Ken Borland

Batting hero Rassie van der Dussen says the Proteas know from their own batting collapse that their bowlers will still have enough assistance from the St Lucia pitch to win the second Test against the West Indies, but if wickets do become hard to get then they know they can extort them through the age-old disciplines of line and length.

Van der Dussen scored a fine 75 not out, fighting his way to his sixth Test half-century and lifting South Africa from a deep hole at 73 for seven to 174 all out, with the tremendous assistance of Kagiso Rabada, who stroked a bright, career-best 40. That left the West Indies with a far more daunting target of 324 to share the series.

“We knew that the West Indies would already have to make their biggest score of the series and we would have been happy with a lead of 250 to 280, but then KG came in and played brilliantly. It’s the sort of pitch where you know you have to move positively and show intent. If you just hang around then you will get good balls that can get you out.

“As a batsman, you have to get into good, strong positions, even though the pitch is getting a little more placid. And if they do manage to put together a partnership then we will have to be really disciplined with our lines and lengths because there is a bit of assistance for the bowlers. We’ve grafted hard and played some really good cricket over the first two days, now we just need to back it up,” Van der Dussen said.

The 32-year-old went through another gripping contest with West Indian bowling spearhead Kemar Roach, who finished with four for 52. Van der Dussen was bowled without playing a shot by a beauty from Roach in the first innings and said he did some important analysis between innings.

“Kemar is a world-class performer and he made it tough for me in the first innings, doing a lot with the ball. So I did some analysis this morning, just working on some different options and game-plans, trying to take lbw out of the picture and just covering the outside edge.

“I don’t mind changing things in the middle of a Test, I’ve played a lot of first-class cricket and I know my game. Sometimes it’s just a matter of changing a couple of small things,” Van der Dussen said in a television interview.

Proteas all-rounder Wiaan Mulder said on Saturday that his quickfire demolition of the West Indies lower-order on the second day of the second Test at St Lucia was a welcome consolation after all the hard work, without much to show for it, that he has been putting into his batting.

Mulder rounded off another clinical bowling display by South Africa as the West Indies were bundled out for just 149, giving the Proteas a gratifying 149-run first-innings lead. The 23-year-old seamer took three for one in four overs, equalling the best three-wicket haul by a South African in a Test innings, first achieved by fellow Johannesburg-born all-rounder Andrew Hall, against Sri Lanka at the Wanderers in 2002.

While Mulder’s Test bowling stats have now been boosted to 14 wickets in six matches at an average of just 20.07, he has scored only 143 runs in eight innings, averaging 17.87. But he has looked good at the crease, sharing in some important partnerships, but has then been dismissed by some excellent deliveries.

“The batting has been a bit frustrating, I’m working really hard in the nets and I’m spending a lot of time at the crease. But I don’t seem to get many bad balls and on this pitch there’s always a ball with your name on it. I actually had a long chat with Aiden Markram about it and he said I’m doing all the right things and my luck will change.

“It’s funny with the bowling, that was not at all expected. I’ve actually been struggling for rhythm, there was not much movement out there and the West Indies were stabilising, so it was a gamble to bring me on. I think the fast bowlers must have been tired. So I was just trying to land the ball in the right areas,” Mulder said with some modesty considering the couple of jaffas he bowled.

The Proteas team seems to be in a very good space at the moment, with Quinton de Kock leading the way and being all smiles behind the stumps after he added a pugnacious 96 to his unbeaten century in the first Test. Mulder said the health of the team environment at the moment is due to hard work.

“A lot of things are contributing but the biggest thing is that we are training incredibly hard and at a very high intensity. We’ve been hoping it clicks and Mark Boucher [coach] really believes in hard work being the key to consistency and not just putting in lucky performances now and then. So that’s our secret and since Dean Elgar has been captain, there’s been a policy of no hiding, we’re being honest with each other about our performances,” Mulder said.

Dean Elgar, as the Test captain, is the new alpha-male in South African cricket but instead of leading with belligerence and bravado, the opening batsman’s greatest show of strength comes from his patience, self-denial and determination.

And these were the qualities that rubbed off on rookie Kyle Verreynne during their crucial 87-run partnership for the fourth wicket on the opening day of the second Test against the West Indies at St Lucia on Friday.

Elgar had lost the toss again and this time South Africa were sent in to bat on a pitch that again provided prodigious movement to the bowlers. The Proteas quickly slumped to 37 for three, before the dogged Elgar, ever the survivor, and Verreynne, in just his second Test innings, dug in and turned the momentum of the innings.

Thanks to their defiance, the West Indies seemed to run out of patience and ideas, allowing Elgar and Quinton de Kock to add another 79 runs for the fifth wicket as South Africa ended the first day on a satisfactory 218 for five. Elgar fell shortly before the close for a determined 77 off 237 balls, a true captain’s innings that shepherded his team to safety.

De Kock, fresh off his brilliant unbeaten century in the first Test, looks ominous again as he is on 59 not out.

Verreynne’s own contribution was 27 off 89 deliveries, important for both the team and his own development as an international batsman.

“I am usually quite free-scoring, I like to score quickly, but I found out in the first Test that that is not the way to go on this pitch. And my chats today with Dean really helped. It’s just my second Test so I don’t have a lot of experience, so Dean was just reminding me to stick to my processes. It was all about time in the middle, it wasn’t important to be scoring runs, we just needed to be there in the middle.

“Dean reminded me of the work I’ve been doing in the net sessions, which has been around adjusting to this pitch and just putting certain shots away. It was fortunate to have the captain at the other end because that really helped me to restrict myself against an attack that is really skilful and they use the Dukes ball to their advantage in quite tough conditions,” Verreynne said.

The Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium pitch once again funded plenty of assistance for the seam bowlers and, challenging as it was, it was a great learning experience for the 24-year-old Verreynne.

“There’s been quite a lot of rain around so the pitch has not seen much sun and it was quite tacky. With it being overcast, there was also quite a lot of swing and then the movement off the pitch became quicker as the sun came out and the pitch dried a bit. You just didn’t get a break out there.

“At domestic franchise level, you might have to get through spells of five overs or so when the bowling is pretty ruthless, but if you can hang around and get through that then you can kick on, you can cash in. But at Test level you can never relax, the pressure is on the whole day. You have to be on it every ball or you’re going to be found out,” Verreynne said.

John Mogodi of Limpopo, Daniel Govender of KZN, Craig Nel of Mpumalanga, Tebogo Siko of Northerns and Simphiwe Ndzundza of Border are the people elected by the Cricket South Africa Members Council, the body that pushed the sport in this country to the edge of the precipice before eventually seeing some sense, to the new Board that will run cricket.

Of those five, it is fair to say Nel and Siko are the only two who have not been opposed to the efforts of the Interim Board and, by extension, the sports minister, to rescue cricket from being flushed down the toilet. While that reflects on the embarrassing quality of leadership on the Members Council, it is a relief that the new Board appointed this week will be dominated by eight independent directors and there is plenty of leadership, financial and legal expertise and governance experience amongst that lot.

Andrew Hudson, whose post-playing career has been centred on the banking world, is the only director with top-level cricket experience and it perhaps would have been nice if more former players had been appointed.

And the lack of female representation is an even bigger blot on the Board. Independent director Ntambi Ravele and acting chief financial officer Christelle Janse van Rensburg are the only two women out of a board of 15, and that’s even after sports minister Nathi Mthethwa made it clear that he wanted to see a greater push towards gender equality.

It is typical of the double-speak nature of the Members Council that president Rihan Richards should speak of their full commitment to greater female representation and then, when the vote was tied for the fifth non-independent director’s post between Anne Vilas and Simphiwe Ndzundzu, they chose the man.

And Ndzundzu is not just any man. He is president of one of the most dysfunctional provinces on and off the field, and someone who is being investigated over a charge of assault involving the elderly mother of a colleague he had a dispute with as well as a broken arm for his rival’s sister.

And Vilas is not just any woman. Acknowledged as one of the best administrators in South African cricket and very successful in business, as president of Central Gauteng Lions she has overseen their rise to arguably the best team in the country.

So it is fair to say that there will still be small pockets of resistance to progress in South African cricket, but hopefully our cricketing family can start to heal. CSA has been a dysfunctional organisation and the events of the last few years have demoralised so many people involved in the game. Good leadership was replaced by an environment of suspicion.

Hopefully this new Board can bring some much-needed stability after their predecessors did so much to kill the hopes and dreams of young cricket fans. Critical to that becoming a reality is for the right person to be elected chair of the Board and also whoever represents CSA at the International Cricket Council requires much thought.

It’s been a depressing time for those cricket lovers looking for moral leadership as the CSA Board and incompetent Members Council were captured by vested interests and a downright crooked culture developed in the running of the game. But this new, majority independent board will hopefully ensure good governance.

Cricket’s governance issues have, without a doubt, affected the on-field performance of the men’s national team as well, but after a lean period, the victory in the first Test against the West Indies provided some encouraging signs that the Proteas might just be regaining their mojo.

So let the healing begin, and thank you to the six members of the Interim Board for their top-class work which saw their vital task through to completion, shouldering a massive burden in the process.