Cracks left unattended will crumble even more and So have the Proteas.
A look at where it possibly went wrong for the test side.
Much like any structure that has cracks that have been left unattended for a long time, the Proteas were bound to collapse. Whilst they managed to be in the top 2 of the Test Championship, it was always inevitable that the Proteas winning template would be found out and all the cracks in the side would be exposed. Perhaps there was a degree of naivety or negligence in the camp because nobody ever thought of doing anything about the cracks that were clear for all to see.
The Proteas were like a car with three good tyres and one bad tyre being driven on a gravel road with hope that the bad tyre would hold until the driver gets to town. Even with all the options in front of him, the driver still decided to risk it. One could argue that maybe everyone was just still excited by the prospect of making it to the Test Championship final and that is probably why I was the only one constantly asking questions about how the team was winning. While some may know me from twitter and my writing, I am also a cricket coach and have been for about 7 years now and, for me as a coach, there is nothing more important than your “HOW”. How did we lose, how did we win, how did my batters go out etc. This is something I felt we were ignoring for the longest part of the test championship. Dean Elgar expressed his views on Bazzball and its sustainability and I could not help but laugh when I read that he thought it would not be sustainable. I did not laugh because I disagreed with him or anything, but I found it funny that he was saying that about Bazzball, yet his team was also playing a brand of… in actual fact, no, his team does not have a specific brand of cricket, but its winning template was never going to be sustainable. No matter how good South Africans bowlers are, the batters were always going to be needed to chip in and they failed. We are currently on our way to being whitewashed down under because our batters cannot seem to do what batters are expected to do; score runs!
Well as the old cliché phrase goes, “No use crying over spilt milk.” The Proteas management can sit and moan about failing to win at least 1 test match against Australia in order to keep our hopes of a Test Championship final spot alive or, they can start fixing things in order to make sure that by the time we play test cricket again, we are able to not only compete but win matches.
There has been a lot said about the domestic system and it being a massive contributor to how the team has performed. I cannot dispute that, however, there are a number of things I believe went wrong that hardly have anything to do with the system. Let us have a look at some of them below.
COACHING
From a coaching point of view, I had always asked questions around the then coach’s philosophy and brand of cricket. This was because I had never heard of or read anything where he was explaining or giving an idea of how he wanted the team to play. I kept searching and asking questions because I was also not seeing it from the team and how the team was playing. The way the team was playing across formats, did not at any point give off the brand of cricket that the team was trying to play. In T20 cricket, it was visible that the team was trying something but, after every defeat, the team would go back to playing this whatever brand of cricket. Going forward, the plan should be to get a permanent coach with the hope that, whoever it is, we will see a clear vision and that we will see his coaching philosophy and brand of cricket through the team. The one big setback with not having a specific brand of cricket is that players end up not knowing what their roles in the team are and how they fit into the team. This is also what has been visible from the Proteas. Maybe, it will be a suitable time to fully explore the idea of having two separate coaches even though it could end up being an issue of affordability,
SELECTION
This probably ties down with the point mentioned above. A lot of selection mistakes have been made throughout the test championship and the ongoing series in Australia is no different. I personally do not have a problem with having a selection panel that is responsible for selecting a team for the coach but, I always wonder how much input the coach has on squad selection. Do the selectors consider the brand of cricket and the coach’s philosophy before they select a squad, or do they select a squad then coach must see what he can do? I believe that whatever squad is picked should be picked based on how the coach wants his side to play. The squad picked for this series against Australia was particularly strange. The balance in terms of playing ability and playing style was off. We went to Australia with batters who play the same brand of cricket, from our two openers down to the middle. The only batter in the side we have that can naturally push the game forward was benched for the whole series and is now playing in the last match, OUT OF POSITION. There are so many questions I could ask around selection, but I feel, we should be working towards the answers now and not the questions.
A lot of people have called for a completely new top 6, and I understand why but, it’s times like these that you want to avoid making impulsive decisions because the matter can move from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. Going forward, proper planning needs to be the order of the day. Very often when the Proteas play, you cannot help but get the feeling that someone, somewhere did not plan properly. When the two likeminded openers go out to bat, they are both playing the same brand of cricket. Number 3, 4, 5, and 6 also go out doing the same thing and we wonder why we cannot even score 200? Who, from the current batting line up, has the natural ability to go out there and take the team to 200 without taking any risks? You then wonder what the conversation was during the selection meeting?
It also did not help the team that our captain, all of a sudden, seemed to turn more into Gcina Mhlophe (a storyteller) and less into an opening batter that scores runs. He spoke much more and longer than he batted. He is not just the captain but the most experienced batter in the side.
Apart from the above mentioned, a lot of work within and around the system will need to be done to ensure that even for many years to come, the Proteas are still one of the best test sides in the world, of which they are not at the moment. Even with our T20 league, we will need to make sure that we produce cricketers who can dominate in the longer format - and that could start with making high school cricketers, and even club cricketers - play 2-day cricket or something similar.
The system will change better when we start bringing in more cricket people because only cricket people can fix cricket.
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