In the land of quickies, the right pitch holds the key
MIKE Procter tried hard to answer the question, loaded though it was with the hope that the damn straight reply could be avoided. No chance.
“Got to be the pitches,” Procter said. “The pitches have got to have something to do with it.”
The question was, “Why does SA produce so many quality fast bowlers? Surely it can’t all come down to the pitches?” Yes, it can, Procter said. “In Asian countries, the wickets simply aren’t conducive to fast bowling. In England and New Zealand, it’s more about seam. But in SA and Australia, fast bowlers come to the fore.”
Not by accident, Vinnie
South Africans have cultivated a skill for making the ball reverse swing
Barnes said. “Yes, our conditions breed fast bowlers. But a lot of planning and thought goes into it.”
As Cricket SA’s high-performance manager, Barnes is responsible for a significant amount of that planning and thinking.
“We’re fortunate that the cupboard has never been bare, but we need to make sure the guys who are playing below international level are playing against quality opposition so that we can judge how good they are,” Barnes said.
“There are a lot more resources available these days. When I played, you didn’t have many coaches and fast bowlers would learn things by talking among themselves. These days there are physios at every level, workloads are monitored, and if there are issues with a bowler’s action they get analysed and sorted out early in his career.”
Barnes tried to kill batsman in the colours of Western Province and Transvaal board teams in the days of racially divided cricket. But even on the affluent side of the fence, the flame throwers were on their own.
Procter himself walked a crooked mile to come to the cutthroat craft of quick bowling.
At school he was primarily a batsman who dabbled in wicketkeeping and seam bowling, usually confined to the nets.
“Coaches would look at my action in the nets and say, ‘You just keep bowling seamers. Don’t worry about trying to bowl fast’,” Procter said.
“Then, at about 17 or 18, I started filling out, and the faster I ran in the faster I bowled.”
But might the modern approach mean the business of bowling fast had softened?
“No,” Barnes said. “You have to look after players — we haven’t had a situation where Dale Steyn or Vernon Philander or Morne Morkel has missed a series because of injury.”
And then there’s the supporting cast. When Mitchell Johnson concussed Ryan McLaren at Centurion, Wayne Parnell stepped in to take wickets with consecutive deliveries at St George’s Park. When Parnell cried off with a groin strain, Kyle Abbott — fresh from taking 12 wickets in a franchise firstclass match in Paarl — was called up to the test squad; a squad that already featured Rory Kleinveldt and had Beuran Hendricks lurking in the wings.
On top of that, the South Africans — Steyn in particular — have cultivated a skill for making the ball reverse swing, often with devastating effect. David Warner has expressed his own ideas on the legality of the methods Graeme Smith’s team use to achieve the effect, but his views could have something to do with the fact that Australia failed to make the ball reverse in Port Elizabeth.
Faf du Plessis is SA’s designated ball-shiner. Clearly, he did that job well in the second test. Warner fulfils the role in the Aussie side. Could his assertions be a defence against the evidence that he does not share Du Plessis’s level of expertise?
From Krom Hendricks to Neil Adcock, Allan Donald to Morne Morkel, SA’s flavour of fast bowling has always been about talent, tactics, terroir, and a taste for terror.