Philander in a sweat over bowling woes
Former new ball ace suspicious of hosts’ ability to take 20 wickets
● When Vernon Philander trapped Virat Kohli lbw during the pulsating New Year’s Test in 2018, it was the culmination of a period in which he earned the nickname “The Surgeon ”.
It was a dismissal that required the kind of patience and precision demanded of the best medical practitioners. Not one of the 13 balls Philander delivered to Kohli in that second innings missed its mark. Each required Kohli, arguably the sport’s best batter, to show meticulousness in movement and thought. Kohli defended most of them, scored a single and left others and then, having been dragged away from the stumps just enough, his eye-line and position centimetres askew from where it needed to be, he was trapped lbw by the first ball Philander darted into him.
“I think it was two-and-a-half overs of away-swingers, and then the one back into him, ” Philander said at the time. “It was definitely a plan to keep him quiet, and also to drag him across to make sure that when you do bowl the other one, he’s on the other side of the off stump.”
Recalling Kohli’s wicket this week, Philander said it was about understanding the moment. “That was a low-scoring game and I needed to be up for the fight. If you let Virat get in, the rest of them could bat around him and we didn’t want that happening.
“Ja, it was obviously a big moment and I recognised how important he was, obviously he’s a great player and I was happy to get him, I hope our bowlers can do the same in these Tests,” Philander remarked.
He is, however, concerned about whether they can. The Proteas head into the first of two Tests against India, starting on Boxing Day, with only Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee having any cricket under their belts post the World Cup. “It looks like we are scrambling to put a seam attack together,” said Philander.
“Annas (Anrich Nortjé) is missing already and then KG (Rabada) has this (heel) injury. I think our batting is good enough to make enough runs, but I always look at ‘ can we take 20 wickets?’ I don’t knowthe answer to that. It is concerning.”
Nortje ’ s lower back issue will reportedly prevent him from playing until March or April, Lungi Ngidi has an ankle strain, while Rabada picked up his heel injury in the World Cup semifinal and didn’t bowl his full quota of overs in that match. “KG always tends to feel his way into a series, but he can’t do that this time, because it’s just the two Tests, he needs to be on top of it immediately and now he hasn’t bowled for more than a month, so that is also very concerning,” said Philander.
Neither team has played much Test cricket this year; India have had two series against Australia in March, the World Test Championship also against Australia and two matches in the West Indies. South Africa played in Sydney to start the year and then won bothmatches against West Indies in a series no-one attended and thus can remember.
Although India’s captain Rohit Sharma, Kohli and their premier paceman, Jasprit
Bumrah, have not played since the World Cup either, the fact that they were in form at that tournament, unlike Temba Bavuma, who hasn’t played since then either, puts the tourists on a more solid footing ahead of the opening Test in Centurion.
The absence of Mohammad Shami with an ankle injury is a big blow to India. He was magnificent in the 2021/22 series, with his dismantling of Aiden Markram in the Centurion Test in that series a highlight.
India had always felt that last tour was their best chance of winning a Test series in this country for the first time, citing their own skilful bowling resources, which they believed would be too good for a flimsy batting line-up. Having gone 1-0 up after winning at SuperSport Park, they lost the next two matches at the Wanderers and Newlands.
Dean Elgar, then still Test captain, played one of the best innings by a Proteas batter in the second Test in Johannesburg, while Bavuma, Rassie van der Dussen and Keegan Petersen all contributed consistently.
“We play so little Test cricket anyway nowadays, and now we have just two Tests. Also just in the last few years, we’ve started series slowly. But you know, if we can avoid that (slow start), we have to back ourselves in our home conditions. We have been successful (against them),” said Philander, who took 224 wickets in 64 Tests.