Ken Borland

Kagiso Rabada is once again the No.1 bowler in red-ball cricket according to the ICC world rankings, but as much as he believes Test cricket is the pinnacle of the game, South Africa’s spearhead says winning the World Test Championship is not at the top of his bucket list.

The Proteas, whose inability to win a limited-overs World Cup has baffled cricket-lovers around the globe, are in position to make the World Test Championship final next year, even though they are currently lying fifth in the standings with a win percentage of 54.17. But their last four Tests in this cycle are all at home and winning all of those games, against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, will lift that figure to 69.44%, which will guarantee them a place in the final at Lord’s from June 11 to 15 next year.

A couple of draws and two wins could also be enough, depending on the results of the Tests between Australia and India and New Zealand and England.

In the last calendar year, South Africa have come closest to breaking their World Cup hoodoo, reaching the semi-finals of the 50-over event last November in India and making the final of the T20 tournament in the West Indies and USA in June 2024. They seemed on-course to win that final against India, but superb bowling at the death, led by Jasprit Bumrah, saw them fall short by just seven agonising runs.

Rabada, who reached 300 Test wickets in the least-ever number of balls during the recent 2-0 series win in Bangladesh, has said previously that individual milestones are not his main motivation, but winning a World Cup for South Africa is his chief goal.

But, in an exclusive interview with SportsBoom at his home ground of the Wanderers, Rabada said claiming the World Test Championship crown would not scratch that itch, even though the longest format is his favourite.

“The T20 World Cup was extremely heartbreaking, but I feel we rose to the occasion,” Rabada said. “We are edging closer and closer to winning a World Cup and it’s just a matter of making that last, full step. But it was nice to be in that moment, we now know what it takes. You need a bit of luck as well.

“But having that experience is important, coming so close under high pressure, experiencing that will be invaluable going forward. I think the lesson we take from that final is not to over-complicate things, but the lessons will apply to each individual differently. But there was so much agony and once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it.

“Winning the World Test Championship would not completely satisfy me, although I would still be very proud and it would be amazing to do it. But the 50-over World Cup has so much value and history; the World Test Championship is not there yet, it’s a new thing.

“For me, winning the ODI World Cup is the holy mecca. You lose one game in the playoffs there and you’re gone. Whereas the World Test Championship is about who the best team is over a two-year period. We are now at crunch time in that tournament,” Rabada said.

Trying to decipher the South African team’s resting policies can at times feel like picking through dirty laundry, but the 29-year-old Rabada is frank about the management of his workloads, which has seen him sitting out the current T20 series against India.

“I’ve learnt to listen and understand my body better and I know I won’t feel the same as I did in my early twenties. I’ve bowled a lot of overs and it’s been a high workload. So looking at my path moving forward, I’m going to prioritise Test and ODI cricket.

“It’s not just about physical fatigue but also mental, and I believe it’s the smart decision to preserve myself. It also gives opportunities for others to step up and come through.

“But Test cricket is the best and all the greats played that. Even the most dominant T20 players, they play Test cricket. It’s the hardest and best format,” Rabada said.

With 313 wickets in 66 Tests at an average of just 21.49, 157 ODI wickets in 101 matches while conceding a touch over five runs-an-over, and 71 scalps in 65 T20 Internationals, it is easy to think Rabada is at his peak.

But the athletic U19 World Cup winner says there is still room for improvement.

“I don’t know if I’m at my best yet. I just want to keep pushing the limits. It could sound crazy, but I believe you never know how much you can get out of yourself.”

And, given that he is now clearly one of the strongest leaders in the Proteas set-up, what about captaincy?

“Taking more of a leadership role has come naturally really, it’s the circle of life and I’ve been in the Proteas team now for nine years. I’ve just taken it in my stride and I’m happy to be one of the leaders. I feel it’s something I’m meant to take on and I’m not shy about it.

“It’s a natural process when you consider the experience and knowledge that I’ve gained. So I’m willing to express myself and pass down that knowledge, when there are people who want to hear it. It’s because I have a lot of care for this team, why wouldn’t I want to be involved in the decision-making?

“As far as the actual captaincy goes, I have thought of it. Pat Cummins actually asked me about it and he said he found it difficult to separate it from playing his own game. He said as a bowler, you need a lot of assistance to be captain.

“But it’s something I would not rule out, but I won’t be strongly advocating for it. It must just happen naturally,” Rabada said.

Caring for the Proteas and their performance comes naturally too for Rabada. As does his undiluted passion for the game: The fifth-leading wicket-taker in South Africa’s Test history insisted on conducting this interview sitting outside on the balcony of the president’s lounge at the Wanderers, so he could watch the progress of his Central Gauteng Lions domestic team as they opened their four-day campaign.

New Proteas Test coach Shukri Conrad is not aiming to be the manufacturer of some dramatic new way of playing five-day cricket, but he has nevertheless made some brave calls as South Africa head into a new era in what most players still consider the pinnacle of the game as they take on the West Indies in the first of a two-match series in Centurion from Tuesday.

Conrad has not only installed a new Test captain in Temba Bavuma, whose predecessor Dean Elgar remains in the team but needs to regain his ability to make tough runs, but also cut a trio of players who would probably have expected to still be involved.

Dropping two of the three leading run-scorers in the series in Australia over the festive season is certainly a tough call if you are Kyle Verreynne, who scored two half-centuries in the three Tests, or Sarel Erwee, whose last Test innings was the dogged 42 not out he scored to help South Africa save the third Test in Sydney.

Lungi Ngidi has also been a regular in the Test team, playing 11 of the 18 Tests in the last two years. He has taken 33 wickets in that time, at an excellent average of just 21.63. Ngidi has also conceded only 3.06 runs-per-over in that time, all of which suggests he plays an important role in the Proteas attack, but Conrad has seemingly gone the bold route of wanting the express pace of uncapped Gerald Coetzee instead.

Heinrich Klaasen and Aiden Markram are the batsmen to benefit from the axing of Verreynne and Erwee. There is no doubting that both are amongst the most talented strokeplayers in the country, but Klaasen has scored just 48 runs in four Test innings, and Markram makes yet another return based on just how damn good he looks whenever he picks up a bat, except when it comes to actually scoring runs at Test level.

Typically of Conrad, who is never afraid to back his big calls, he has already stated that Markram will return to opening the batting alongside Elgar. The new coach is not reinventing how the Proteas play Test cricket, but he is certainly aiming for a more aggressive, positive approach.

Conrad was walking around the SuperSport Park field on Monday morning during the Proteas’ final preparations like a sergeant major, but he is not all bark and bite; he found time to give the no-doubt hurting Elgar an arm around the shoulder and a rub of the neck.

If the 55-year-old Conrad is the equivalent of the Proteas’ chairman of the board, then Bavuma is the new CEO tasked with getting the best out of the staff.

Bavuma is no stranger to international captaincy, of course, having led the Proteas in 17 ODIs and 25 T20s. He is highly-respected by his team-mates for his tactical acumen, technical ability and tenacity.

Bavuma has been no stranger to tough times recently, and he was stressing the need for his team to embrace a fresh start against the West Indies.

“These are exciting times, it’s the start of a new journey and I would like us to start with a clean slate and play the way we want to play,” Bavuma said at Centurion on Monday.

“We have got enough resources in the 15-man squad to adapt to conditions and back up whatever tactics we want to employ. And there are other leaders within the team, guys who have been around for a while, who I can definitely lean on. We just need to ensure we are all speaking the same language.

“The brand of cricket we play is how we want to measure ourselves, but we still need to man up. We know as a batting unit that we need to score the runs, we need to go out and do what we need to do.

“A lot of these guys have won a series against India not long ago when no-one really backed us to do that. I always preach playing together as a team and we don’t want to lose that,” Bavuma said.

Fresh starts almost always involve a positive approach to things, and it seems the Proteas are as concerned with how they go about playing as what they produce. Conrad will have to live or die by his brave choices, and perhaps he will discover that sometimes producing the goods is all that matters, no matter how you look doing it.

 

Judging by his performance in the Nedbank Golf Challenge, former world number one Luke Donald is certainly on course for a second wind in his career that reached the pinnacle of world golf in 2011 but then stalled as he dropped down the rankings in 2013.

Having reached new heights three years ago when he became the first golfer to win both the European and PGA Tour moneylists in the same year, Donald has not won since November 2013 and missed out on selection for Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup team this year.

He changed coach in mid-2013 and although he has since split from Chad Cook and gone back to Pat Goss, Donald said yesterday that there was no second-guessing his decision.

“I changed coach because I felt my game was not going the way I wanted it to, in particular I didn’t feel I was a good enough driver of the ball to win a Major. But it’s tough to break 30 years of golfing DNA, I didn’t play very well and I struggled to see a change, so I went back to Pat. Change is hard, but it was a good decision to join Chad because it made me realise that sometimes what you have is good enough,” Donald said.

The Gary Player Country Club course, however, is not the sort of place where poor drivers of the ball prosper, and Donald showed that he has plenty of game in the second round, picking up a dazzling nine birdies and not dropping a single shot.

“Every tee shot here has danger and you really have to be switched on and play good, solid shots. I feel I’ve done that very well today,” Donald said.

Whether or not Donald is the winner on Sunday – it would be a tremendous way to celebrate his 37^th birthday the same day – the Englishman feels he is getting back to being one of the best golfers in the world.

“Winning would give me a huge amount of confidence that I’m doing the right thing, but my main goal is just to keep moving forward, keep getting better. Sometimes we put the Majors on too much of a pedestal. I prefer to stick to smaller goals,” he said.

In coming through a couple of miserable years, Donald has also shown that he has the character within him to overcome the tough times that inevitably come in golf and he admitted a change in mindset had also been necessary for him to rebound.

“I’d never had big struggles before but I think I needed to adjust mentally. You expect your golf to be good and for that to make you happy on the course, but it’s the other way round.”

Once the most consistent golfer in the world, Donald has the short game to capitalise on the opportunities he creates from tee to green and the old solidity is definitely returning.

 

There are many cases of highly-successful players then becoming triumphant coaches, but not many can claim to have reached the pinnacle of their sport mentoring two such vastly different teams as Gary Kirsten has.

As a player, Kirsten was one of the most effective opening batsmen of the 1990s and early 2000s, as 7289 Test runs at 45.27 and 6798 ODI runs at 40.95 attest.

But he really became a legend of the game when he took over as the coach of a seriously-talented but under-performing Indian team.

Despite having no top-level coaching experience before that daunting assignment, Kirsten managed to get a group of celebrity cricketers, under the biggest burden of expectation in the game, playing consistently as a winning unit.

Under Kirsten, India won the World Cup on home soil and reached the number one Test ranking.

Now South Africa have also scaled the Test peak and top the rankings after their 2-0 series victory in England.

Apart from the talent and the expectation (admittedly at a much lower level of intensity), South Africa are a very different team to India.

Even Jacques Kallis, arguably the greatest all-rounder to grace the game, does not have the same cult status of a Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag or Rahul Dravid.

The team ethos is drummed into South Africans from a young age and with it comes a conservative approach, a fear of failure and a great work ethic when it comes to things like fitness and nets.

Being an individual is almost frowned upon; the whole team must be treated the same.

But Kirsten has begun dismantling these long-held beliefs. Eyebrows were raised when South Africa spent time in the Alps with explorer Mike Horn rather than arrive earlier in England for more match practice.

And those same eyebrows were in orbit when Kirsten said practice the day before the crucial Lord’s Test was optional.

It’s not that the 44-year-old does not believe in preparation. He swears by it.

It’s just that Kirsten realised a long time ago – during his lengthy playing career – that everyone is different and requires different preparation. At the elite level, most of this preparation is mental anyway.

“We will focus on our preparation and the work that we do. We always respect the opposition and we understand we are playing against quality teams. We will never underestimate any side, we will never go into any Test match complacent and arrive thinking the job is done.

“We will do the preparation necessary to look at the opposition and what they have got in their team and how we can exploit certain areas,” Kirsten assured the media in London before the battle for the number one ranking reached its climax.

South Africa have been number one before, of course, briefly in 2009 after winning in Australia, but, according to captain Graeme Smith, they now have the maturity to try and hang on to the top spot for longer.

“Having touched it before, I think we have learned some lessons. I can’t predict what will happen, but we are pretty humble. I don’t think there will be any flashiness from our guys.

“There will be lots of hard work and with the type of people we have around our group, if we do lose this it won’t be because of our attitudes,” Smith said.

Words like “humble”, “no flashiness”, “hard work” and “attitude” have been used many times to describe Kirsten and the coach has made it clear that he wants to change the players as people as much as cricketers.

Kirsten believes it is vital for his players to have perspective – that real life extends far beyond the cricket field (this, of course, can make it easier to handle those inaptly named “life-or-death” moments in the game).

But he also insists that players have to take personal responsibility within the team unit.

Although the technical knowledge of Kirsten has been refined on the biggest stage, it is the man-management skills of the Capetonian that set him apart.

The failures and the disappointments are dealt with quickly and then forgotten; the blame game is never played; and the talk in the changeroom is always of the positive and what the team has already achieved.

The mental freshness of the squad is also one of the key factors Kirsten won’t compromise.

Allan Donald, the bowling coach, was allowed to leave the New Zealand tour earlier this year to spend time with the family, while avid surfer Paddy Upton, the mental conditioning coach with India but now the performance director with South Africa, was allowed some leave from the England tour in order to chase the waves in the remote oceans around Indonesia.

The same principle was in play when the players were told nets were optional.

In the thrilling final stages of the Test at Lord’s, when England made it clear that they were not going to relinquish the number one ranking without a huge fight, it was the mental state of the South African team that mattered most.

With Matt Prior throwing down the gauntlet in marvellous fashion, South Africa showed no signs of the “choking” ailment that has dogged them in the past.

Far from ignoring the unwanted tag, Kirsten dealt with it head-on during the time in Switzerland with Horn, one of the most inspirational people on the planet.

By being put in real life-threatening situations on the glaciers of the Alps, South Africa’s cricketers learnt a huge amount about their own abilities to handle pressure.

Mentally, the Lord’s thriller was like a stroll in the park compared to some of the adventures Horn has introduced to them.