Ken Borland

New Proteas Test coach Shukri Conrad, captain Temba Bavuma, bowling spearhead Kagiso Rabada and batting consultant Neil McKenzie have all been or are currrently on the payroll at the Wanderers for many years, and Conrad said on Tuesday that it was that home ground knowledge that led South Africa to make the shock decision to play two spinners in the second Test against the West Indies, which starts in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

The first question Conrad was asked during Tuesday’s pre-match press conference was whether the hosts had settled on a starting XI, and the transparent coach surprised many when he began reciting the team. That surprise turned to shock when the names Simon Harmer and Keshav Maharaj were called out consecutively at numbers eight and nine.

The debate at the Wanderers is usually whether the Proteas will play even one frontline spinner, but from a pace-heavy attack for the first Test at Centurion, Conrad and the brains trust have now switched to fielding both off-spinner Harmer and left-arm orthodox Maharaj. It is the first time since the 1965 Test (37 matches ago) against England, when orthodox left-armer Atholl McKinnon and offie Harry Bromfield both played, that South Africa have selected two frontline spinners for a Wanderers Test.

But those who have watched much cricket at the Wanderers this year will know that the pitch has been unusually helpful to spinners, offering both turn and bounce. Conrad said they know the Wanderers pitch well enough to know this week’s track is different to what has been in use for Test matches there for several years.

“Frostie [new groundsman Brendon Frost, formerly of Willowmoore Park] has done a good job covering the massive bare patch so that it looks okay. But we have lots of cricket IP [intellectual property] in our squad when it comes to cricket here – myself, Temba, KG, Neil Mac have all been involved with Lions cricket for a long time,” Conrad pointed out.

“In the last year, we’ve seen that spinners do come into play more here. A Test doesn’t have to end on Day Three, and if we go to the fourth and fifth day then spin will definitely come into play.

“The pitch looks a bit abrasive and we think one end is going to be a lot more seamer-friendly. So we’re not just making the change for change’s sake,” Conrad said.

Local knowledge has also led to Ryan Rickelton getting a place in the starting XI, replacing the struggling Keegan Petersen. Since the hero of last summer’s epic series win over India tore his hamstring in the CSA T20 Challenge final in November, he has scored just 85 runs in six innings.

Rickelton, on the other hand, has been in tremendous nick, stroking three centuries in his five four-day innings. His absence from the Proteas team this summer has been perplexing; even his much-debated ankle injury has not been able to justify his omission.

“Ryan deserves a crack, he’s been churning out runs and probably deserves a chance more than anyone,” Conrad admitted. “Ryan is definitely going to be a big part of the side going forward.

“Knowing his character and the way he has performed at domestic level, we can start building a future team around him. I think he’s going to have a long and successful run.

“Keegan was the incumbent and I still think his best position may be number five going forward, looking at the way he plays. The batting unit is still a work in progress, but I think he will have a bigger role to play in the middle-order,” Conrad said.

South Africa: Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Tony de Zorzi, Temba Bavuma, Ryan Rickelton, Heinrich Klaasen, Wiaan Mulder, Simon Harmer, Keshav Maharaj, Gerald Coetzee, Kagiso Rabada.

Temba Bavuma and the Proteas will no doubt still receive more than their fair share of flak for the next few weeks following their shock exit at the hands of the Netherlands in the T20 World Cup, but it is only right that Cricket South Africa come under scrutiny too for their handling of the domestic game.

The Proteas are the end result of whatever comes through the domestic system, so that pipeline is of vital importance. The first domestic tournament has already come to an end with the Northerns Titans winning the CSA T20 Challenge in Potchefstroom last weekend.

As provincial cricket so often is these days, it was a low-key event, not helped by it all taking place in one little university town. But CSA’s cost-cutting necessities are understandable.

But what is neither understandable nor acceptable is the way CSA impose so many other agendas, other than performance simply being the be-all and end-all, on the provincial teams.

The fact that CSA issued a directive forbidding the Central Gauteng Lions from choosing their star player, Sisanda Magala, simply because he failed their fitness tests, should cause all the provincial CEOs to rise up and reject such interference in their affairs by the mother body.

Magala is the sort of T20 specialist, with his death-bowling skills and hard-hitting batting, who could have made the Lions genuine contenders for a tournament in which they finished fifth, just two points away from the semi-finals.

The Lions missed out on vital promotion/relegation points because they were severely hamstrung by CSA. A player on the fringes of the national team – many believe he should have been in Australia for the World Cup – was also denied the opportunity to further build on his sizeable reputation.

And Magala’s credentials have not just been praised by great fast bowlers such as Dale Steyn and Shaun Pollock; the most ruthless judges of them all, the Indian IPL team owners, clearly rate the 31-year-old very highly too – he was bought for R5.4 million by the Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the SA20 Auction.

Magala’s ‘crime’ was that he cannot run a two-kilometre time trial in eight minutes, 30 seconds, missing out by a few seconds and that was enough for some jobsworth at CSA to ban him from playing in the CSA T20 Challenge. The big lad is actually pretty athletic in the field and never has a problem bowling his four overs and is quite capable of running quick singles. Where running two kilometres applies to batting and bowling I would love to know.

With so much at stake for the provinces – relegation would be a financial disaster for a team like the Lions – the day is surely coming when they challenge any policies imposed on them that stop them from performing at their best.

This over-emphasis on arbitrary fitness tests is surely something that falls under the ambit of director of cricket Enoch Nkwe and he needs to address it.

Not having Magala, one of our best cricketers, playing is also doing a disservice to transformation. In order to reach their targets, the Lions actually had to rope in a club cricketer to replace their star all-rounder on the morning the tournament started.

Magala’s treatment is just yet another example of South African cricket hurting itself. How did forcing him on to the sidelines serve the game or make it better?

Perhaps the day South Africa finally win a cricket world cup is the day when high performance, winning or getting results (call it what you will) is the only focus for our teams.

Proteas captain Temba Bavuma did not explicitly say it was another case of South Africa choking at a cricket world cup after their shock loss to the Netherlands saw them eliminated from the T20 showpiece on Sunday, but he did admit that notorious tag would now be hung around their necks, like so many of their predecessors.

Needing to just beat qualifiers the Netherlands to make the semi-finals, the Proteas instead came out flat and uninspired, allowing the Dutch to post a challenging 158/4, and then batting limply to only manage 145/8 in reply.

“That tag will always be there until we get to a final and come out on the right side of it,” Bavuma said in the aftermath. “We have nothing else to blame, everything was in our own hands.

“We had the confidence, the belief and the form behind us, but when it mattered we just couldn’t do the business. There needs to be an element of learning to make sure young guys like Tristan Stubbs and Marco Jansen don’t make the same mistakes in future.

“But we are still going to carry that monkey on our backs, that tag. We knew we had to win the game, but I didn’t feel any different type of pressure personally.

“It’s very hard to say it was different because we knew we had to beat India and we won that game. We had the opportunity to make the semi-finals and we just did not take it,” Bavuma said.

Of his own future in the shortest format, Bavuma said he will park any decision on the captaincy until a new fulltime coach is appointed. The skipper admitted that all the speculation over his own poor batting form had also been unsettling.

“It’s been a tricky time and to consider the captaincy now, a lot of my thinking would be emotional. I probably will think about it and speak to the relevant people.

“We have to see who comes in as coach, generally the new person coming in might want a different leader to execute their vision. But I think I carried myself with dignity through the good and bad times.

“Mentally all the talk does affect you. You try to manage your mental space as much as you can, unfortunately social media and whatever is said about you, always seems to get to you no matter how you try to control it.

“I’ve tried to keep a level head through the good and bad times and stay as close to myself as possible. Not just for myself but for the group, who will now take a lot of flak, and rightfully so,” Bavuma said.

As a scarred and wounded Temba Bavuma said after the Proteas’ shock loss to the Netherlands saw them exit the T20 World Cup on Sunday, there will always be a few things to pick at “after a performance like that”.

The problems started for a surprisingly flat Proteas side, considering the semi-finals beckoned, with their bowling. The 10.30am start and early moisture in the pitch prompted them to bowl first, even though the last nine matches at the Adelaide Oval had been won by the side batting first.

The South African attack is always so highly-rated, but on this occasion they let down their captain’s decision at the toss by bringing little energy or smarts to their bowling. They failed to adapt to Stephan Myburgh’s onslaught up front or to the true nature of the pitch, which was slowing up and required pace to be taken off and plenty of variations to be used. How the Netherlands later bowled was exactly the template.

A switched-on Lungi Ngidi would normally have prospered, but he went for 35 runs in three overs; Kagiso Rabada travelled for 37 runs in his three overs.

Rabada is South Africa’s premier fast bowler and a team always needs their spearhead to shine in world cups. But sadly Rabada was the Proteas’ most expensive bowler in the tournament, conceding 9.43 runs-per-over and only taking two wickets for 151 runs. Those are not the returns expected from such a great paceman.

On a pitch on which strokeplay was always going to become more difficult as the ball became softer, a fast start to the chase is always going to be vital, but Quinton de Kock and Bavuma could only score at a run-a-ball as they limped to 39/2 in the powerplay.

Bavuma will surely now be jettisoned from the T20 side unless the selectors continue to be blind to what is now openly being called “the elephant in the room”, but the Proteas also need more consistency from De Kock, especially when it comes to the crunch games where he needs to be stepping up as a senior batsman.

Slow pitches with a bit of turn will continue to be the achilles heel of the Proteas batting unless their minds, game-plans and skillsets are sharper to the importance of being able to rotate the strike in-between the boundaries.

CSA will reportedly be splitting the Proteas coaching job into red-ball and white-ball roles, so these are the problems that will be inherited by whoever succeeds Mark Boucher on a permanent basis.

South Africa’s next limited-overs action will only be at the end of January, in an ODI series against England, which will be crucial to their hopes of qualifying automatically for next year’s 50-over World Cup.