Shoulder to the wheel for Proteas
Indian league lures players
OW is the Proteas’ winter of contentment. They will wake up tomorrow with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Their season will be over, their jobs done, the embers of another campaign fading with the autumn sun.
But not for long and not for all of them. Players contracted by Cricket SA will follow individually designed conditioning programmes, while the names of 15 South Africans — nine have played for SA this season — are scattered among squad lists of franchises of the Indian Premier League starting on April 3.
Graeme Smith will avoid all that jazz by playing for Surrey, ankle injury permitting. Further north, Alviro Petersen will turn out for Somerset. JP Duminy could find himself sent off to test his repaired Achilles in the colours of an as yet unnamed team or left to prepare for the Champions Trophy.
SA ’ s first match in the tournament is against India in Cardiff on June 23. To warm up, the Proteas will play an ODI against the Netherlands in Amsterdam on May 31.
Players peripheral to the national squad will be involved in matches against India A and Australia A in June and July, and
NCSA ’ s High Performance Centre will ensure anyone not on the field does not become too ensconced on the couch.
That seems a full schedule, but there will be little sympathy and understanding in some quarters — not with the Proteas having grown fond of dispersing whenever the opportunity arises, often in the midst of a series.
“There ’ s no doubt that all the training and living in hotels gets to you,” Proteas team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.
“These are all professional sportsmen and so are the management, but if someone needs to be re-energised we give them short breaks. If it’s going to benefit the system and the entire squad, why not?”
Is that a viable way to run a team at the top level of sport, where success depends on honing skills and learning to absorb pressure? Aren’t those aspects of a team’s performance that, in oldfashioned terms, can only be improved by endless repetition?
“Alex Ferguson doesn’t field the same 11 players all year round for Manchester United,” Moosajee said. “On pre-season tours he brings in guys he’s trying to develop and nurture. He’s got the nucleus of the team, and he’s got other guys who come in and out.”
Cricket, once the great game of summers neatly separated by hemispheres, has — like soccer and rugby — become a multinational industry in which players are products and competitions are vehicles for them to sell themselves. The notion of a season is as relevant to the modern game as batsmen in cloth caps facing fast bowlers on uncovered pitches.
“A decade ago, when you played for four to six months of the year, it was fine because then you also had four to six months at home,” Moosajee said. “Currently, the minimum programme runs for nine months of the year and often for 11 months. And now you are playing three formats.”
Ah, the third format. The tyranny that is T20 is the cricket industry ’ s biggest growth point. It creates more opportunities for more players, but also for more mediocre players in ever more meaningless tournaments.
Everyone needs a break from that. Enjoy it, boys.