Ken Borland

South Africans who love both their cricket and their rugby will recognise the similarities between what national coaches Mark Boucher and Jacques Nienaber have been doing with selection lately, and the Proteas mentor will probably have nine of his 15-man squad for the T20 World Cup in two-and-a-half months time already settled.

It was a typically ballsy call by Boucher to keep the same XI that were slaughtered in the first T20 against England for the second match, but it paid off as they kept the series alive with a highly-impressive all-round showing in Cardiff.

By resting players such as Aiden Markram, Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortje, Boucher has almost been fielding a second-string outfit, much as Springbok coach Nienaber did for the second Test against Wales.

But he will now know that explosive batsmen like Rilee Rossouw and Tristan Stubbs need to be part of his squad for the T20 World Cup in Australia, as does Lungi Ngidi (if there was any doubt). A player like Andile Phehlukwayo has been given a fair chance to also showcase his strengths, as well as his weaknesses.

Boucher will still, nevertheless, face some really tough selection decisions.

Reeza Hendricks, who seems to attract criticism as unfairly as Willie le Roux does, has justified his selection for the tour to England with wonderful back-to-back half-centuries, but will he be in the World Cup squad? The 32-year-old has really sped up his scoring rate in the two T20s against England, lifting his career stats to an average of 27.58 and a strike-rate of 124.71.

The other contenders for the opening batsman slot alongside Quinton de Kock are the injured Temba Bavuma (average 26.76, SR 120.60), Rassie van der Dussen (38.14 & 130.37) and Rossouw (35.58 & 144.25).

Will Boucher and the selectors be brave (or foolish) enough to leave out the appointed captain, especially given how important Bavuma is to the transformation agenda?

I have not mentioned Markram in this conundrum because he will be going as a middle-order batsman who is averaging 39.20 with a strike-rate of 147 and is third on the ICC rankings. He also provides the Proteas with a sixth bowler, which I still believe is crucial.

Van der Dussen is the next best South African in 10^th place and should surely be on the plane to Australia given how useful his ability to bat just about anywhere will be.

South Africans will fondly recall the exploits of their famous fast bowlers Down Under, but the nature of current T20 cricket will probably dictate that only three frontline pacemen will be chosen for the World Cup – Kagiso Rabada, Ngidi and Nortje.

Pretorius – remember he was South Africa’s joint leading wicket-taker with Nortje in last year’s T20 World Cup – and Phehlukwayo, who has taken 44 wickets in 37 matches, will probably edge out Wayne Parnell for the all-rounder berths.

Heinrich Klaasen, who has been in great form, will be counting on the Proteas taking two wicketkeepers to Australia.

It has also been good to see Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi affirm that they are still South Africa’s two best white-ball spinners.

Experimenting with players does not only confirm which ones are good enough for international level, it also shows the ones who are not yet ready for the step up, and this is more what Nienaber learnt from his selection gamble against Wales.

But you know your depth must be pretty good when players like Reeza Hendricks and Parnell, or Marcell Coetzee and Aphelele Fassi, are probably not going to make your World Cup squad.

One of the more pleasing aspects of the Proteas’ previous season was how well head coach Mark Boucher and his assistant Enoch Nkwe dovetailed together, which is probably not too surprising given the similarities between them in coaching philosophy.

It could have been a lot more awkward than it was when Boucher took over as head coach in December, Nkwe effectively being demoted to assistant coach because he had been the interim team director when the Proteas toured India in September/October.

But Nkwe is the sort of coach who always puts the team first and Boucher has always been known to be a great team man. As a player and coach, the record-breaking wicketkeeper’s attributes of honest communication, competitiveness, toughness, courage and discipline are well-known.

They are shared qualities that bind them together.

That the 37-year-old Nkwe has a similar coaching philosophy to the 43-year-old Boucher became clear when I was fortunate enough to sit in on the virtual coaches conference he held with the Lions recently. Apart from the many coaches within the Lions system, including his successor as franchise head coach Wandile Gwavu, there were coaches from as far afield as the Eastern Cape, Uganda and New Zealand logged in to hear Nkwe share his thoughts, and the Soweto-born former all-rounder certainly left them with many great insights to ponder.

Nkwe sees the coach’s role as being to create an environment that enables the team to reach success.

“It’s important that you are all speaking the same language, you need the environment to be freed up and authentic. There needs to be clear role-definition which is one of the most powerful coaching tools and it can determine the brand of cricket played. And if the whole process is done properly then the coach is in a much stronger position to have tough conversations.

“You’ve got to be totally honest, one can feel sorry for the player but you can’t sugarcoat things or beat around the bush. It may be uncomfortable at the moment, but going forward the player will have respect for you because of your honesty. Don’t be scared or shy to have those honest conversations; the players know the moment you are bullshitting,” Nkwe said.

In order to discover his own coaching philosophy, Nkwe, who began his coaching career as player-coach for Dutch club HCC Rood en Wit in 2005, said he looked at his own character and what he consistently did as both a player and coach.

He came up with the word ‘competitive’, a word closely associated with Boucher himself.

“You need to master the little things, you’re not going to get everything right but you strive for a level of excellence. And you have to find a way to make it work. Things are not ever going to go all smoothly, and when things are not great, that’s when you have to overcome the challenge. You have to keep finding ways to be successful. There’s always a way and you can’t feel sorry for yourself,” Nkwe said.

You can imagine the exact same words coming out of Mark Boucher’s mouth. To be courageous also seemed to be second-nature for the gritty Eastern Cape product.

“You need courage and consistency to promote your vision and the confidence to go into a new environment and not compromise your beliefs because then you will lose the team. If you want to be liked, then coaching is not the industry for you,” Nkwe said frankly.

Boucher himself has spoken positively of their burgeoning relationship.

“Enoch and I have had some great conversations and I think we understand each other. We certainly have the same ideas and agree on how to do it. We know we’ll have hard calls to make but we’re not scared to make them.

“He has a good relationship with the youngsters I don’t know properly yet and he takes a load off my hands. I appreciate it and we will just keep working hard together and drive our vision together,” Boucher said recently.

Nkwe has also been a great respecter of new Director of Cricket Graeme Smith, ever since their paths crossed as schoolkids. Nkwe played for St Stithians and Smith was at King Edward VII. The future national captain would skipper Nkwe in the Gauteng Schools side of 1999, Smith’s second year of Khaya Majola Week cricket and the first of three years in which Nkwe played. Interestingly, both Smith and Nkwe scored centuries on their first-class debuts.

“Graeme was always a great example to me, he worked out at 15 years old that he needed to make peace with his technique. He knew he was not the best-looking batsman but he had a clear vision of what his strengths were and he made sure he thrived on that and his mental strength. I remember at Khaya Majola Week in 1999 just trying to understand how he could score so many hundreds at such a young age.

“Graeme found a way to make it work, he didn’t fight his technique. It was pure mental strength and he was lucky to have a coach that encouraged that,” Nkwe said.

I would dare to predict that South African cricket will realise in future just how lucky they were to have Smith, Boucher and Nkwe working together to steer the Proteas out of their current turmoil.

 

South Africa’s 2019 Cricket World Cup fixture list will have some eerie similarities to their infamous 1999 campaign in England, according to a report on the CricInfo website on Wednesday, with the ghosts of Edgbaston combining with their tournament nemesis.

The schedule, which the International Cricket Council board will deliberate over in Kolkata on Thursday, sees South Africa enjoying the honour of playing the opening game of the tournament, against England at the Oval, on Thursday, May 30. It is the same venue at which they beat the hosts by 122 runs in the previous World Cup held in England.

But after that matters get scary with history repeating itself with South Africa once again playing against Australia in their last match before the knockout round, on Saturday, July 6, with one of the semi-finals scheduled for Edgbaston in Birmingham, the scene of their notorious tied semi-final in 1999 that eliminated them from the tournament and created shockwaves that seemed to affect them in every World Cup thereafter.

The Proteas will also have to take on New Zealand, the team that has knocked them out of the last two World Cups, at Edgbaston on Wednesday, June 19.

Although there is a reasonable gap of three-to-five days between all the other Proteas’ games, the proposed schedule states that there will be an awkward eight-day gap between their match against Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street on Friday, June 28, and their crunch clash with defending champions Australia. That match, as well as their June 15 game against Afghanistan in Cardiff, will be day/night affairs, while England, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will not play any day/night games in the round-robin phase.

SA fixtures: Thursday, May 30 v England (Oval); Sunday, June 2 v Bangladesh (Oval); Wednesday, June 5 v India (Southampton); Monday, June 10 v West Indies (Southampton); Saturday, June 15 v Afghanistan (Cardiff); Wednesday, June 19 v New Zealand (Edgbaston); Sunday, June 23 v Pakistan (Lord’s); Friday, June 28 v Sri Lanka (Chester-le-Street); Saturday, July 6 v Australia (Old Trafford).