scored nine and 17 since returning to the Lions?

Still, some will refuse to see past their own clumsy, limited agenda and continue to get in the way of constructive conversation. They have exhausted the indulgence they didn’t merit in the first place, and now they need to see the truth. All they have to do is look: It’s there in black and white. 

First published by Cricbuzz. 

On a good day, Pieter Malan can see forever

“That’s not pressure, that’s privilege. Pressure is playing out there in a semi-pro game, nobody watching, and you’re fighting for your career.” – Pieter Malan on reaching the Test arena.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

SEVERAL minutes after the end of his press conference at Newlands on Tuesday, Pieter Malan popped back into the room. “I don’t get them for free — I still have to pay,” he said as he retrieved the sunglasses he had left behind.

That wasn’t his only zinger. There was this, when he was asked about the pressures of playing Test cricket: “That’s not pressure, that’s privilege. Pressure is playing out there in a semi-pro game, nobody watching, and you’re fighting for your career. Being out there, the Barmy Army cheering, Jimmy Anderson running in, it felt like a video game at some stage. It was unbelievable. I felt very privileged to be in a position to fight for the team and try and bat long and just be there for as long as I can.”

There was also this, on the challenges of making his debut: “For me the most difficult parts are away from the ground; when you’re in the bus or in the hotel and your mind starts racing and you can’t do anything about it. If you’re in the middle, as soon as you walk down the stairs … I’ve walked down the [Newlands dressingroom] stairs a lot of time, playing for Western Province. I’ve even played a club game here, so you walk down the stairs and always take a second or two looking at the mountain, appreciating where we play because then you end up playing in Kimberley and there’s nothing to look at.”

Malan spoke with the authority earned by lived experience. As recently as December 1 he was playing in a semi-professional one-day game for Western Province against Northern Cape in, yup, Kimberley. Officially, that’s two levels below the international arena. In real terms, it’s a world away from where Malan was when he opened the batting for South Africa in the second men’s Test against England at Newlands.

His first innings was over in a minute less than half-an-hour in which he faced 17 balls for five runs: he steered to first slip a Stuart Broad delivery that was veering away. “That shot was so out of character it was ridiculous; I don’t play that shot,” Malan said. “It was probably a bit of Test debut nerves, taking in the situation too much and then I end up sparring at a ball I should have left. Second innings, I just tried to knuckle down and play the way that I normally do and it seemed to work better.” Indeed, there was no getting rid of Malan that easily once he took guard again, this time on a pitch significantly flatter. He scored 84 off 288 balls in a marathon of more than six hours and showed his mastery of the important art of knowing when not to offer a shot. “In the last three or four years, that’s been a massive part of my game — leaving the ball well and eliminating dismissals that I felt were soft. Especially as a new-ball player, you want to make them bowl at you. In South Africa, it’s tough opening the batting. There’s a lot of things happening; there’s nip, there’s bounce. So the less you can give the bowlers, the better. In their third and fourth spells, that’s where the real runs are.”

If all that makes Malan seem suspiciously grown up for a debutant, that’s because he is. He turned 30 in August, and went to Newlands with the experience of 245 first-class innings and 10,161 runs in his kitbag. In the process he has lived a chunk of life. He made his debut for Northerns in January 2007 and was playing for the Titans two years later. Because of a glut of batting talent at Centurion he moved to other end of the country, where he has turned out for Western Province from November 2013 and the Cobras from February 2015. “I don’t think I did myself any favours when I was younger,” Malan said. “I took a lot of stuff for granted, and didn’t put in the hard work that, in hindsight, I needed to put in. It’s also a matter of opportunities and them being limited and not taking them when I got them. It’s been a long road but it’s a road that I am glad I’ve been on because I am a better cricketer and I am a better person.”

Did he wonder if Test cricket had passed him by? “I thought it was never going to happen but life works in funny ways. I decided if it’s going to happen, it will happen. That it’s not something for me to worry about. Luckily it did happen.” But earning his chance for South Africa depended on him making the right choices. Like putting himself in the hands of Ashwell Prince, the Cobras coach who, like Malan, took plenty of obduracy to the crease in his 66 Tests. “Ashwell has been massive in my career,” Malan said. “He gave me my first chance for the Cobras, and back into franchise cricket. He has played 60-odd Tests, averages over 40 and has scored hundreds. So when he tells you something, you listen. He has lived it, he has done it, he is not making it up as he goes along. We work on small technical stuff that we just keep refining because you need to keep improving. It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. You improve something, then the bowler spots another weakness, and you end up going back and forth. He is very good with that. And also from the mental side: he pushes you all the time and I enjoy that. You can never be comfortable, you can always be better, you can always do more. He is that type of coach.”

A picture doing the rounds on social media shows Malan in sleeveless training gear about to catch a tennis ball with his biceps bulging as if he has stepped straight out of the pages of super hero comic book. How long does he spend in the gym? “I’ve seen that photograph. I don’t do a lot of arms, actually. They should have taken a shot of my legs — that’s where I spend most of my time. But I do enjoy the gym. That’s where I go to switch off, put the music on and train and get away from whatever is going on around me.”

Like the fact that, even though South Africa lost by 189 runs at Newlands, Malan’s debut — which only happened because Aiden Markram broke a finger in the first Test at Centurion — was a solid success. And that, for all its weaknesses and limitations, South Africa’s domestic system clearly does prepare players for the international arena. The gym might also be where Malan goes to not think about the fact that, because of his age, his time in Test cricket could be limited.

Even so, his future promises to be bright. Don’t forget the shades.

First published by Cricbuzz. 

South Africa’s brain farts leave bad smell

Rassie van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17 was a labour of more than three hours. But its end was another episode of the mental flatulence that cost South Africa the match.

TELFORD VICE at Newlands

FOR the first 93 minutes of play at Newlands on Tuesday, the improbable seemed distantly possible. For a while, something brewed in the quiet place in South Africans’ minds where they go when they want to imagine a reality different from the obvious. For many of them, thoughts of Adelaide in November 2012 were prominent.

Then, Faf du Plessis batted for more than a day on debut to score a century, save the match, write his own script as a man for the trenches, and start his journey towards the Test captaincy. On Tuesday, after 93 minutes, or 27 minutes before lunch, he played the stroke of a dolt — the kind of shot he refused to downgrade to against the Australians more than seven years ago — and the bubble burst. A slapped sweep off Dom Bess flew past short leg but not past square leg, where Joe Denly couldn’t help but take the catch.

Dean Elgar has a phrase for this sort of thing: a brain fart. The shock of what Du Plessis had done rippled electrically around the ground. In came someone the scoreboard introduced as “Hendrick van der Duss”, who can bat a bit, and at least Pieter Malan was still there, the South Africans in the crowd would have thought …

In the seventh over with the second new ball, which was taken when due by — surprisingly — Sam Curran, Malan misread the line of a Curran delivery the left-armer angled across him and Ben Stokes took a low catch at second slip. It was the 288th ball Malan had faced in a stay of more than six hours for his 84, and it was a decent nut. The debutant done good: he had to be got out.

Van der Dussen and Quinton de Kock took South Africa to tea with no further drama, and it was a sign of England’s rising anxiety to take the five remaining wickets that they set bristling fields — all available men, or all but one, in catching positions — in the final session. That paid off in the sixth over after tea, when De Kock, having compiled an exemplary half-century, lunged at a long hop from Denly and smashed it to short midwicket, where Zak Crawley leapt to hold a fine catch. It was another episode of mental flatulence, and it earned Denly — a country house level leg spinner who hadn’t taken a wicket from the 240 deliveries he had bowled going into this match — his second of the innings.

A moment after James Anderson was moved to leg gully, Van der Dussen blipped him a catch off Stuart Broad. Van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17, a labour of more than three hours, was an admirable effort. But its end was another brain fart.

At 237/7, England had taken such firm control of the match that Joe Root felt at home enough to gee up the Barmy Army from his position in the slip cordon. For the significantly fewer South Africa supporters, that was a sickening sight.

After Stokes removed Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortjé with consecutive deliveries to take England within a wicket of victory, Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander — who had become embroiled in a verbal confrontation with Jos Buttler — couldn’t quite decide whether to take a run when Rabada punched the hattrick ball down the ground.

They recovered the sensibilities in time not to suffer the calamity of a runout, but the snapshot was a look into the heads of a team who didn’t seem sure of much anymore. Twenty-four balls later, with 50 deliveries left in the match, Philander failed to deal with a rising effort from Stokes and speared a catch to Ollie Pope in the cordon. Philander didn’t seem to believe what had happened, and stood for a long moment, apparently waiting for his fate to be undone. You could hardly blame the man: South Africa had lost half their wickets for 11 runs when all they had to do to secure a draw was bat out a session. That didn’t smell at all good.  

Ten days ago at Centurion, South Africa defied everything that has befallen the game in their country by beating England. They made the improbable not only possible but real, and hopes skyrocketed that after months of darkness the sun had at last come out. It was blazing again at Newlands on Tuesday, but it shone on England. Sometimes even the brightest dawns are false.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Malan a worthy member of Elgar’s dozen

“I wouldn’t waste a referral knowing that I’d nicked it.” – Dean Elgar takes aim at electronic umpiring.

TELFORD VICE at Newlands

DEAN Elgar has opened Test innings on 30 grounds around the world, and in the company of a fast bowler, two wicketkeepers and eight batters; three of them medium pacers of varying ability, another a decentish off-spinner for seven years. Including Elgar, that’s a useful squad of 12 with experience in all conditions. But even a dozen Elgars would do well to get South Africa out of Cape Town with their series lead alive.

Elgar and his latest opening partner, debutant Pieter Malan, spent almost two hours together in the middle at Newlands on Monday. They faced 176 balls between them and shared 71 — South Africa’s biggest first-wicket stand in 36 attempts since Elgar and Aiden Markram put on 85 against Pakistan at Centurion two Januaries ago. It was the first time in 15 innings — or in three days more than a year — that South Africa’s openers have managed a half-century stand when they had the opportunity, and it takes the number of consecutive innings in which they have failed to put a hundred runs on the board, again, when they’ve had the chance, to 37. The last time the openers banked three figures was in Bloemfontein in October 2017, when Elgar and Markram piled up 243 against Bangladesh.

South Africa have won 10 of their 19 Tests since then, but how many of the nine they have lost might they have at least drawn had they been able to build on a more stable platform of early runs? And surely they would not have shambled to five consecutive defeats last year had seven of their 10 opening stands not been worth 10 runs or fewer. There is a lot more to fix about this team than steadying the opening partnership, but ticking that box wouldn’t hurt.    

Wanted: two blokes who can stand up to fresh bowlers armed with a fresh ball on a fresh pitch for long enough to make all of that stale. Actually, just one bloke. Elgar’s position is not up for discussion. He has made only one century in his last 25 innings, but in a South Africa team in which little is certain at least what you see is what you get from the stocky left-hander with the bulldog spirit at the top of the order.

“If I tell you the truth I might get into trouble,” was all South Africa’s batting consultant, Jacques Kallis, would say about Elgar’s reaction to being given out — earning occasional leg spinner Joe Denly a first Test wicket — because of a snickometre spike so small it might have been the result of a butterfly’s wing brushing a silk thread. Even in Kallis’ non-disclosure, He summed Elgar up.

Elgar himself was bracingly, and typically, undiplomatic in an interview with Sky Sports. Had he hit the ball? “No. I wouldn’t waste a referral knowing that I’d nicked it. I don’t play cricket like that. I like to see myself as someone who takes their outs if they’re out. I wouldn’t waste a referral like that. It’s a bit of an emotional time when those kind of things happen. When I’d simmered down and was watching the footage I could still say that I hadn’t hit it.” What did he think of electronic umpiring? “I don’t know. I’m going to reserve my comments because I don’t want to get into trouble with the ICC. But, as a player, I can say I’m very confident I didn’t nick it.”

Beautiful in his belligerence as Elgar is, an opening partnership cannot stand on one leg. Malan, blessed with the jib of an adolescent labrador and upper arms so knotted with muscle they look like a couple of challah loaves, put up his hand for the vacancy on Monday. Technically the job still belongs to Markram, who played at Centurion but was sidelined for the rest of the series with a broken finger. Thing is, a precedent was set when Temba Bavuma was dropped at Newlands despite passing a fitness test after recovering from the hip injury that, officially, kept him out of the Centurion match. So Markram should not rest easy.

The knowledge and nous the 30-year-old Malan has gathered in his 245 first-class innings before he cracked the nod was evident in the strokes he chose to play — and in those he didn’t. As Kallis said, “It’s not his first roadshow … but it is his first roadshow.” Malan left the ball with such assurance it seemed you could shake him awake at four in the morning and ask him where his off-stump is, and he would know to the nearest hair’s breadth. When he does hit the ball he does so properly and with purpose, and he doesn’t flinch from wearing a few on the body.

Malan came into the match under a swirling cloud of controversy. His selection was welcomed by some and seen as part of the dilution of transformation efforts by others. Had he not been picked, having been included in the squad as a specialist opener to start with, throats would have been cleared in anger. The best way to reward the faith shown in him by his supporters, and build it in his detractors into the bargain, is to do what he did in his almost four hours at the crease on Monday.

“He knows how to switch on and switch off,” Kallis said, a line that will ring bells in the memory of all who saw him bat. Between deliveries, there was so little in Kallis’ eyes you would have sworn you could see clean through his head. That was true even when he scored his first century, at the MCG in December 1997, and in the process drove Shane Warne crazy with his refusal to engage in anything that didn’t have to do with hitting — or leaving — the ball.

Kallis was 22 then, but he was born ready and with an old soul. Malan, eight years older, has accumulated his wisdom rather than arrived with it built-in.    

Not unlike Hashim Amla’s bat coming down straight despite his whimsically wayward backlift, whatever winding paths different players take don’t matter as long as they end up in the middle.

Should Malan, who will resume on 63, live up to Kallis’ billing on Tuesday on a pitch the latter called “very much battable”, and on which South Africa need to score 312 more runs to reach the magic number of 438 — a world record that would echo the score they famously made to win a series-deciding one-day international against Australia at the Wanderers in March 2006 — even Elgar might be pleased. 

Elgar has opened the batting with, in order, Graeme Smith, Alviro Petersen, Stiaan van Zyl, Vernon Philander, Temba Bavuma, Stephen Cook, Theunis de Bruyn, Heino Kuhn, Markram, Quinton de Kock, and now Malan.

Whether Malan is the best of them doesn’t matter. What does is that he is still batting. 

First published by Cricbuzz.

It’s not easy being Pieter Malan

“He’s one of the best opening batters, domestically, in the country. His temperament is second to none. I have every confidence that he will go well.” – Rassie van der Dussen goes to bat for Pieter Malan.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

RASSIE van der Dussen and Pieter Malan have much in common. Both are 30 years old, both are flinty batters, and both have walked a long and winding road to reach the South Africa men’s Test team’s dressingroom. Right now, Van der Dussen has something Malan doesn’t: a Test cap. But that will change at Newlands on Friday in the second match of the series against England.

Malan, who was picked in the original squad, will make his debut in place of opener Aiden Markram, who has been ruled out of the last three matches of the series with a broken finger. Van der Dussen completed a full set of format caps in the series opener at Centurion, where he scored an important 51 in the second innings of what became a 107-run win — South Africa’s first in the wake of five defeats.

Both Malan and Van der Dussen cut their first-class teeth with Northerns; Malan from January 2007, Van der Dussen first in February 2008. Malan played his first game in the format for the top-tier team in the province, the Titans, in February 2009 before going south and turning out for Western Province from November 2013 and the Cobras from February 2015. Van der Dussen was part of North West’s side by February 2012, and the Lions by February 2014.    

“Pieter and I have come a long way,” Van der Dussen said. “It’s also taken him 10 or 12 years. He’s got more than 10,000 first-class runs and he knows his game. He knows this field, too: he didn’t get opportunities up north and he had to move to Cape Town. In a lot of ways we have similar stories. He’s one of the best opening batters, domestically, in the country. His temperament is second to none. I have every confidence that he will go well.”

South Africa’s other debutant at Centurion, Dwaine Pretorius, began his first-class career for North West in March 2011. By December 2014 he was in the Lions’ side. Like Malan and Van der Dussen, Pretorius is also 30. But he is the junior of the trio in experience terms with 100 first-class innings compared to Van der Dussen’s 191 and Malan’s 245. Anrich Nortjé is a relative baby at 26 and has spent his entire first-class career, which started in February 2013, with Eastern Province and the Warriors. But the Centurion Test — his third — was his 50th match in whites.

All that first-hand knowledge and moving house and living of life, Van der Dussen said, counted for plenty know that they had arrived at the promised land of Test cricket: “Guys like Dwaine and Anrich have put in the hard yards. They’re guys whose opportunities in cricket and life haven’t come easily. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction in that. Pieter is a guy who doesn’t complain. He gets on with it. He makes big runs. He performs year in and year out. It’s not a case of a guy coming in at 21 or 22, and he has to prove himself. Pieter, and I’d like to think the same about me, and Dwaine, they come in and perform and they won’t shy away from playing at a different level. We have a lot of experience and we know what we’re about as cricketers.”

But to end this story here would be to do readers a disservice. All of the players mentioned above are white, which means most aspects of their lives are starkly different from many of their black counterparts’. Officially, apartheid ended in 1994. In reality, it still governs the country in economic and social terms. Whites continue to grow up in better neighbourhoods and go to better schools — where they have access to better coaching — than most black children, who have a far less secure connection to cricket. White players do feel the sting of being overlooked in favour of black players of similar ability as South Africa looks to right the wrongs of its past and present. But the privilege whites are born into is painfully real and rooted in our society. 

To point this out is to invite irrational anger and abuse from the ranks of dog-whistling reactionaries, who like to tub-thump the lie that racial equality has, or should have, been achieved now that almost 26 years have passed since the advent of South Africa’s deeply imperfect democracy. The untruth of that dishonest and divisive assertion is all around in the fact that most of South Africa’s wealth is still in pale hands.

The ugly noise duly reached a crescendo this week after Cricbuzz correctly called Malan’s likely selection controversial — in racial terms, not according to cricket logic — because it could mean South Africa will field seven white players at Newlands. That’s two more than stipulated by Cricket South Africa, and that after seven whites also played at Centurion — not least because Lungi Ngidi and Temba Bavuma, who are black, were injured. Transformation is measured at the end of the season, so the numbers can be made up with creative accounting by the selectors. But picking players purely on race would damage the integrity of the process.

It is equally correct to say that not picking Malan would be controversial. He is the spare opener in the squad and he has earned his chance. And it’s not as if quality black batters are in plentiful supply. But how much being white has helped Malan make the grade we cannot know, just as we cannot say it hasn’t. Damned if he is picked, damned if he isn’t.   

What if Malan had been black? Whether he would have had access to cricket at all is open to question, nevermind made it into a good school and been spotted by quality coaches. But if those pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place for him — and if he had been able to avoid having to fund impoverished members of his family, which is common among blacks, and therefore stick with franchise cricket as a career — chances are his path to the top would have been simpler.

South Africans who say they don’t see colour also don’t — or won’t — see reality. They would rather pretend sport and the world they live in are — or should be — separate. They need to open their eyes and see: the truth is all around. In black and white. 

First published by Cricbuzz.

Malan set for controversial debut

“Temba has been under pressure but I don’t want to throw him to the wolves.” – Mark Boucher

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

PIETER Malan is set to make his debut for South Africa in the second men’s Test against England at Newlands on Friday — a decision that would likely polarise opinion across race lines.

Malan is in the squad as a specialist opener, and would seem to be a shoo-in what with Aiden Markram ruled out of the rest of the four-match series after fracturing a finger in the field during the first Test at Centurion.

But Malan is white, and South Africa’s racial selection policy says six black players — two of them black African — should be included in the XI. There were only four blacks in action at Centurion, and just one of them was black African.

No doubt injuries were a contributing factor in the numbers not adding up, particularly in the case of Temba Bavuma, the black batter who missed the first Test with an injured hip flexor but should be fit in time to play in Cape Town. Bavuma has gone 12 innings without reaching a half-century, though he has batted grittily and contributed important chunks of runs in that time. His white replacement at No. 5 at Centurion, Rassie van der Dussen, took his chance and scored 51 in the second innings.

“It will be tough to leave a guy like Rassie out,” coach Mark Boucher said on Sunday after his team had won by 107 runs with four sessions to spare.

A way to include Bavuma, and thus improve the race equation, would be to give him back his place and promote Van der Dussen to an opening berth, a role he has often filled at first-class level.

But Boucher suggested strongly on Sunday that Malan would crack the nod: “Pieter Malan was selected in the squad. For us to go messing around with the opening position wouldn’t be clever. He has done a lot of good work over a long period of time. It’s his home ground. At the moment, we’re leaning towards a straight swap of opening batsmen.”

Malan, 30, has scored 199 runs at an average of 33.16 in six innings for the Cobras this season. In his 245 innings overall he averages 45.16 and has made 32 centuries.  

But Bavuma, whose disciplined, technically sound batting has earned him respect but not enough runs, would not be discarded.

“Temba still felt pain in the side [on Saturday] otherwise we were thinking about using him as a catcher [in the field],” Boucher said. “Temba has been under pressure but I don’t want to throw him to the wolves. Temba is very good and we will work with him. We understand transformation and we understand we need to do a lot of hard work on a lot of players.”

Sunday’s result was South Africa’s first Test win in the wake of five losses suffered since February. They also lost five of their eight completed games at the World Cup.

Boucher hoped his team had turned a corner: “There’s a sense of belief that we can win Test matches against very good teams. We’ll enjoy this win.”

Boucher’s playing career, which comprised 147 Tests, 295 one-day internationals and 25 T20s, was ended by an eye injury in Taunton in July 2012. The Centurion Test was his first as South Africa’s coach.

“The passion is still there,” he said of his return to the dressingroom. “There are a few guys in there with lumps in their throats today. It’s a great feeling to be back, and an honour to be part of, hopefully, change.”

First published by Cricbuzz.