Proteas needed to think out of the box
Another ICC tournament, another early trip home staring the Proteas in the face.
|||Cape Town - Another ICC tournament, another early trip home staring the Proteas in the face. And once again, the age-old conservatism that South African cricket has always relied on came back to haunt them at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur on Friday night.
Yes, captain Faf du Plessis is right when he said afterwards that his team were probably 10-15 runs short of posting a more competitive total than the 122/8 they scraped together against the West Indies.
But even before we get to the bowling effort, the team selection left a lot to be desired. Du Plessis has harped on about how the Proteas need to play “smarter cricket” than the other nations to end their ICC tournament bogey, but they dropped the slip catch even before the game got going.
On a slow, turning Nagpur pitch, it was going to be near-impossible to hit through the line and chase boundaries, while the field itself is also one of the biggest in India. The Proteas had lost their best “nudger and nurdler” in JP Duminy to injury – someone who could push for quick singles and turn the ones into twos on a sticky wicket.
So they needed to make a like-for-like replacement, which should’ve seen Farhaan Behardien come into the middle-order. Behardien has received a lot of flak – sometimes rightly so – for failing to hit enough boundaries at international level, which he does with aplomb for the Titans in franchise cricket.
But there can be no denying that he is effective at working the ball around the outfield and maintaining at least a run-a-ball strike-rate. It was that type of pitch, and it needed someone to play that anchor role at one end to allow the clean strikers to have a go from the other when possible.
Another important Behardien attribute is his ability to bowl military medium “dibbly-dobblers”, especially with Duminy’s valuable off-spin not available. As both sets of bowlers proved, the more pace taken off the ball, the more difficult it was to get it away. And these aren’t observations made in hindsight, but which should’ve been picked up following the India-New Zealand game on March 15 at the same venue.
Even though the Proteas played on a pitch next to the one of the India game, the square itself would have similar characteristics, so even though the ball didn’t turn as much on Friday night, it was still quite slow and kept low.
Instead, the South African brainstrust went for specialist batsman Rilee Rossouw’s flashing blade, and he got out in the manner any stroke-player would if they went for a glory shot early on – holding out to a fielder in the inner ring, Rossouw this time cutting Chris Gayle to Andre Russell at point for a second-ball duck.
But while there were some awful shots played by the likes of captain Du Plessis, AB de Villiers (when will his slump end?) and David Miller – with Du Plessis admitting that the top-order were “very frantic” – the Proteas could’ve given themselves a better chance of defending the 123-run victory target.
It required out-of-the-box thinking, but as usual, it was in short supply from the South Africans. They went back to default mode, opening with two fast bowlers in Kagiso Rabada and Chris Morris. The situation cried out for Aaron Phangiso to be given the new ball due to the pitch conditions, and the fact that they didn’t ultimately cost the Proteas dearly in the end.
Rabada made a great start by bowling the mighty Chris Gayle for four in the first over while conceding just five runs, while Chris Morris kept it down to just three in the second over.
But the next two from Rabada and Morris went for 11 runs each, and the West Indies were away at 30/1 off four overs. Even when Imran Tahir was introduced in the fifth over and showed what would’ve been possible from a spinner by going for just two runs, fast bowler David Wiese bowled the sixth and eighth overs instead of both Tahir and Phangiso operating in tandem.
Another missed opportunity came in the 13 th over. A new batsman in Dwayne Bravo was at the crease after Johnson Charles was dismissed by Wiese for 32, but instead of bowling Tahir or Phangiso, Du Plessis lifted the pressure by bringing back pace in the form of Rabada, who went for 14 runs as he was hit for three boundaries.
Even Tahir’s late heroics, when he was on a hat trick in the 17th over (what a fantastic googly to Darren Sammy) came too late. The Proteas needed to bowl the West Indies out if they were going to stay in the tournament.
But the stereotypically cautious South Africans came up short in selection, and Du Plessis dropped the captaincy ball on the field.
Let’s all hope the Proteas are afforded a lifeline by Sri Lanka, who need to beat England on Saturday for South Africa to have any chance of making the semi-finals. If Sri Lanka win on Saturday, Russell Domingo’s team would have to beat the Asian side on Monday in Delhi to advance to the last-four.
ashfak.mohamed@inl.co.za
@IndyCapeSport
Independent Media