Stamina and skill vital to beat the jungle heat
PITCHES from the back of the moon harbouring opponents bowling from the back of their heads or trying to launch every delivery to the back of beyond make Sri Lanka a tough place to play cricket.
After all, the Proteas have lost nine of the 10 completed one-day internationals played against the Lankans in their own back yard.
The conditions, the unorthodoxy that comes standard with Sri Lankan players, and SA’s rigidity, have conspired to undermine them, and these obstacles will be uppermost in the mind of Russel Domingo, head coach of the Proteas, when SA leave today to play Sri Lanka in five ODIs and three T20s.
A South African success will require unusually high levels of skill and stamina in the island’s jungle heat and on rough surfaces that rapidly rob the ball of its shine.
That doesn’t mean SA should not depend on their strengths — just that they will have to deploy them especially carefully.
“I bowled a lot of overs,” was how Brett Schultz explained how he, a big, bearish fast bowler supposedly unsuited to subcontinental pitches, took 20 wickets at 16.30 in SA’s test series in Sri Lanka in 1993.
“I was really gutsing it out in that horrible climate, and I was striking up front and getting reverse swing when the ball got older. The skill of bowling reverse swing is really important there.”
Who are SA’s current masters of that art?
“Marchant de Lange has that heavy action with a lot of wrist that you need for reverse swing, and Dale Steyn just has an incredible skills set — he gets conventional swing and reverse swing,” Schultz said.
Ominously, perhaps, neither De Lange nor Steyn are in the squad.
Schultz stopped short of labelling as cheating the questionable preparation of the grounds.
“They aren’t shy to prepare their pitches to suit their bowlers exclu-
They aren’t shy to prepare their pitches to suit their bowlers exclusively
sively,” he said. “In fact, they do it as a matter of course.”
Schultz’s advice to SA’s batsmen, delivered obliquely, was to attack the bowling. “When I played, if some guy hit you back over your head you wanted to bean him,” he said.
“Now it’s changed so much and batsmen play so positively from ball one.”
Even the use of a new ball from each end was good news for batsmen.
“It’s a disadvantage because you will get less reverse swing, and when the ball gets soft, batsmen can’t hit it as far,” said Schultz.