Ken Borland

South African pacemen bowling too short in foreign conditions has been enough to give their fans and coaches kittens in the past, but current bowling coach Charl Langeveldt has been stressing the need for fuller lengths in New Zealand.

The Proteas on Monday had their first look at the Hagley Oval in Christchurch, the venue for the first Test against the Black Caps starting at midnight on Wednesday evening, South African time. They have also been practising at the university ground in the largest city on the South Island.

“We had our first practice at Hagley Oval and there were overcast conditions and a green pitch,” Langeveldt said on Monday. “But it can be misleading because it actually played better than it looked.

“With the new ball there was a bit of swing and seam, but then batting got better, easier when the ball got older. So batsmen need to stay in and take it deep and our bowlers need to make them play at the new ball.

“So we need to bowl a fuller length and once the ball is old we can go back to the usual four-to-six metres from the bat. We have to adapt and get fuller, normally we bowl back-of-a-length in South Africa.

“So it can be harder for the guys to get those fuller lengths going. But everyone is looking good out in the middle, the bowlers are doing it,” Langeveldt said.

And the changeable weather also plays a big part in a team’s tactics.

“When the sun comes out, it gets a bit easier for batting and there’s not so much swing and nip,” Langeveldt said. “The grass starts to look a different colour.

“In New Zealand, generally everyone needs to chip in with a coupe of wickets, but if it is your day then you must exploit the conditions and go with it. It’s not as warm so you can bowl longer spells, it’s not as testing on the body.

“Our confidence is high after the India tour and momentum is important for both batsmen and bowlers. The batsmen must take it deep and then they can score big if they rake care of the new ball.

“The bowlers must challenge them and make them play. We will look at how often the opposition batsmen have been out caught behind or lbw, but we will focus on our strengths,” Langeveldt said.

Dean Elgar was philosophical about the telling blow his team has suffered with the withdrawal of fast bowler Anrich Nortje from the series against India, but the Proteas captain was more upset when he told South Africa’s administrators that they have not backed the squad, and especially the coaches and management, enough.

As has become the norm, the Proteas go into a vital series with off-field clouds hanging over their heads. The most threatening of those is the news this week that coach Mark Boucher and director of cricket Graeme Smith are to be subjected to a formal enquiry by the CSA board based on the “tentative” and “untested” findings of the Social Justice and Nation-Building Report.

On the field, they will be without one of their key enforcers, Nortje needing to see specialists to sort out a persistent hip injury. The 28-year-old has been South Africa’s leading wicket-taker in Tests this year with 25 in five matches at an average of just 20.76.

“It’s not too tough for us, as a team we’ve got used to bad news being around us the last one-and-a-half years,” Elgar said on Tuesday. “We just adapt to it, even though they are not ideal headlines.

“What happens off the field is irrelevant now, we have to try and implement a game-plan and trust it. We’ve been through such crappy times, but we’ve formulated such a bond that works for us as player group.

“There have been so many different administrators, but I feel that we have not received enough backing, especially in terms of our coaches and management. We need to show them some love.

“As players, we would like to say that we back them, we know the work they put in that is not seen by the public. It’s not nice to see them being lambasted by articles in the media,” Elgar said.

Another Proteas squad member who is encountering some mixed media treatment is returning fast bowler Duanne Olivier, and Elgar did his best to bolster the former Kolpak’s image. Nortje’s injury means the 29-year-old is now surely almost certain to play his first Test since February 2019.

“The team has responded very well to Duanne coming back, he’s played with quite a few of the guys before and he has half-a-dozen Central Gauteng Lions team-mates here as well,” Elgar said.

“I want us to have the best opportunity of winning matches and series and I’m sure there’s 100% backing for that in the changeroom. Which means sometimes you have to make tough calls.

“But I’m very pleased and excited to have him back, I know what he can do on the field and there are no bad feelings. I see a different energy and enthusiasm in him.

“He’s a different cricketer now and he brings a lot of knowledge and experience back into the team, which is what we need. He’s a matchwinner, I’m very aware of that and that’s what I want to have,” Elgar said.

One will not often find a young head coach who would not feel threatened by bringing in assistants who are more experienced or better-known than himself, but it speaks volumes for the confidence and character of Central Gauteng Lions mentor Wandile Gwavu that he has fully embraced having JP Duminy and Piet Botha as his batting and bowling coaches.

Duminy played 46 Tests, 199 ODIs and 81 T20s for South Africa, so he has a wealth of knowledge to offer the Lions batsmen, while Botha is vastly experienced in his own right as a coach and is highly-rated when it comes to helping the bowlers. Gwavu said it is not just the players who will be learning from his assistants.

“It’s a superstar coaching staff with JP, Piet and Prasanna Agoram as our analyst. It’s not only going to be great for the players but also for the growth of the head coach, I’m keen to take the learnings on and it will make me better as well. I know I lack international playing experience and the way JP speaks about cricket, I know we totally share the same philosophies.

“I’ve played under Piet Botha, we have a very strong relationship and I rate him as one of the best bowling coaches around. He’s very good with youngsters and Sisanda Magala, Lutho Sipamla and Anrich Nortje have all come through under his watch. And Prasanna is one of the best, if not the best, analysts, so we have world-class people in our camp,” the 34-year-old Gwavu said on Tuesday.

That the Lions have secured the services of Duminy, one of the Western Cape’s favourite sons, is due to the initiative of CEO Jono Leaf-Wright. The team will certainly benefit from one of the deepest thinkers in the game.

“It was an opportunity I didn’t really think of until I had a conversation with Jono during an ODI I was commentating on against Pakistan here. And then when I heard him speak at a coach’s forum I knew I was in,  you can just sense the trust and integrity. I certainly believe I can contribute. It’s mostly about having conversations about game-plans and driving certain mindsets.

“It’s about talking through their processes with the players, but it’s also about the coaches in Gauteng and telling them what happens at the top level. I don’t have all the answers, but hopefully I can ask good questions and it’s about empowering, encouraging and uplifting the batsmen. It all starts with mindset and trying to throw the first punch. It will be a learning experience for me too,” Duminy said at the Wanderers on Tuesday.

Like all good coaches, Jake White does not like to elevate certain pool games to greater importance than others, but there has been an obvious lifting of the ante this week as the Bulls have prepared for the arrival of their arch-enemies, the Stormers, for their SuperRugby Unlocked match at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

The importance of the match – between two of the favourites for the title; the top-of-the-log Bulls against the unbeaten Stormers – has been shown by White providing his most obvious example yet of his famous mind games since he arrived in Pretoria.

And White’s focus has been on the importance of the forward battle, with some sledges thrown the Stormers’ way over his perception that they will field a bench with six forwards and just two backs, the veteran coach implying that this was a betrayal of Western Province rugby’s running-rugby traditions.

But there can be no doubt that the Stormers’ greatest strength is their scrum and, in particular, the first-choice Springbok front row of Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi and Steven Kitshoff.

“The win over the Sharks was a good performance and a massive confidence boost, but this is a really big game on Saturday, just given the history between the two teams and the intensity of the clashes before. The Stormers pride themselves on their scrum and maul and the forward battle is going to be really important and we know we have to match them up front.

“Last week, both our game and the Stormers’ bad game against the Pumas showed that rugby has not changed, the forwards are always the ones who win the game for you and this Saturday will be one of those games too. What we learnt from the Pumas match is that the Stormers use their scrum to get out of their own half, and with that front row that works for you,” White said.

Bulls captain Duane Vermeulen was also certainly looking forward to the arrival of his former team.

“They have a quality pack, that’s where it’s all going to go down. Their forwards really pulled them through against the Pumas, the momentum they got from the scrums allowed them to kick to touch and set up mauls. They may have a 100% success rate at scrum-time, but how many times has the scrum gone down? I think there have been lots of resets, but they know how to scrum.

“We’ve lost a couple of scrums, but we will keep building. We’re trying to work on our consistency as a whole, we’re not there yet and we had a slippery start, losing at the death against the Cheetahs. It hasn’t been the consistency we want, but this is a North versus South derby and hopefully we play better as both individuals and as a team,” Vermeulen said.

Stormers coach John Dobson has been extolling the super powers of Kitshoff, his stand-in captain now that Siya Kolisi is injured, but it is the character of the men from the Cape that has probably been their greatest virtue so far in holding on for victory against the Lions and the great escape in Nelspruit.

Teams

Bulls: David Kriel, Travis Ismaiel, Stedman Gans, Cornal Hendricks, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Morné Steyn, Ivan van Zyl, Duane Vermeulen (captain), Elrigh Louw, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje, Jason Jenkins, Trevor Nyakane, Johan Grobbelaar, Jacques van Rooyen. Replacements – Joe van Zyl, Gerhard Steenekamp, Marcel van der Merwe, Sintu Manjezi, Nizaam Carr, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Marco Jansen van Vuren.

Stormers: Warrick Gelant, Edwill van der Merwe, Dan du Plessis, Rikus Pretorius, Leolin Zas, Damian Willemse, Herschel Jantjies, Juarno Augustus, Ernst van Rhyn, Jaco Coetzee, JD Schickerling, Salmaan Moerat, Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Steven Kitshoff (captain). Replacements (from) – Scarra Ntubeni, Leon Lyons, Neethling Fouche, Chris van Zyl, David Meihuizen, Marcel Theunissen, Ben-Jason Dixon, Godlen Masimla, Tim Swiel, Angelo Davids, Tristan Leyds.

Kick-off: 19h00.