Oz tour will shape SA’s World Cup batting blueprint
● Not for the first time SA’s bowling is in better shape than their batting. Thing is no one wins a World Cup without scoring enough runs.
Making only 843 of the precious things in 155.1 white-ball overs against an attack as impoverished as Zimbabwe’s, as SA did in recent weeks, is not nearly enough.
That’s a run rate of 5.43, and the 31 wickets they lost in those five innings means they averaged 27.19. At home. Against Zimbabwe.
Can do better. Must do better if SA are to compete at next year’s World Cup in England.
The tournament starts on May 30 with a match between England and SA at The Oval, which can only disturb the ghosts of the same fixture at the same ground five years ago.
SA were 80/8 in the 23rd over and 175 all out in the 39th, England won by seven wickets to reach the Champions Trophy final, and Gary Kirsten’s last public words as his team’s coach were: “We choked.”
The 2019 World Cup starts a week later, so conditions should be comparable. Or not. The summer of 2012 was the wettest in 100 years in England, which has just come through the joint hottest summer on record.
That can only change things, but it can’t diminish the significance of the fact that just three centuries were scored in the 2013 Champions Trophy — two by Shikhar Dhawan, the other by Kumar Sangakkara; top order players both.
Of the 13 efforts of 70 or more, just five weren’t scored by openers or No 3s. Three of those belonged to No 5s, and only once did a player batting below No 5 get there.
Earth to SA’s top five: the ball will be in your court.
Hit the damn thing. Hard.
Aiden Markram, the only man who opened for SA in all three one-day internationals against Zimbabwe and the purest batting talent the country has produced since Jacques Kallis, is key to that happening.
He is a far better player than his scores of 27, 35 and 42 against the Zimbabweans suggest, and he could do worse than prove it on the white-ball tour to Australia next month.
Having paid due tribute to Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock as an opening pair, Ottis Gibson said this week: “We also know that Reeza Hendricks and Markram have been very good in franchise cricket.
“We know where we are with those two; they are definitely in our thoughts.”
That Amla and JP Duminy are out of the Aussie tour with injuries complicates matters. But it also offers SA a glimpse of the future: both are nearing the end of their careers.
So, at 35, is Farhaan Behardien. But the other piece of the World Cup batting puzzle is a player down the order who is as cool as he is calculating.
Berhardien, who sensibly is aboard for Australia, looks like that player.