Ken Borland

You can’t buy experience, so the saying goes, and the sort of talent and skill Rilee Rossouw can bring to the Proteas team is also not available in the shops and South Africa captain David Miller said he is delighted to have the left-handed powerhouse back in the squad for the first T20 against England in Bristol on Wednesday night.

The 32-year-old Rossouw is poised to play for the Proteas for the first time since October 2016. The Grey College product, swift of foot and hand, then signed a Kolpak contract with Hampshire and has made his dashing mark in T20 tournaments around the world. He has been especially successful since joining Somerset for this year’s T20 Blast, lashing 623 runs at an average of 47 and a strike-rate of 192.

“It’s great to have Rilee back, we began our professional careers around the same time back in the day,” Miller said on Tuesday. “The team is right behind him, he has immense experience from playing in leagues around the world.

“He’s also spent a few years in England and it’s great to have that local knowledge for this series. He has a good head on his shoulders and he’s a matchwinner.

“He’s a lot stronger since I last played with him. He’s a seriously good player. A very relaxed guy who takes everything in his stride, but really competitive and fiery on the field. I’m really looking forward to playing alongside him again,” Miller said.

With Temba Bavuma unable to take the reins due to his elbow injury, Miller will captain South Africa for the second series, having led for two matches against Pakistan in 2019. The Proteas won that home rubber 2-1, with Miller commanding a largely second-string squad. Only Hendricks, Van der Dussen, Klaasen, Phehlukwayo and Shamsi are still in the picture.

In those games Miller learnt the importance of staying in contact with his bowlers when T20 inevitably gets hectic.

“It can get a little crazy,” Miller admitted. “It’s about having clear plans. You have to learn pretty quickly our there, it’s about knowing what my bowlers are like, what I want and what they want to do.

“It’s about being well-prepared and you have to trust the bowlers to execute their skills, you can’t control everything as a captain. I do have that trust, so it’s just about executing at the right time.

“In the last year-and-a-half, we’ve got our squad together and we’re pretty comfortable. England have a serious team, but us too. It’s about who does the right things at the right time.

“We’ve played some really good cricket lately and we feel confident. We’re definitely taking this series very seriously so we can continue our momentum heading for the World Cup,” Miller said.

The match starts at 7.30pm SA time.

The Proteas Women’s team began their tour of England five weeks ago and their brave draw in the one-off Test seemingly gave them a toe-hold in the multi-format series. But since then it has been a mass of bad fortune and a litany of defeats, which does not augur well for their chances in the Commonwealth Games starting this weekend in Birmingham.

South Africa arrived in England with talk of competing on all fronts, having beaten their hosts in the T20 World Cup earlier in the year before the tables were turned on them in the semifinals. Sadly, there is little doubt that the Proteas have regressed since then, while England have powered on to new heights with a rejuvenated team introducing exciting new blood.

The Proteas have lost both the ODI and T20 series 3-0 since then, but there have been mitigating factors.

Regular captain Dane van Niekerk has still not returned to play since November last year, and key players like fast bowler Shabnim Ismail and all-rounder Chloe Tryon have also struggled with injuries. The shock retirement of Lizelle Lee, on the eve of the ODI series, must have been a damaging mental blow for the team and it is doubtful that it does not speak to some sort of cultural issues within the squad.

And now Marizanne Kapp, who has been turning in massive performances game-after-game, is back home, ruled out of the Commonwealth Games, due to a family emergency in which her brother-in-law suffered serious burns.

While it would be unwise to make a meal of the recent results given these setbacks, questions need to be asked about whether the pipeline is delivering the quality that is needed for South Africa to remain one of the top sides.

It has not helped that senior players like stand-in captain Sune Luus, stalwart batter Mignon du Preez and 33-year-old bowling spearhead Ismail have not enjoyed good tours.

It is turning into a very long tour for the Proteas Women and they need to pull things together with haste to ensure the wheels don’t come off properly in the Commonwealth Games. Coach Hilton Moreeng will need all his powers of inspiration to put this squad back together again.

Proteas captain Keshav Maharaj’s decision to bat first even though rain was forecast in the third and decisive ODI against England last weekend had its po-faced critics, but as he later explained it was done to ensure South Africa stuck to their strengths and their game-plan, which leans heavily on their spinners.

While the rain ultimately washed out the match and made the toss a moot point, when the T20 series gets underway on Wednesday night in Bristol, we can expect the Proteas to stick to roughly the same game-plan as they use in ODI cricket.

South Africa’s rise to fourth in the T20 rankings has been built around the strength of their attack, and Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, number three in the world T20 rankings, have been key performers with their ability to both take wickets and stem the flow of runs. The game-plan has been the security blanket they cling to because it has carried them through some very tough times.

“We want to make sure we stick to our blueprint at all times and not go back into our slump,” Maharaj said.

“We really turned up to play in the last ODI, it could have been a spectacular end to the series, so it was frustrating to not get a result, but we can’t control the rain.

“The overhead conditions at Headingley told a different story, but the pitch was quite dry and we back our two spinners. We wanted to allow the wicket to deteriorate and use the spinners in the second innings,” Maharaj said.

Despite their awful collapse to 83 all out in the second ODI, the Proteas have built up some trust in their batting line-up. Aiden Markram (third) and Rassie van der Dussen (10^th) are both high in the T20 world rankings, while Quinton de Kock is 15^th and he showed in the final ODI that he still has that matchwinning x-factor.

“Obviously the batting collapse was not ideal and it was really disappointing after the spectacular batting in the first game,” Maharaj said. “The batting unit has generally been pretty good lately though.

“That first ODI was probably the most clinical we’ve been in the last 18 months and we want to replicate that in the T20s. Adapting to the pitch is the most crucial thing.

“It’s great to have Quinny back to his best too and his skill factor is one of the best in the world. He made it look much easier to bat than it was, and it’s always nice to see your senior players put their hands up,” Maharaj said.

David Miller is captain for the T20s and the series is likely to see the return of both Markram, who missed the India matches due to Covid, and Rilee Rossouw to the top-three of the Proteas batting line-up.

Quinton de Kock said after the third ODI between South Africa and England that it was “nice to get out in the middle and score some runs” in his trademark understated way, but given the hunger he showed to make it really count on Sunday, the fact that rain limited his fun to just 76 balls in 105 minutes would have frustrated the 29-year-old.

The left-hander made the most of his time at the crease though, overcoming a scratchy start against excellent English seam bowling to stroke a marvellous 92 not out before the match was washed out. It was his first major innings since his phenomenal 140 not out for the Lucknow Super Giants against the Kolkata Knight Riders on May 18 in his penultimate IPL game.

De Kock had only batted five more times since then, suffering a hand injury during the Proteas’ T20 series in India, so he was eager to make his mark at Headingley.

“It was obviously nice to get out there and score some runs, spend some time in the middle after time away from the game,” De Kock said after the series was shared 1-1 with world champions England.

“The pitch was providing a bit of swing and movement, so I just had to soak up the pressure at first, 50 overs is a long time, and make sure I remained strong in my positions.

“I wanted to make sure I had a strong defence and put away the bad balls, while keeping the ball on the ground for as long as possible. That was the game-plan.

“It was tricky facing three left-arm seamers swinging it around. But we thought that might happen in this series, so we did our prep to make sure we weren’t caught off-guard,” De Kock said.

The three-match series did provide at least one unexpected outcome, with star England all-rounder Ben Stokes’s decision to join the growing number of players who have retired from a format of the game catching many off-guard.

De Kock himself is strictly a white-ball player these days, and pleasingly is still clearly a top-class practitioner who makes batting look so easy on days like Sunday. Part of his secret is that he does not overcomplicate things and he said how much cricket players should be willing to play is purely a personal decision.

“It is starting to be tough for those players who play in all three formats, that is a lot of cricket and there are even more games now over the calendar year,” De Kock said.

“It’s an individual decision, if you feel you can do it then I’m happy for you, but others have taken it into their own hands. It’s a personal decision.

“If you’re still young then I think you should still play in all three formats. But as you get older, the body doesn’t co-operate as much. It’s just about managing things to prolong our careers.

“But there are still World Cups I want to play in and win, I still have a lot to play for. I always try to make an impact, that’s what we’re here to do, no matter how many formats you play,” De Kock said.