Proteas not the finished product, but in a good space
THERE is just over five weeks to go to the T20 World Cup and despite all the problems of the past 18 months, the Proteas are actually in a good space.
Sure, they haven’t really been tested in some areas lately, the fielding is still prone to errors and the balance of the starting XI is always open to debate. On that latter topic, coach Mark Boucher said, on Tuesday, that South Africans had better just get used to that.
The composition of the starting team will cause much debate. SA looked like being a batsman light in each match in the T20 series in Sri Lanka. Five frontline batsmen, with one seam bowling all-rounder and then bowlers, was the make up for the first two matches. It was five batsmen in the last match too, but then Dwaine Pretorius and Wiaan Mulder played in the third game, which again gave the team seven bowling options.
That appears to be the overall plan. SA - like they wanted to do at the 50-over World Cup in 2019 - want the bowlers to be at the forefront of their strategy. In England two years ago, it was the quicks, a plan that failed dismally because Dale Steyn and Lungi Ngidi weren’t fit, and Kagiso Rabada had been bowled into the ground in the preceding two years.
This time, it’s not the quicks who are front and centre, rather a host of slow bowlers.
Keshav Maharaj played his first T20 International last week, and now it looks like the most ingenious move on the part of the selectors to take him to the UAE. Maharaj, who is high on confidence, is now thriving as a senior member of the squad and, as he showed in Sri Lanka, is tactically astute.
Tabraiz Shamsi, Bjorn Fortuin and Aiden Markram round out a spin unit that has become potent.
It is Markram’s improvement with the ball that has so many wondering why not just have the extra frontline batsman - as insurance.
SA appear to have made peace with the fact that they don’t have to score 200 to win a T20 match.
The big test for the strategy, and the batsmen, will be the match where the bowlers have an off day. The Proteas are extremely reliant on Quinton de Kock. Reeza Hendricks has quietly put together a good run of scores this year, and in his last four innings - three alongside De Kock and one with Temba Bavuma - has shared two fifty-run stands and two partnerships of over a hundred.
Markram has made a good start to life batting in the No 3 position, averaging 69.50 in three innings, but admits, it’s still a role he is uncomfortable doing.
The middle order wasn’t tested against Sri Lanka, and the best gauge is the West Indies, where it was hit and miss for Rassie van der Dussen, David Miller and, for that series, George Linde.
The “death bowling” didn’t get examined either in Sri Lanka, but concerns remain given what was seen in the Caribbean. However, for all that, SA will go to the World Cup confident. It’s a team with a lot of variety in it’s squad, but a group that acknowledges, as Boucher said, that it is “definitely not the finished product.”