Ken Borland

South Africa player ratings

Graeme Smith – 8

The South African captain once again provided immense substance at the top of the order. His unorthodox strokeplay drove England to distraction and he was solid in trying conditions.

Alviro Petersen – 7

Starting to feel comfortable at international level; a solid series highlighted by his epic, stoic 182 at Headingley after missing out on the Oval run-fest.

Hashim Amla – 9

As reliable and elegant as always, his 311* at the Oval will be remembered forever. When his team were under pressure at Lord’s, he responded with another fine century.

Jacques Kallis – 7

Never failed to impress whether it was in scoring his wonderful, series-defining century at the Oval, making vital breakthroughs with the ball or taking superb catches in the slips.

AB de Villiers – 6

Three 40s suggest there may have been too much of a load on him being asked to keep wicket as well. Reliable with the gloves, but his focus is surely on scoring big hundreds.

Jacques Rudolph – 6

Although he has still not cemented himself at number six, his battling efforts at Headingley and Lord’s were crucial for victory.

JP Duminy – 7

Batted beautifully and with an air of assurance that he has not had for a while. Possibly moved himself ahead of Rudolph in the queue with his defiant efforts down the order.

Vernon Philander – 8

Starred with bat and ball at Lord’s after chipping in with a couple of wickets in each of the first two Tests. His unerring line and length did not bring as much reward as it could have … until Lord’s where he showed what all the fuss was about.

Dale Steyn – 8

Another whose efforts did not always bring the reward they deserved, but he showed his class at the Oval. The leader of the attack even if he didn’t take the new ball and tremendously skilful and fiery.

Morne Morkel – 7

England’s batsmen were kept on their toes when he hit his straps – his pace, bounce and aggression meant they were continually under pressure.

Imran Tahir – 5

Stopped some threatening England lower-order rallies with important wickets, but is still in the developmental stage of his international career. A lack of control at times arrested his ability to build pressure.

Highlights of the series

Kevin Pietersen – The only England batsmen capable of turning a dodgy position at Headingley into a situation where the hosts could be the only winners. The only person capable of sowing such discontent that his international career was seemingly over straight after that innings.

Vernon Philander’s dream day – Philander had an outstanding fourth day at Lord’s. He had been joint top-scorer with Duminy in the first innings and South Africa had been reduced to 282 for seven in their second innings, a lead of just 276, when he scored a crucial 35 to take the target well beyond 300. Philander then claimed two quick wickets to fatally undermine England’s chase.

Oval heroics – There have been many great batting line-ups that have taken on England, but in 924 Tests they had never conceded successive double-century partnerships until Kallis and Amla put on an unbeaten 377 for the third wicket, following the 259 for the second wicket between Smith and Amla. A pitch that had been seemingly flat was then transformed as Dale Steyn took three for eight after lunch on the final day to set up a crushing innings win.

There are many cases of highly-successful players then becoming triumphant coaches, but not many can claim to have reached the pinnacle of their sport mentoring two such vastly different teams as Gary Kirsten has.

As a player, Kirsten was one of the most effective opening batsmen of the 1990s and early 2000s, as 7289 Test runs at 45.27 and 6798 ODI runs at 40.95 attest.

But he really became a legend of the game when he took over as the coach of a seriously-talented but under-performing Indian team.

Despite having no top-level coaching experience before that daunting assignment, Kirsten managed to get a group of celebrity cricketers, under the biggest burden of expectation in the game, playing consistently as a winning unit.

Under Kirsten, India won the World Cup on home soil and reached the number one Test ranking.

Now South Africa have also scaled the Test peak and top the rankings after their 2-0 series victory in England.

Apart from the talent and the expectation (admittedly at a much lower level of intensity), South Africa are a very different team to India.

Even Jacques Kallis, arguably the greatest all-rounder to grace the game, does not have the same cult status of a Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag or Rahul Dravid.

The team ethos is drummed into South Africans from a young age and with it comes a conservative approach, a fear of failure and a great work ethic when it comes to things like fitness and nets.

Being an individual is almost frowned upon; the whole team must be treated the same.

But Kirsten has begun dismantling these long-held beliefs. Eyebrows were raised when South Africa spent time in the Alps with explorer Mike Horn rather than arrive earlier in England for more match practice.

And those same eyebrows were in orbit when Kirsten said practice the day before the crucial Lord’s Test was optional.

It’s not that the 44-year-old does not believe in preparation. He swears by it.

It’s just that Kirsten realised a long time ago – during his lengthy playing career – that everyone is different and requires different preparation. At the elite level, most of this preparation is mental anyway.

“We will focus on our preparation and the work that we do. We always respect the opposition and we understand we are playing against quality teams. We will never underestimate any side, we will never go into any Test match complacent and arrive thinking the job is done.

“We will do the preparation necessary to look at the opposition and what they have got in their team and how we can exploit certain areas,” Kirsten assured the media in London before the battle for the number one ranking reached its climax.

South Africa have been number one before, of course, briefly in 2009 after winning in Australia, but, according to captain Graeme Smith, they now have the maturity to try and hang on to the top spot for longer.

“Having touched it before, I think we have learned some lessons. I can’t predict what will happen, but we are pretty humble. I don’t think there will be any flashiness from our guys.

“There will be lots of hard work and with the type of people we have around our group, if we do lose this it won’t be because of our attitudes,” Smith said.

Words like “humble”, “no flashiness”, “hard work” and “attitude” have been used many times to describe Kirsten and the coach has made it clear that he wants to change the players as people as much as cricketers.

Kirsten believes it is vital for his players to have perspective – that real life extends far beyond the cricket field (this, of course, can make it easier to handle those inaptly named “life-or-death” moments in the game).

But he also insists that players have to take personal responsibility within the team unit.

Although the technical knowledge of Kirsten has been refined on the biggest stage, it is the man-management skills of the Capetonian that set him apart.

The failures and the disappointments are dealt with quickly and then forgotten; the blame game is never played; and the talk in the changeroom is always of the positive and what the team has already achieved.

The mental freshness of the squad is also one of the key factors Kirsten won’t compromise.

Allan Donald, the bowling coach, was allowed to leave the New Zealand tour earlier this year to spend time with the family, while avid surfer Paddy Upton, the mental conditioning coach with India but now the performance director with South Africa, was allowed some leave from the England tour in order to chase the waves in the remote oceans around Indonesia.

The same principle was in play when the players were told nets were optional.

In the thrilling final stages of the Test at Lord’s, when England made it clear that they were not going to relinquish the number one ranking without a huge fight, it was the mental state of the South African team that mattered most.

With Matt Prior throwing down the gauntlet in marvellous fashion, South Africa showed no signs of the “choking” ailment that has dogged them in the past.

Far from ignoring the unwanted tag, Kirsten dealt with it head-on during the time in Switzerland with Horn, one of the most inspirational people on the planet.

By being put in real life-threatening situations on the glaciers of the Alps, South Africa’s cricketers learnt a huge amount about their own abilities to handle pressure.

Mentally, the Lord’s thriller was like a stroll in the park compared to some of the adventures Horn has introduced to them.

Women’s Day – and it’s motto: “you strike a woman, you strike a rock” – is all about celebrating the courage and strength of women in South Africa and, in cricketing terms, Elise Lombard was the very epitome of those words.

Elise was the guest speaker at Cricket South Africa’s Women’s Day celebration on August 8 and spoke with great passion about the game she served so well for over 30 years.

So it was with great shock and sadness that the South African cricket fraternity learnt of Elise’s passing the next day, ironically on Women’s Day, which is meant to celebrate heroines exactly like her.

What set Elise apart as the CEO of Titans and Northerns cricket was her ability to combine a gentle, caring touch with tremendous leadership skills, business acumen and organisational excellence.

Although her shock passing will forever taint the memory of that day, CSA’s 2012 Women’s Day function was meant to be a celebration and what a party it was!

CSA has retained a wonderful team spirit and the female staff were able to let their hair down in a series of challenges involving dancing and singing.

National women’s captain Mignon du Preez has a lot on her plate at the moment ahead of the ICC Women’s T20 in Sri Lanka, but she took time out to report back on the team’s preparations, which have been nothing short of exhaustive.

South Africa have been drawn in the same group as hosts Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the West Indies, but Du Preez said her team’s confidence has been boosted by their recent series against world leaders England and the England Academy.

Women’s cricket has unfairly been dubbed as “butch” in the past, but Du Preez, alongside the likes of Dane van Niekerk, Yolandi van der Westhuizen and Shandre Fritz, showed the glamorous, athletic side of the sport.

“There’s not that much awareness about women’s cricket and there’s a misperception, people think you have to be butch to play cricket. But cricket is for any girls – and pretty ones too!” the petite Du Preez smiled.

The rise of the women’s game in South Africa is something Elise Lombard was fully behind. The game of cricket would be much the poorer if it weren’t for the contribution of all the wonderful women who add so much.

Grace Hughes is the chief physiotherapist of the South African Paralympics team and, on the eve of the team’s departure, she was telling the media how well-prepared, fit and strong the squad are.

“I can tell you that we’ve had them all in my office doing special neck-strengthening exercises … “ she said … “because I’m honestly worried about how they’re going to cope with all those medals around their necks!”

It was a moment of humour that is typical of the Paralympics squad. The people who have the most to be unhappy about are some of the most joyous, inspiring people around, and “the pressure of expectation” seems to be a totally foreign concept for those for whom just playing sport is a major achievement.

But Hughes is right, South Africa are in line for plenty of medals at the Paralympics, which start in London on August 29.

South Africa’s 66 competitors won 30 medals in Beijing in 2008, 21 of them gold, to finish sixth in the final standings and will be looking to improve on that in London.

“I think 40 medals is possible, but our main aim is to maintain or improve on our sixth place overall in Beijing,” Sascoc CEO Tubby Reddy says.

Some of the greatest Paralympians of all time – most notably Oscar Pistorius and Natalie du Toit – are in Team South Africa and there will be a steward’s inquiry if they don’t come home with at least a couple of gold medals.

Seventeen-year-old Marike Naude is a rising star in the world of swimming and is competing in six events. There are high hopes for her, especially since she could be re-classified in London into an easier disability group.

Charles Bouwer is going to his third Paralympics and is also going to swim in six events, while looking to repeat his performance in the 2010 world championships, when he won silver in the 400m freestyle.

“I started in Athens when I was a 14-year-old and I thought I would stop in Beijing, so it’s unbelievable to be going to a third Paralympics,” Bouwer says.

The visually-impaired 22-year-old went to Pescara in Italy to train with the able-bodied Olympic swimmers and is clearly not one to back down from competition.

“Swimming six events in the S13 class, there’s going to be a lot of competition. But why go to an event and just win everything? It’s great to have the challenge,” Bouwer says.

Other swimmers to keep an eye on are the versatile Hendrick Herbst, 100m breaststroke veteran Tadgh Slattery, competing in an astonishing sixth Paralympics, Beijing world record setter Kevin Paul and Shireen Sapiro, who won gold in the 100m backstroke in Beijing.

Pistorius, given the fact that he is one of the top 16 400 metre runners in the world, should murder the opposition in the one-lap race, but he will have strong competition in the 100, 200 and 800 metre races.

Other hot athletics medal contenders are Dyan Buis, Hilton Langenhoven, who burst on the scene so spectacularly in 2008 with three gold medals, sprinters Fanie van der Merwe, Arnu Fourie and Teboho Mokgalagadi , Ilse Hayes (100m & long jump) and experienced javelin thrower Zanele Situ.

“The bulk of our medals tend to come from athletics and swimming and everybody who has been selected in the team has medal potential. It’s a very difficult team to get into,” Chef de Mission Pieter Badenhorst says.

“But in terms of new stars after Beijing, we have high hopes for Dian Buys, who is the world record-holder in the long jump, and Teboho Mokgalagadi.

“It’s notoriously difficult to predict how many medals we’ll get and the medals table is so congested and that one gold can make the difference between finishing fifth and 13^th. Russia and Brazil have invested quite a lot now in their Paralympians and it will be hard to predict how they’ll do. But we have prepared as best we can,” the 1992 gold medallist in the 400m sprint says.

Team South Africa are also hoping for some medals from the other “smaller” sports they are competing in – cycling, equestrian, rowing, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis.

Cycling, with world champion Ernst van Dyk leading the way, and equestrian sports, featuring double gold-winner Philippa Johnson, are genuine medal hopes, while South Africa’s top wheelchair tennis player, KG Montjane, is in the top 10 of the world rankings.

South Africans are only just starting to fully embrace the Olympics after all those years of isolation, and it might yet take a while for the Paralympians to be fully appreciated.

But sports minister Fikile Mbalula has the right idea.

“Our Paralympians have led from the front and have never disappointed us. I stand here ashamed that the country has never given you the rightful credit.

“So bring that gold back that was stolen from our motherland. I don’t know if we’re going to nationalise it, but we want it back,” Mbalulu told the Paralympics farewell banquet in Sandton.

Cameron van der Burgh said the Olympic athletes “should take notes” from their disabled compatriots for the many challenges they overcome just to have the opportunities the able-bodied sportspeople take for granted.

The gold-winning swimmer said his most inspirational moment of the Olympics was seeing Pistorius get more applause than Usain Bolt; but Mbalulu may have been just a little over-enthusiastic when he described the Blade Runner as “the greatest human on earth”.

That’s what the Paralympics are about: sportsmen and women overcoming the stiffest of challenges just to compete on the biggest stage. The medals are a bonus, but something South Africans can certainly expect.