“The pull on players to be available for national teams as well as league sides and the clash of those two, which is what we are seeing now, is inevitable.” – Rob Walter
Telford Vice / Cape Town
SOUTH African cricket is living in interesting times. The men’s team have crashed to a 3-0 T20I loss to Australia at Kingsmead, the same margin of defeat suffered by much the same women’s side — the retired Shabnim Ismail excepted — who reached the T20I World Cup final in February — in a T20I series against Pakistan in Karachi. And all in six days.
That marked only South Africa’s fourth winless shellacking in 44 bilateral men’s T20I rubbers. The women have been blanked five times in 27 series but never before by Pakistan. Laura Wolvaardt’s team were at least competitive, taking two matches into the last over and losing the other by six runs. Not so Aiden Markram’s side, who were hammered by 111 runs and with 5.1 and 2.1 overs remaining.
Rob Walter acknowledged the self-evident truth after the last match on Sunday: “To put it bluntly we were pretty much outplayed throughout the series in both departments.” In the third department Australia dropped one catch in the series, South Africa five.
Cricketminded South Africans will want to take refuge in the absence of the rested Quinton de Kock, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Wayne Parnell, Anrich Nortjé and Kagiso Rabada. But the visitors were without David Warner, Steven Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.
Walter’s team will have to have learnt the lessons of all that by the time they take on the Aussies in five ODIs, the first of them in Bloemfontein on Thursday. Into that gloom on Tuesday emerged South Africa’s squad for the men’s ODI World Cup in India in October and November.
The closest thing to a surprise selection was Gerald Coetzee cracking the nod ahead of Wayne Parnell. “‘Parny’ was one of the tough decisions to make,” Walter told a press conference in Bloemfontein. “He would have formed part of that six-strong fast bowling group, but we went for Gerald as someone who has got a little bit of extra pace in relation to ‘Parny’. It was a tough call and it’s tough for him to miss out.”
Was Lungi Ngidi’s form a worry considering he had gone wicketless at an economy rate of 13.78 against the Australians? “I’ve seen the work Lungi has put in over the entire winter period,” Walter said. “T20 can be brutal, this series in particular. There is a different dynamic in 50-over cricket and I know he will find his feet soon enough. We must be careful to look at things in isolation. From a broader point of view, given what I have seen over the last three months, there is no real concern on my side.”
How about the omission of the cool kids, Tristan Stubbs and Dewald Brevis? “Sometimes selection doesn’t sometimes happen as quickly as people want. We have one back-up batter in our group [Reeza Hendricks]. Those guys [who have been picked] have been playing for South Africa. For them to be superseded would be unfair. That’s the important thing to understand about the ODI side — they have been playing good cricket for a while. That’s why the tried and tested names are there.”
None more so than De Kock, who seems to be retiring from the international arena in instalments. CSA said on Tuesday the World Cup would constitute his last ODIs, and that he will likely be available for the T20 World Cup in West Indies and the United States in June next year. That’s an improvement on De Kock’s abrupt departure from Test cricket in December 2021 — in the throes of a home series against India. The importance of De Kock to South Africa’s World Cup cause is illustrated by the fact that they have lost only two of the 17 ODIs in which he has scored a century.
“A player himself knows when it’s the right time to step out,” Walter said. “‘Quinny’ has been a magnificent player for South Africa in the 50-over format. He has got some unfinished business from a World Cup point of view. It’s great to have his energy directed towards these five one-dayers and then a World Cup to follow.”
At 30 and in prime condition, De Kock is a hot property on the franchise market. Walter and CSA know that, and also that De Kock makes exponentially more money in exponentially less pressured environments playing in leagues compared to when he wears a South Africa shirt. In countries like South Africa, where the cricket industry is impoverished from top to bottom, what used to be the dog — the international game — is now the tail. Far flung franchises are cricket’s new dog. So players like De Kock need to be accommodated.
“We are living in an ever-changing world where the league space is strong and becoming more powerful,” Walter said. “The pull on players to be available for national teams as well as league sides and the clash of those two, which is what we are seeing now, is inevitable. The most important thing is managing that situation, trying to understand the players’ needs and the needs of the South African side as we lead up to a World Cup.
“The benefit of it is that whatever happens our players will be playing T20 cricket, and strong T20 cricket, in the lead up to a World Cup. If we aren’t malleable and flexible in the way we manage things, the inevitable end point is that players will leave the international game and follow the leagues, which is the last thing we want.”
Did someone say AB de Villiers? Probably not. Walter was speaking at Grey College in Bloemfontein, where the squad was announced and unveiled, and De Villiers went to Affies; Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria. Both schools are in the highest echelon of the country’s elite player factories.
And in other areas. Grey has produced such disparate figures as Laurens van der Post — a charlatan guru who became close enough to Margaret Thatcher and then prince Charles to be knighted; Bram Fischer — a lawyer who chaired the South African Communist Party and was a prominent part of Nelson Mandela’s legal team; and Steve Hofmeyr — a croaky-voiced singer who has developed a sideline in often incoherent far right wing political rambling.
Eleven cricketers who went on to play for South Africa’s men’s team, across the formats, have graduated from Grey, an all-boys institution. None of them, of course, have helped South Africa win a senior World Cup.
But all of South Africa’s World Cup-winning rugby teams — in 1995, 2007 and 2019 — have included former Grey boys. It helps that 45 old Greys have become Springboks, more than four times as many as their international cricket counterparts, and that most of them have earned Test caps.
Walter will hope some of that accumulated greatness seeped into his players as they strode Grey’s hallowed halls on Tuesday. Given recent results they could use the kind of magic made by the almost 50 shades of Grey.
South Africa men’s World Cup squad: Temba Bavuma (capt), Gerald Coetzee, Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Sisanda Magala, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortjé, Tabraiz Shamsi, Kagiso Rabada, Rassie van der Dussen.
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