Long way but Ottis sets the World Cup ’19 plans in motion

Ottis Gibson took a deep breath, allowed himself a shallow sigh, glanced downward and tried not to frown too obviously. Then, he answered, with due respect, a question that — to him, it seemed — was premature.

“We’re looking at 34 or 35 games between now and 2019 and the idea between Faf, the selectors and I is to have a look at players who might be on the fringes,” he said. “We have to give players opportunities so that in a year’s time we can narrow that pool down.

“At the moment, we need a wide pool of players to look at. We also need to determine the type of players, bearing in mind the conditions in England, that we’re going to need.

“They need opportunities for the next year so that we can make better judgments going forward. Then we finally need to narrow down to 15 or 16 players we feel can play at the World Cup. “It’s still a long way, but that’s the plan.” The 2019 World Cup is more than 18 months away. Is it too soon to nail down a hard-and-fast plan for the tournament or is that the kind of attention to detail required to win it?

“When Bob Woolmer sat us down it was probably just under a year-and-a-half away,” Allan Donald said about South Africa’s preparations for the 1999 World Cup. “He explained to us individually what the situation was and what our roles would be.

“For him it was about making sure that we kept upskilling and getting stronger as a unit in terms of our confidence.”

South Africa had plenty of opportunities to up those skills: they played 44 one-day internationals between November 1997 and March 1999.

South Africa’s 1999 World Cup ended in a tied semifinal against Australia at Edgbaston, England, with Donald and Lance Klusener looking at each other like a couple of cows at an abattoir.

But Donald would have other, happier, World Cup memories, some of them while perched on a boundaryside cooler box in Dhaka, Bangladesh, watching New Zealand undo South Africa in the 2011 quarterfinal.

How had the Kiwis approached that tournament, in which they lost to beaten finalists Sri Lanka in the semis?

“They didn’t worry about it too much,” Donald, then New Zealand’s bowling coach, said. “[Captain] Dan Vettori made it very clear that they never put too much emphasis on how big a deal the World Cup is.

A nation thinking

“His philosophy was that the best group of players will step forward about eight to 10 months out. John Wright [the coach] went with that.”

New Zealand have not won the World Cup but they’ve reached the final — in 2015, when they went down to Australia — and only twice in 10 trips to the tournament have they not reached the knockout rounds.

South Africa have played in seven World Cups and just once — at home in 2003 — did they not make it to the playoff stages. Somehow that kind of record is a bigger deal here than in New Zealand.

“Maybe that’s the way to go,” Donald said. “New Zealand have always played expansive, confident cricket at World Cups; that’s why they’re always in the mix.”

Might Gibson have that effect on South Africa?

“Ottis is a smooth, calm guy and I think he’ll bring that to this team.”

Amen! You can hear a nation thinking.