Ken Borland

Any minute now Cricket South Africa are set to announce their winter tours with director of cricket Graeme Smith saying on Monday morning that he was hoping for a “very busy” year of international action. But he also called on the International Cricket Council (ICC) to show more leadership to ensure teams outside of the Big Three continue to have decent fixtures lined up.

While Australia pulling out of the Test tour scheduled for next month clearly still hurts CSA, Pakistan will help fill the void by coming over for a white-ball series in April, and CSA are expected to announce tours to the West Indies and Sri Lanka over our winter, as well as a series in India before the T20 World Cup in October/November.

“Our relationship with Cricket Australia is definitely now strained and the ICC needs strong leadership because Covid is just amplifying the Haves and the Have-Nots. The FTP [Future Tours Programme] is going to be hugely challenging with eight ICC events in the next eight years, an extended IPL and the calendar being dominated by England, Australia and India [the Big Three]. That just amplifies the stress on us and the other countries looking for good content.

“Fortunately there has been the opportunity to manoeuvre a bit in the FTP and add some tours. This Pakistan tour coming up was meant to happen last October and we were meant to go to the West Indies last year, there’s also a Sri Lanka tour, India before the World Cup and they’re also meant to be coming here at the end of the year. But it takes time to finalise these – it’s a bit of a bun fight because every nation is trying to fill gaps,” Smith said on Monday.

“So I think the men’s team is going to be very busy. But the game as a whole needs leadership right now because I don’t think we want to see only three teams competing at the top in 10 years time. Their leagues are just getting bigger and bigger and the rest will be left with no content. Covid has really fast-tracked this issue and I think the ICC has been caught a bit off-guard,” the former Proteas captain added.

Because of the uncertain global stage at the moment, Smith announced a new drive by CSA to uplift the domestic game. The T20 Challenge will start on Friday and is being played in a bio-bubble in Durban, with all the Proteas being obliged to play. The conclusion of the four-day competition will then happen in March and Smith is hopeful the national team players will also feature in that.

“Because Australia are no longer coming in March, we’ve decided it is important to invest in our domestic competitions and we are making all the national players available. Those guys coming from Pakistan will go straight into the bubble in Durban. We’re also trying to make sure the four-day competition will be televised and there will be national player involved too.

“South African cricket needs to come first and it is open season now in terms of national contracts. There have been some good performances by the Proteas, but there are a lot of places up for grabs and we want to see a lot of competition and people performing domestically. The goal is to see all our players stepping up because it is now contracting season. Everyone in the Proteas has been really positive and they want to play,” Smith said.

The mental well-being of players will need to be carefully managed though especially as some of the Proteas were already showing signs of bubble fatigue in Pakistan.

“It is a challenging space being in these bubbles, but some of the Proteas have only played seven games the whole season so the workload issues are not there. Being in Pakistan, with security around you all the time, may have caused some additional stress, but all the players were extremely happy with how they were looked after by the Pakistan Cricket Board.

“We are trying our best to manage the mental health of the players, there is a psychologist involved and SACA [the players’ union] are also helping. For the IPL the players will have to spend two months in a bubble and I don’t see our four-day competition happening in a bubble. We want to do as much as we can for the local competitions and we want to see players putting their hands up there,” Smith said.

Heinrich Klaasen not only has the challenge of leading South Africa on his first venture back on to the park since late November due to catching Covid, but also doing it with a Proteas T20 squad that is missing some major personnel.

The 29-year-old wicketkeeper/batsman has not played since the second T20 against England in Paarl on November 29, having tested positive for Covid shortly before the first ODI against the tourists, a series which was eventually cancelled. And Klaasen revealed just how badly he was affected by the coronavirus.

“It’s been a difficult summer for me, I’ve only played four games, which has been very frustrating. But I finally recovered after Covid hit me quite hard. It’s difficult to say how my form is, but I’m hitting the ball very nicely in the nets. I’ve worked hard at the Titans to get my rhythm back and I’m looking forward to having a good series after a difficult two months.

“For the first 16-17 days I was very sick and could not do much. I couldn’t practise or even run 20-30 metres or exercise for two or three minutes without my heartrate getting too high. So I had to go through the protocols to build myself back up again, until I could exercise for 10-15 minutes or walk 200 metres. But it took a long time to get my heart-rate under control.

“I needed to get past the phase of it being too dangerous for me to train, which meant two months at home doing nothing. I had a week in the bush and then I’ve trained very hard for the last three weeks and I’m fit and safe now,” Klaasen said from Lahore on Tuesday.

Captaining South Africa for the first time, Klaasen will still have some experienced heads out on the field with him, even though the likes of Quinton de Kock, Temba Bavuma, Faf du Plessis, Rassie van der Dussen, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje are resting after the Test series. But Junior Dala, Reeza Hendricks, David Miller, Andile Phehlukwayo, Dwaine Pretorius, Tabraiz Shamsi and Jon-Jon Smuts are experienced cricketers who will form the core of the side.

“We are by no means a second-string team although a couple of guys aren’t here, but we have rested guys quite a bit in the past. It gives other players an opportunity and they deserve it for the good form they have shown domestically, they have shown their skills. So we are definitely aiming to win the series and play to the best of our ability. It’s going to be massive for our senior players to step up and I look forward to that.

“A couple of youngsters with unbelievable potential will come in and we definitely want to give those guys more opportunity. And to have David Miller, who has played here before, helping the guys out is great because he has knowledge on the ground. We have a very strong squad and we are here to win the series, we don’t expect anything less,” Klaasen said.

But Pakistan have similarly been unable to include seasoned stars like Mohammad Hafeez, Shadab Khan and Imad Wasim.

It’s not the first time the Proteas have given their critics reason to jeer their mental toughness on the subcontinent following their 2-0 series loss to Pakistan in Rawalpindi on Monday, but this time coach Mark Boucher has publicly questioned their mental strength as well.

South Africa went from needing 129 runs with seven wickets in hand to a 95-run defeat in the second Test, following a collapse of seven wickets for just 33 runs against the second new ball.

“It’s more mental than anything else. If there were technical issues then guys would be getting out the same way all the time and you can look at the techniques and make changes, we do continuous technical work and change little things. But there are clearly a lot of scars from previous tours. We keep talking about mental application and the big moments when you need to drive home your advantage.

“But instead we seem to find ways to get out, things like run outs, stupid ways to get out at important moments that really cost us. The new ball played a massive role today, which can happen, but losing seven for 30 is a major batting collapse. It’s a mental thing, the match awareness is not where it should be. You should know when it’s time to really turn the screw, but that’s when we just seem to relax,” Boucher said on Monday.

While Aiden Markram’s breakthrough series (227 runs at 56.75) in the subcontinent has brought some cheer, Boucher admitted that the failure of the senior batsmen to provide constant solidity was a major disappointment. Captain Quinton de Kock scored just 46 runs in four innings, Faf du Plessis averaged 13.75 in the series and even opener Dean Elgar could only pass fifty once as he totalled 119 runs in his four knocks.

“If you’re going to win away from home, you need your senior players who have been in these conditions before to stand up, they should know what to expect, but unfortunately that did not happen. We needed to get through 15-20 overs with the second new ball today and then it would have been much easier to bat, we needed to look after the second new ball but we did not do that.

“It was great to see Aiden come through though, he was able to fight his way through, spending time at the crease, and scoring an unbelievable hundred in tough conditions on Day 5. It was a fantastic Test pitch and if you applied yourself mentally then you could score well. And I don’t think you can blame a lack of cricket because of the amount of time the team has had in the nets, they’ve played enough,” Boucher said.

Aiden Markram had a brilliant maiden century on the subcontinent to point at, but it was clear the Proteas opening batsman was deriving little pleasure from it after South Africa collapsed against Pakistan’s new-ball attack to lose the second Test by 95 runs in Rawalpindi on Monday.
While seated at the virtual press conference after the close of play, Markram said “I wish was still out there now getting the job done”.
While Markram was at the crease, it seemed the Proteas could perhaps stll chase down a record target of 370 to level the two-match series, and the Proteas were well-placed at 238 for three, with Markram on 107 and Temba Bavuma on 56 when Pakistan took the second new ball as soon as it became available after 80 overs.
But the second over with the new ball saw Markram poking Hasan Ali to second slip, ending his five-and-a-half hour landmark innings on 108 off 243 balls, an impressive knock that saw South Africa fight their way very much back into contention.
Armed with a new ball and the middle-order to bowl at, Hasan and Shaheen Shah Afridi stormed through the rest of the batting line-up as the Proteas lost their last seven wickets for just 33 runs.
“Ultimately we are all highly competitive so to lose the game and the series really eats at you, far more than one or two indvidual performances that might have gone right for you. So I’m certainly feeling more hurt than satisfaction right now. It seems like just when we start making good progress, when we get ahead, we give it away.
“It’s time for us to learn and stop making the same mistakes. We have to appreciate in the subcontinent, getting in is really tough because of the nature of the conditions, so wickets can fall in clusters. You need to keep your mind nice and calm and clear, get thrugh those first 20-30 balls to settle the nerves. Obviously our mood is pretty down now,” Markram said despite being comfortably the highest-run-scorer in the series.
Whle Markram’s partnership with Rassie van der Dussen (48) was broken in the first over of the day by Hasan, his 106-run stand for the fourth wicket with Bavuma (61) was the source of much optimism for the Proteas.
“Obviously it was a big target we had to chase and we just tried to break it down into smaller targets. We always knew that if we were still batting at tea then we would have a real chance. The coaches just told us to not be scared to go out and win the game, to have no fear, and just express ourselves.
“For me I’ve been able to take a lot of learning from these two Test matches having had struggles in the subcontinent against spin in the past. It’s been nice to almost learn on the job. But it’s never nice to lose a series and it definitely leaves a bitter taste,” Markram said.