Variety and adaptability are two of the major ingredients South Africa take with them to the Cricket World Cup, and neither are entities heavily associated with previous sides from this country.
They were oft-spoken of sure, but that’s where it ended with South Africa rather choosing to go with a ‘tried-and-trusted’ policy which nearly always led to predictability and which too often showed the opposition South Africa’s hand.
Through design and a bit of error South Africa arrived at World Cup squad, who for the most part during the series against India couldn’t apply tactics they will use on the sub-continent and in the cases of Imran Tahir and Jacques Kallis had no role to play at all.
However this series has shown the variety and depth of the unit. Faf du Plessis in the third match and Morné van Wyk in the fifth, batted with skill and courage to suggest that there is merit for their inclusion in the starting XI.
They could fill numbers 6 and 7 in the batting order adding some sturdiness to the lower order. Both are capable of scoring quickly, and in Du Plessis’ case hitting a long ball.
And this variety doesn’t only stop with the batting. Robin Peterson showed in the last two matches that he remains a capable candidate for the support spinner role, while his fielding was often breathtaking. He too adds depth to the batting. Of course they could choose to for-sake one of the three front-line seamers, bring in Tahir, go into a match with an all-out spin assault and see how far that takes them. Kallis provides a third seamer option, so they won’t lack experience in that regard.
“It’s the great thing about our squad – that it’s hard to predict what the first XI line-up will be,” said Graeme Smith, who was pleased that in his final assignment as one-day captain, he was able to finish with a series win. “It’s the first time that I can recall us going to a World Cup with a lot of different options. We don’t go there with a set XI in mind, we will pick the best combination for each game.”
As pleasing as all that is though, there remain flaws in South Africa’s make-up. Smith spoke Sunday evening of the poor decision making, particularly among the batsmen, that proved so costly at the Wanderers and nearly did so again in Port Elizabeth.
In fact at various stages in all five matches South Africa had collapses of varying degrees of incredulity, a fact that would have been noted by their group rivals, particularly the heavyweights like England and India who they face in back-to-back matches on March 6 and 12 respectively.
Of course Kallis’ composed authority will go some way towards alleviating the kind of panic seen at the Wanderers, Newlands and St George’s Park. “We learnt some important lessons in this series,” Smith said.
There is little fault that can be found with the bowling. In South African conditions the three seamers performed their job particularly well, and it will be difficult to drop one of them should they want to roll out three spinners at the World Cup.
Lonwabo Tsotsobe has grown immensely, and his confidence is such that he is bowling with greater variety and adapting to varying conditions. Morné Morkel will remain a confidence player – he talked of how he still gets emotional when things go wrong as was the case when he dismissed Zaheer Khan Sunday but was called up for a no-ball, but that he was learning to cope better, with those emotions. Taking 12 wickets in the series at an average of 11.41, suggest that to be the case. And then there’s Dale Steyn, who is the world’s best fast bowler.
Mystery continues to surround Tahir, which is just the way South Africa want it, according to Smith. He’ll get a run in one of the warm-up games before the World Cup, most likely against Zimbabwe on February 12, but as far as possible they want him to remain a secret.
Smith emphasised that it was most important now that the players took a break. On India’s side the likes of Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag played no part in the one-dayers, while Sachin Tendulkar went homeafter the second match.
“Arriving there fresh is crucial. We have a long period before our first game in India,” said Smith.
The team are due to leave on February 8. They play Zimbabwe and Australia (February 15) in pre-tournament warm-ups and the first World Cup match is against the West Indies in New Delhi on February 24.
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