Ken Borland

Proteas captain Dean Elgar said on Monday that he has made peace with the four players who are not available for the Test series against Bangladesh because they are in India for the IPL, and he has full confidence in their replacements ahead of the first match starting on Thursday in Durban.

Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, Rassie van der Dussen and Aiden Markram will all be missing from the team that drew the series in New Zealand. Pace bowlers Anrich Nortje and Lungi Ngidi are also in India.

Keegan Petersen was always likely to return at the expense of probably Markram, while Ryan Rickelton is in line to make his long-awaited debut.

On the bowling front, Lizaad Williams, Glenton Stuurman and Duanne Olivier are the potential replacements for Rabada and Jansen.

“A lot of events have happened lately and I’m pretty comfortable where I sit with the players that are not here,” Elgar said. “I’ve had in-detail chats with all of them, to find out mentally where they are in terms of Test cricket versus the IPL.

“The players were put in a pretty unavoidable position due to the No Objection Certificates and agreements between the BCCI and CSA. No rash decisions were made and I know where they stand.

“But we can’t lick our wounds for too long and I’m very comfortable making do with the next best players, I’m confident they will cover all the bases.

“We’ve lost a few caps, but it’s a great opportunity for the new players to put the unavailable ones under pressure,” Elgar said.

The Test captain was also left in the lurch by the poor performances in the ODI series, which have allowed Bangladesh to take tremendous momentum into the Tests. Elgar said it was clear from the ODIs that Bangladesh now have the apposite skills and attitude for South African conditions.

“The ODI result really hurt, even for me and I wasn’t involved in it. Hopefully that has fuelled us a bit more and our hunger to do well will be right up there.

“Bangladesh are a new-look team and their coaches have obviously changed their mindset about how to play in South Africa. I think it’s going to be a good contest and we’ll need to nail down our basics.

“We are known to start series quite poorly, it’s always a talking point and I’ve emphasised it a lot with the team. I’m not sure what the reason for it is, but by making the players aware of it and trying to avoid it, that gives us the best chance to win the series.

“We need to find a way to not start poorly because it’s just a two-match series. I’m trying my utmost to get the message across that we need to start well,” Elgar said.

Former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis continues to bat with the same class and explosiveness as he showed in his first match as skipper of the Bangalore Royal Challengers at the weekend, but his team suffered the same fate as they always seem to when they put a big total on the board – losing by five wickets with a full over to spare against the Punjab Kings in the Indian Premier League.

Du Plessis changed gears superbly in his innings as his 88 off 57 balls took Bangalore to 205/2 in Mumbai. Opening the batting, the 37-year-old only scored 17 runs off his first 30 balls in seamer-friendly conditions, but two sixes and a four off West Indian paceman Odean Smith in the 13^th over took him to his half-century off 41 balls. He plundered 38 runs from his next 16 deliveries, adding 118 in 10 overs with Virat Kohli (41* off 29).

But then, in a recurring theme for Bangalore, their bowlers let them down.

As usual when Du Plessis is the star of the day, in what is still though a domestic league, his display led to plenty of questions over why the Proteas have not chosen him since he retired from Test cricket in February 2021.

The current situation is that Du Plessis is technically available for white-ball cricket, but it is difficult to rely on him at national level because his first priority is playing as a T20 free agent in the leagues around the world. Du Plessis wants a contract to play for South Africa, but CSA cannot afford to contract a player who is only available to them some of the time and in only one format.

Last year Du Plessis said he was taking a sabbatical from ODI cricket in order to concentrate on T20 cricket with World Cups being played in 2021 and this year. He has since made no mention of his ODI availability.

So it would seem Du Plessis has had his day in the Proteas shirt.

Heinrich Klaasen continued his rampant form of late as he roared to a career-best 153 off just 127 balls to lead the Northerns Titans to a 32-run win over the Free State Knights in their CSA One-Day Cup match at SuperSport Park in Centurion on Sunday.

The victory means Northerns also raced to the top of the log after winning all four of their games thus far. They lead the North-West Dragons, who have won three out of five, by two points.

Having been sent in to bat, Northerns racked up a formidable 341/6, built around Klaasen’s ferocious innings, which included nine fours and seven sixes. His second successive century in the 50-over competition has not only rushed the Titans to the top of the log, but will keep him in the conversation for the Proteas team.

Free State, led by Migael Pretorius (10-2-40-2) bowled well up front and reduced Northerns to 15/2 in the first four overs. So Klaasen’s first job was to repair the innings, which he did in tandem with Neil Brand, who made a fluent 87 off 104 deliveries.

The duo put on 167 for the third wicket in 31 overs and Klaasen then unfurled some great attacking strokes in the company of Sibonelo Makhnaya (37).

Free State’s chase was off to a blazing start as they scored 82 runs in the first 10 overs. But the erratic Northerns bowlers also managed to pick up four wickets in that time, three of them to fast bowler Bosch, who also conceded 42 runs in his first five overs.

Four more wickets fell in the middle overs and the Knights had to rely on the go-go-gadget skills of their veteran skipper Pite van Biljon to keep their small hopes of victory alive. The 35-year-old was tenacious to the extreme, running hard and fighting his way to a brilliant 127 not out off 110 balls, with 14 fours and four sixes, an innings full of fine strokes and shot-selection.

Fast bowler Junior Dala was only able to bowl four overs due to injury, leaving Northerns with a makeshift attack, but left-arm spinner Neil Brand, who picked up the extra overs, kept chipping away and finished with 4/61 in 10 overs, as Free State were bowled out for 309 in the 45^th over.

Down the road at the Wanderers, the Central Gauteng Lions used a three-wicket win with three overs to spare over the KZN Dolphins to jump into third place in the standings, two points behind North-West.

Sent in to bat, KZN crashed to 21/4 as Sisanda Magala (10-1-42-2) and Malusi Siboto (10-0-29-2) used the new ball well. It was Andile Phehlukwayo, with a feisty 100 not out, and Eathan Bosch (68) who lifted the Dolphins to 224/8, despite Codi Yusuf taking 4/26.

On a tricky pitch, the Lions slipped to 117/5 after opener Josh Richards scored 44, but Dominic Hendricks dug in for 43 and wicketkeeper Connor Esterhuizen made a great debut with 52 off 58 balls to all but finish the chase with Sisanda Magala (28* off 24).

The Proteas really are extremely hard work for their fans, the latest grave distress they have inflicted on them being their hugely disappointing series loss to Bangladesh in the ODIs.

It is Bangladesh’s first series win in South Africa in all formats and they are going to be favourites now going into the two-Test series. Conditions at Kingsmead and St George’s Park are probably going to be low and slow, the Proteas are missing five frontline players who have chosen to go to the IPL instead and the tourists certainly have all the momentum with them.

How South Africa managed to lose to Bangladesh in a three-match series on the Highveld, with plentiful bounce on offer in all three games, is baffling though and the shockwaves are going to reverberate around the ODI team for a while.

What makes the loss even more dismaying is how poorly they played in the deciding match and also the fact that this same team, minus Kagiso Rabada, beat India 3-0 in their previous engagement.

It is this infuriating inconsistency that the Proteas are going to have to stamp out. Several wins are required for them to qualify automatically for the World Cup next year and South Africa are certainly not going to be contenders unless there is a greater steadiness to the execution of their 50-over skills.

Top limited-overs teams always talk about intent these days and that was rather lacking from the Proteas batsmen. Intent is, of course, easier to show once a partnership has taken control of the innings and one of the major differences between the Bangladesh and Indian series was that South Africa had major partnerships in the latter. Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen both scored hundreds in their incredible partnership in the first ODI, openers Janneman Malan and Quinton de Kock took the Proteas to 212/2 in the 35^th over in the second match, and centurion De Kock and Van der Dussen shared a crucial stand of 144 in the last game.

The overs after the fall of a wicket are always a tricky time for the batting side, but in the deciding match against Bangladesh, Malan, who had started at about a run-a-ball, inexplicably went into his shell after De Kock’s dismissal. He had 28 off 31 balls at the end of the over before the wicketkeeper holed out at long-off, but then began leaving balls outside off stump and was eventually dismissed for 39 off 56 deliveries.

That innings included seven fours, which points to the fact that Malan was too block-block-block-four-block-block-block in his innings; De Kock had only faced eight balls at the time of his dismissal in the seventh over, the lack of rotation of strike probably causing frustration.

Malan (65.09), Bavuma (59.32) and Kyle Verreynne (74.57) all had strike-rates of below 80 in the series; 80 should always be the benchmark in decent batting conditions. Bangladesh certainly showed that as none of their batsmen scored at less than 74 runs per 100 balls.

South Africa also need to look at the composition of their attack. Simply choosing the Test bowlers and adding Tabraiz Shamsi and an all-rounder like Phehlukwayo or Pretorius is not cutting it in ODI cricket.

Different, specialist skills are needed, especially at the death. If Rabada and Lungi Ngidi don’t strike up front then they are in trouble, generally needing Shamsi to bail them out in the middle overs.

There also clearly needs to be a discussion over whether the fitness tests are helping the team or hurting them. While Lizelle Lee was able to join the Women’s World Cup squad late and lacking match fitness, Sisanda Magala was ruled out of the Bangladesh series because he failed a fitness test. While taking bags full of wickets for the Central Gauteng Lions, scoring vital lower-order runs and generally showing the skills so sorely lacking in the Proteas attack.

And it seems the Proteas need a full-time sports psychologist in camp as well.