Domingo demands Proteas dominate
RUSSELL Domingo can only go up from here. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he is under pressure to do so unfairly quickly.
The sole positive aspect of SA’s Champions Trophy campaign was that they reached the semifinals. Then, for the eighth time in 11 knockout games at International Cricket Council one-day tournaments, they fell at the first hurdle.
“Maybe we aren’t as good as we think we are,” was AB de Villiers’s bleak, pithy view of SA’s umpteenth unhappy ending.
De Villiers needs reasons to be cheerful and in a hurry — on July 20 he and his men will be in Colombo playing Sri Lanka in the first of five ODIs. SA, whose winning percentage in ODIs of 64.21 is the highest among all national teams, have won only one of the 10 completed matches they have played in that format on the Asian island.
So Domingo has three weeks to prove to his players they are better than they think they are, but not as good as they will need to be to give him a successful start to his tenure as SA’s head coach.
Asks do not come any tougher and Domingo might start by making sure his team understand the implications of India not needing Gary Kirsten to win the Champions Trophy.
They did so under another respected and experienced coach in Duncan Fletcher, but the point is that players win trophies; not coaches.
Kirsten would concur. Players accepting responsibility for more of their preparation and, conversely, their performance is his guiding principle.
Because Kirsten has left the building does not mean everything good about SA’s team has left with him. They were strong and competitive before he arrived and they remain so.
It also means the buck stops with the players, not the coach: it is up to Proteas players, far more than Domingo, to fix the problems.
A top order that failed to close the gaping holes left by the absence of Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis and a middle order that did not have enough experience to avoid falling into those holes are the major batting problems. Smith is recovering from ankle surgery and will be out for months, while Kallis no longer bothers with bilateral series. So the holes are likely to remain open for a while.
Without Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, SA’s attack is a pale imitation of its bristling self. Both have shown themselves to be not as bulletproof to injury as the team needs them to be.
So there can only be admiration for Domingo having the balls to say: “There aren’t players shooting lights out in the way Kallis or Steyn did, but if you’re expecting to replace Steyn, Morkel, Kallis, Smith and, to a degree, Johan Botha with young players and expecting them to make the same impact consistently straightaway, it’s not going to be easy.
“We weren’t the strongest side [at the Champions Trophy] and we didn’t deserve to win it. We need to aspire to dominate for a long time before we can consider being serious contenders.”
That sounds like bad news, but it’s good.