For success, SA must keep an eye on the one-day ball

WE NEED to stand back and look at the bigger picture to understand why SA aren’t the best team in the game in one-day cricket.

Australia dominated world cricket for the best part of eight years, spending more than six of them as the No 1 ranked test side between 2003 and 2009 and winning the World Cup in 1999, 2003 and 2007.

There was no doubt about which country was cricket’s leading light. The debate was more about who was next best.

Australia won with style and swagger. With rare exceptions every other team’s hopes extended only as far as hoping they would not be beaten too badly when they dared step across a boundary everyone knew was owned by the Aussies.

Were they the finest team cricket has yet seen? That we are able to ask the question with seriousness tells us how good they were.

A collision of high-quality talent in all departments, excellent leadership, peerless preparation, a scientific approach to every aspect of the game, including the emotional side, an infallible sense of humour and a special kind of aggression were some reasons for Australia’s domination.

Here’s another: Australia is home to 22.32-million people, 850 155 of whom are registered cricketers — 3.8% of the population. That seems a small number until it is compared with the South African scenario.

We live in a country of 50.59-million. Unlike in largely homogenous Australia, cricketers are not easily countable here.

Cricket SA reckons we have 22 000

So for us to expect to just rock up and beat England is maybe a little . . . not arrogant, but getting ahead of ourselves

club players and 105 000 children involved in mini-cricket programmes. The professional and senior amateur ranks — including Namibia — probably account for 280 more. It is not yet known how many South Africans play cricket at school.

Whatever SA’s total is, it is sure to be a lot less grand than the Aussies’ 850 155. Yet our population is more than double Australia’s.

This means SA can’t have it all. They are unlikely ever to be, for a significant time, the best test as well as the best one-day team in the game.

As AB de Villiers’ men proved at the Champions Trophy in England and Wales last month, they deserve to be ranked behind India, England and Australia.

SA saved their worst performance for last, crashing to England in the semifinals playing wretched cricket that will haunt them for years. On the bright side, it left them nowhere to hide from reality.

“We know we didn’t play well on that particular day,” Russell Domingo said this week. “But the fact of the matter is that England are ranked higher than SA, which says they have been playing more consistent oneday cricket than us.

“So for us to expect to just rock up and beat England is maybe a little . . . not arrogant, but getting ahead of ourselves. In that event we probably weren’t consistently good enough.”

Domingo spoke at the announcement of the one-day and T20 squads that will tour Sri Lanka later this month. They are unlikely to find the going any easier there: SA have won just one of the 10 completed ODIs they have played in Sri Lanka.

Contrast all that with the undeniable fact that SA are test cricket’s finest team. Asking how they are able to reach that pinnacle with a comparatively piddling number of cricketers compared to a country like Australia can only yield one answer.

Something’s got to give and that something, at the moment, is its oneday cricket.

When SA shifts its focus from test cricket, that might change.