‘Strange ‘ Days’ as SA ‘ find wrong ‘ ‘... Doors

ESPIONAGE and information concealment are both in that category of thankless jobs where if you’re doing them properly no-one should notice a thing.

When you get it wrong though ... your mistakes are amplified and ridiculed.

On Tuesday night Prassana Agoram, performance analyst for the Proteas, delivered team dossiers to the players for yesterday’s One-Day International against New Zealand at SuperSport Park.

For Dale Steyn he had a list of the Black Caps’ batting strengths and weaknesses. He slid them under the fast bowler’s room door at the team’s hotel at Melrose Arch.

Unfortunately for Agoram, he had an outdated room list. Steyn had arrived a day earlier than everyone else and had switched rooms when the rest of the team arrived.

In the room instead was a guest who worked for Commonwealth Bank (an Australian institution), who posted their newly acquired intel onto Facebook.

“Something tells me I wasn’t supposed to get the South African cricket team’s plan/ strategy for the New Zealand team’s batsmen and bowlers under my hotel room door … (sic),” she wrote. “I wonder if this means Dale thinks he’s sleeping in my room tonight?...”

The post was picked up by local and international media outlets and by the start of the game South Africa’s “top secret” tactics were common knowledge.

Among all of the bowling recommendations the highlights were that opener Martin Guptill and Tom Latham could be bowled with bouncers angling in to them, wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi and debutant George Worker were compulsive pullers and hookers, and the captain Kane Williamson doesn’t pull well.

Yesterday, as the match got underway, Agoram was described as feeling ill about the whole thing and wanting to hang himself.

Agoram was in the news during the South Africa’s tour of Bangladesh for using a drone to film the side’s training without prior permission. Cricket South Africa apologised after the incident.

With the utmost respect to the World Cup finalists and winter cricket, Agoram was slightly fortunate that his misplaced drop-off wasn’t during a series with higher stakes.

His mistake is also not the first of its kind. In 2012 the Australian team’s plans for how they would deal with the South African batting line-up fell into the wrong hands ahead of their November Test series.

Some claim that former coach John Buchanan had orchestrated the leak to deceive his opponents.

At the end of the series the Proteas hold a fines meeting. There players and coaching staff will pick apart the team’s performance, with those deemed responsible for specific errors carrying out various light-hearted “punishments.” Personnel deemed to have committed the worst mistake possible are said to be “on death” and will face the worst penalties. For this series Steyn chairs the fines meeting ...

We’ll not know the full extent of Agoram’s case of mistaken doors until the series wraps up in Durban next week. Whichever way it pans out, and especially after the fines meeting, he’ll probably be deathly sure that he knocks on the right door in the future.