Ken Borland

The constrained new reality that faces the Proteas Test team calls for a different approach and national red-ball coach Shukri Conrad says he also wants the squad to adopt a new way of thinking.

Because South Africa will be playing so little Test cricket for the foreseeable future – there will be just four Tests at home this summer – the Proteas need to make the most of every game and extract as much as possible from every outing.

But the ever-pugnacious Conrad also doesn’t want the team to start feeling sorry for their lot and sink into a victim mentality. The home Test programme opens on November 27 against Sri Lanka at Kingsmead in Durban, and they then take on the islanders at St George’s Park in Gqeberha from December 5.

That is the exact same schedule as in February 2019 when Sri Lanka claimed an historic 2-0 series win, their first in South Africa. Previous Proteas teams have made little effort to disguise their unhappiness with having to play on spin-friendly surfaces at home, especially at Kingsmead, but that has changed under Conrad’s watch and he states emphatically that he considers South Africa to be “heavy favourites” for that series.

Pakistan then visit for the Boxing Day and New Years Tests in Centurion and Cape Town respectively, which will suit their pace-heavy attack.

“I think it’s great to be playing in Durban. We had a camp there in the winter and it’s a fantastic facility, CEO Heinrich Strydom has done some unbelievable stuff. It’s lekker to play there and we should be heavy favourites, but without being complacent,” Conrad told kenborland.com in an exclusive interview.

“We should start wearing the favourites’ tag more at home and it’s going to be four massive home Tests this summer, not just in terms of the World Test Championship but also for the growth of the team.

“Given we don’t play enough Tests at home, speed-growth is required. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of playing 15 Tests a year, so we can’t give players good runs and bring them along slowly. The schedule demands making big calls on players and they have to produce the goods quickly, like Tristan Stubbs, who has shown enough already at number three.

“But this squad has dispelled any talk of not wanting to play at certain venues. It’s a bunch of young bucks and a couple of old hands and they just want to get on with it. They want to get back to being a leading Test side,” Conrad said.

The Test coach was speaking at Willowmoore Park in Benoni after his SA A team had just been soundly beaten by Sri Lanka A to lose their red-ball series 2-0, having earlier gone down 2-1 in the one-dayers. It was a terrible day for South African cricket in general, with the men’s side being bowled out for just 106 and being thrashed by Afghanistan in the first ODI in Sharjah, and the women’s team losing by 13 runs to Pakistan in their T20 series in Multan. Our ladies did at least bounce back and win their series by winning the third T20 on Friday.

Conrad was unequivocal in saying the national teams’ struggles are mostly due to not enough cricket being played at domestic level.

“We’ve actually gained very little from this A series, except the confirmation of the gap between international and our domestic cricket. These are the guys who have done very well at domestic level, so it’s not a great advert for that. They’ve been out-bowled, out-batted and out-thought by Sri Lanka.

“These SA A fixtures are a lot about who can take the step up and the message is quite simple really: what’s below the Test side is concerning. But it’s not entirely the players’ fault – to get better they have to play more, both in Tests and in more first-class cricket.

“If you’re only playing seven first-class games a season then you’re not going to get better. I don’t want it to be about me fighting the system, but we only play 42 days of domestic cricket this season! We can’t have that and whatever the format, we need to be playing more of it.

“CSA obviously have good reasons for the schedule and they also want to know what the best solution is for the domestic game, but at the end of the day we need to find a way to prioritise domestic cricket, even at the expense of the SA A team. If we don’t have quality players feeding into the SA A squad then that structure means nothing.

“I understand the constraints and CSA can only cut their cloth to what they have. But every coach wants more cricket and CSA have committed to it. And first-class cricket is the most important. A lot of cricketers start as hotshot T20 players, but they don’t realise their full potential until they have cut their teeth in first-class cricket.

“Red-ball cricket teaches you about option-taking, you get to understand your game and the different situations you get to face out in the middle. First-class cricket is the breeding ground for all formats and the shop window for talent. It’s how you become a better white-ball player. You still need the art of batsmanship and that has gone out of our game a bit, as seen by our batting on a ragging pitch in Sharjah,” Conrad said.

Two possible Tests in Bangladesh from October 15, depending on CSA getting clearance from their security team this weekend, will be a welcome addition to the schedule, but Conrad knows he has to fast-track everything if South Africa are to make any progress in the red-ball format.

So the mighty Indian team will indeed be gracing our fields for five weeks of what should not only be intense cricket for the Proteas but a timely financial boost that will help the constrained Cricket South Africa administrators keep the candle wicks burning.

While one hopes the Proteas are able to make it a hotly contested series, there is no doubt that in terms of global boardroom politics, CSA are in a much weaker position than the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Of course South African cricket are eternally grateful for India agreeing to honour their commitment to tour when it looked likely that the Omicron variant of Covid would snuff out the tour.

But hopefully that gratitude does not express itself in timidity which allows the BCCI to bully or ride roughshod over South African cricket.

India have been calling the tune in world cricket for a while now, deservedly so when one considers they bring the most money into the game, but there will come a time when CSA have to stand up for their rights.

India are so used to everyone just kowtowing to them that there are occasions when they take a chance and push the boundaries of fair play.

One such occasion occurred this week in Bloemfontein, where their A team, to whom we are also extremely grateful for completing their series against SA A, displayed some incredibly frustrating time-wasting techniques and skullduggery.

As soon as the SA A team, trailing by just eight runs on first innings, made a solid start to their second innings, reaching 89/1 at tea on the third day, India began to ensure much time was taken out of the game.

In the two-and-a-half hour session after tea, they bowled just 26 overs as their bowlers crawled through their deliveries. Field settings were regularly tampered with and then returned to what they were, and every couple of overs, one of the Indian players would go to ground roaring and writhing in agony. The physiotherapist spent so much time on the field he should have been in the starting line-up.

The responsibility in those circumstances lies with the umpires and match referee to ensure the game is played in the right spirit, and there are laws, penalty runs and fines at their disposal to help them do it.

But this is India, who are doing South African cricket a massive favour remember, so there was a decided reluctance to ruffle any feathers.

The Test series against India is likely to have South African umpires due to the problems of travelling in these times of Covid, and one hopes the International Cricket Council devolve enough power to those officials so that they are seen to be representing the ICC and not CSA.

Otherwise they may not feel empowered enough to make tough calls against India should the need arise.

Hopefully we will be spared any controversy though, and will just be able to enjoy the fine cricket we know both teams are capable of producing. Given the aggressive fast bowlers South Africa have at their disposal, and India’s ability to fight fire with fire, there will certainly be some feisty action.

Which is fine, as long as that mysterious, difficult to quantify, line between competitiveness and unsporting behaviour is not crossed.

But anyone who watches this intriguing series will also be expecting two very passionate teams to sometimes get very close to that line.

I say bring it on!

When a South African leader talks about finding an extra 5% it’s normally the Minister of Finance trying to balance the books in a time of constrained fiscus, but Proteas captain Temba Bavuma admitted on Friday that this is what his team will need to do to beat England in Sharjah and maintain their hopes of qualifying for the T20 World Cup semi-finals.

Depending on Australia’s margin of victory or defeat against the West Indies in Saturday’s earlier game in Abu Dhabi, South Africa could advance to the semi-finals even if they lose narrowly to England or could still be knocked out even if they beat the favourites.

Bavuma said the Proteas’ focus was simply on winning, and to do that they needed to be at their best on Saturday.

“We need to play our best cricket tomorrow and our first port of call is the win. Although our cricket has been good so far, we need to find a way to add an extra 5% in all departments,” Bavuma said.

“England have had the better of us lately, so we have to be at our best against them. We can’t leave it to individuals, we can’t rely on individual brilliance, it’s all about us as a team.

“We want to show the same character we have done and fight to the end. Every game we have tailored our strategy according to the opposition and England are obviously a very good team.

“So we will come up with plans that speak to England’s strengths and weaknesses, but mentally our approach should not be any different. The players and management have been through a lot and we have grown as a team,” Bavuma said.

Bavuma may be a playful character out of the spotlight, but he is clearly taking the responsibility of leading the national team at a World Cup most seriously. He is also extremely diligent about fulfilling his batting role, over which there has been much chatter recently. His strike-rate of 108.33 has been a particular focus, as was his run-a-ball innings of 46 against Sri Lanka the last time they played in Sharjah.

“If you look at conditions, they have not been freeflowing and you can’t just come in and hit the first ball out of the middle of the bat. We’ve really had to graft as a batting unit.

“I feel I can do a role up front or in the middle to hold the game and allow the big-hitters to get into the game. We’ve seen that’s worked in this World Cup, we feel it’s what’s best and we back it.

“We really do know now after the Sri Lanka game that the pitch in Sharjah will be on the low side. In terms of our batting, we took the game quite deep and what we have learnt is that we should have pulled the trigger a bit earlier,” Bavuma said.