SA gears up for Black Caps tour – in August

WHEELBARROWS filled with tins of green spraypaint could be more useful than the heavy roller for staff at some of South Africa’s cricket grounds, what with New Zealand set to tour in August.

“It’s not going to be a lush, green outfield,” former Centurion groundsman Hilbert Smit said yesterday. “It’s going to be hard and yellow.” Smit knows whereof he speaks, having prepared his ground for a oneday international on August 17 2005.

“We sprayed the outfield green but that only changed the colour of the grass, not the conditions. The ball still got old much more quickly than it does during the summer.”

That match was part of the Afro-Asian Cup, an odd competition that consisted of three ODIs and was contested by teams representing Africa and Asia. The other two games were played at Kingsmead on August 20 and 21.

August? That’s for the start of the SA and English football seasons. It’s also for cricket, but in the other hemisphere: the last two Ashes tests will be played in England in August.

Cricket and August do not often share a sentence in South Africa. However, the Kiwis will play three ODIs and two T20s between August 14 and 26 at Kingsmead, Centurion and Potchefstroom.

“It’s a huge problem if you’re playing tests at that time of year because the pitches don’t change as the match goes on,” Smit said. “But for ODIs it’s not an issue – the quality of the surface will be good.

“But the weather could be freezing and that might affect the players, and the groundstaff could find themselves having to get frost off the covers in the mornings.”

That won’t be the case in subtropical Durban, where the locals enjoy something close to endless summer.

“We’ve started our preparations very early because of the tour,” Kingsmead groundsman Wilson Ngobese said yesterday. “We’ve done our scarification already, and it’s nice and green and the grass is growing back.

“There’s not a lot of rain at that time of year so we should be fine in terms of preparing the pitches.”

Reporting the 2005 Afro-Asian Cup for Wisden, veteran West Indian journalist Tony Cozier described the August 20 match in Durban, in which the Africa XI fell 17 runs short of their target of 268, as having been played on a “balmy winter’s day”.

That wasn’t the case 24 hours later, when the teams returned to Kingsmead. “Brooding skies and air like consommé made for a fast-bowling feast: not only did the ball swing, but it seamed and bounced . . .”

The New Zealanders should feel at home on the Highveld, where the weather could chime with the myth that is summer in Dunedin. In Durban, where no spraypaint will be needed, the heat could be on the batsmen.

‘ We’ve started our preparations very early because of the tour