Ken Borland

Rain washed out the second day’s play of last year’s Boxing Day Test against India at Centurion and, while the tourists enjoyed a lunchtime feast including broccoli soup, Chicken Chettinad and lamb chops, Proteas captain Dean Elgar was giving his team some of his famous tough love after a poor first day.

Having allowed India to rattle up 273-3 on the first day on a pitch that assisted the pacemen, Elgar told his team to “toughen up mentally, take responsibility and wear your big-boy pants”.

South Africa did fight back, but that first day had ultimately done too much damage. Their determination did, however, make them the most tenacious of opponents in the rest of the series and they pulled off a thoroughly unexpected series triumph.

It’s the sort of inspirational captaincy Elgar has now become famous for and he believes England’s newly-appointed skipper Ben Stokes will lead in similar vein when they host the Proteas in a Test series in August.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘stubborn’ captaincy but I’d say we are both f****** tough cricketers,” Elgar told The Citizen on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be a battle of feisty characters and Stokes is a world-class cricketer, and we know what he’s capable of because he’s done pretty well against us, albeit just as player.

“But as captain you need to get the best out of your players and it’s going to be interesting to see how he goes with the added responsibility.

“We play with our hearts on our sleeves because we always want to push for the win, but Test cricket comes down to who controls their emotions best. If you let them get the better of you, then the results generally don’t go your way,” Elgar said.

Elgar and Stokes are both left-handed batsmen, but their contrasting styles are very much the yin and yang of Test cricket.

Stokes is immensely strong and provides much attacking thrust to England’s middle-order, while Elgar, as an opening batsman, does not play with the same freedom but the time he spends at the crease can be equally draining for the opposition.

Both Stokes and Elgar have played 12 Tests since the start of 2021, with England’s new captain scoring just 633 runs at an average of 26.37.

Elgar, on the other hand, has been leading from the front since his appointment, with 881 runs at an average of 41.95.

“I don’t dwell too much on individual battles, my focus is on us as a team,” Elgar said. “And I haven’t had a lot of personal interaction with Ben, even though we have played against each other numerous times since an SA A series against the England Lions in 2015.”

Dane Piedt has the variations

New Proteas spinner Dane Piedt has excited many with his wicket-taking variations, to which 45 batsmen succumbed in the Sunfoil Series, but the Cape Cobras offie knows that international batsmen will feast on him if he tries too much with the ball.

Piedt is heading off to Sri Lanka on his first tour with the Proteas and there can scarcely be a more daunting place for a finger spinner, even one armed with doosras and carrom balls, to make his debut.

“It’s going to be really important to get into a spell. You can’t go for four or five runs an over in long-form cricket because then the captain can’t set fields. Once you’ve bowled 10 overs for 20 runs then you can start manipulating things, bowl variations and change the field,” Piedt said at the Centre of Excellence in Pretoria, where the Proteas were having a fitness camp.

According to his Cobras coach, Paul Adams, what makes Piedt so good is his ability to “just sit at one end and create pressure”.

“When a spinner is a match-winner and takes five-fors in the last innings of the game, that’s what you want to see. It’s great to not crumble under the pressure of being the one relied on to get those wickets, and Dane’s managed to pull off a couple of those performances this season,” Adams added.

While Piedt was a revelation for the Cobras, bowling them to the four-day title, he has been on the national selectors’ radar for a while, attending the national academy in 2011 and touring Australia with the Emerging South Africa squad in 2012 and playing for SA A last year.

“I’ve been given responsibility at the Cobras. Justin Ontong [the captain] always threw me the ball and said ‘bowl the team out’. He used me as a wicket-taker and not just in four-day cricket. It’s the role I was given from the start of the season.

“I had to take it to the next level because we were missing a couple of bowlers with Beuran Hendricks, Rory Kleinveldt, Robin Peterson and Vernon Philander all with the national squad, I had to use my skills in the fourth innings and win games,” Piedt said.

The 24-year-old’s success is not that surprising considering how quickly he whips the ball through, while still obtaining turn and bounce, and how economical he generally is, conceding just 2.50 runs per over in the Sunfoil Series last season. He was also the leading wicket-taker in the competition and there’s no doubt he has a strong claim to a Test spot as back-up to leg-spinner Imran Tahir.

The SACS product said he was sorry to see England off-spinner Graeme Swann, one of his role-models, retire from the game this year.

“I loved watching Graeme Swann, but unfortunately he’s retired so we won’t be seeing him again.”

Piedt has also incorporated aspects of Pakistani Saqlain Mushtaq, Australian Tim May and even local hero Adams into his game.

“It’s mostly all the orthodox off-spinners, but Saqlain had the ability to spin the ball the other way, which was exciting, and obviously Paul, coming from Cape Town, was a hero. It was always a big thing when he played for South Africa for us in the coloured community,” Piedt said.

It seems that Cape Town might have produced another spinner to take the international stage by storm. There’s no doubt Piedt is an exciting prospect and an opportunity to shine in Sri Lanka is one he’s going to grab with both hands.