Ken Borland

NARROWLY avoiding a whitewash against the eighth-ranked New Zealanders will not provide cause for celebration, but Proteas coach Gary Kirsten says the one-day international series should be seen as part of a bigger picture.

That bigger picture is the 2015 World Cup, with Kirsten hired as coach in large part because he won that title with India in 2011 and South Africa crave success in that event after a litany of heartbreak stretching back to 1992.

But while South Africa have a settled Test unit that is rightly ranked No1, there is a perception that there is no clarity when it comes to what the best one-day international team is.

Finding a top-class all-rounder to cover for the day when Jacques Kallis calls it quits looms large as a major assignment, and Kirsten will be delighted that Ryan McLaren repaid the faith invested in him with a match-winning performance under pressure in Potchefstroom.

“Jacques is a two-in-one cricketer and we’ve had the luxury of having him for 18 years,” Kirsten said.

“What can we do when he’s no longer around? Do we choose a fourth specialist pace bowler or play an all-rounder at seven?

“We’ve been mixing and matching to see what’s best and Ryan’s inclusion comes after the selectors decided that he’s the best all-rounder. He’s played 16 one-day internationals spread over four years and probably feels like he’s always playing for his place, plus it’s a grey-area position.

“So I would like to give him a run, to see what he can do and he’s learnt a lot about bowling in the middle overs,” Kirsten said.

Other new, or less regular, faces in the squad — Quinton de Kock, Farhaan Behardien, David Miller, Rory Kleinveldt and Aaron Phangiso — did not manage to have the same effect as McLaren, but Kirsten says the use of a larger pool of players is all part of the plan.

“I’m pretty clear on what the 15-man squad for the Champions Trophy will be and our focus is on the World Cup, which is two years out.

“This time of exploration allows for a great number of opinions and people get irritated. But this is a very important phase, and we need to go through this process.

“There’s obviously a risk attached in doing it at international level and we knew New Zealand would be dangerous and didn’t take them for granted. But we needed to find a series where we could explore our talent because in the long term, it has given us depth and exposure for those players,” Kirsten said.

There is a more worrying question over who is actually the best leader for the team.

It is becoming apparent that too much is being placed on AB de Villiers’s shoulders, hence the decision to call up De Kock as wicketkeeper. But then South Africa had to call on Faf du Plessis to captain the team after De Villiers was suspended for a dreadfully slow over rate.

Thrusting such a high-pressured job on somebody like De Villiers, who has no previous captaincy experience, was always going to be risky and the 28-year-old may be better advised to focus on his batting and keeping wicket in the one-day internationals.

“Faf has great leadership potential but it’s only fair that we give AB a run as captain, he’s only done it for 14 games.

“He wasn’t going to keep wicket because we wanted him to grow his captaincy, but it’s early days, we’ll have to see how things unfold,” Kirsten said.

“There’s a lot of conversation around AB as wicketkeeper and captain and yes, there is a risk attached that it might diminish his batting, but there’s also a risk that we’ll waste one of the greatest careers. He adds massive value as a wicketkeeper.

“We haven’t closed the door on him being the one-day international wicketkeeper. That was very specific to this series and we won’t make a rushed decision,” he said.

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Pakistan’s cricket team manager and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will probably disagree over the security situation in that country, but what isn’t in doubt is that Pakistan will face a daunting assignment of their own in South Africa over the next two months as they take on the Proteas in Tests, ODIs and T20 internationals.

Three Tests against the top-ranked South Africans will be Pakistan’s first and toughest appointment.

While the Proteas have shown brilliant current form with a 12-Test unbeaten run since December 2011, Pakistan have only played six Tests in the same period.

That’s partly because nobody wants to play in Pakistan due to the security situation in the troubled country and they have been forced to host their “home” Tests in the United Arab Emirates.

“There is a difference between perception and reality. Pakistan is as safe as any country. We’re not getting enough Test experience, under the pretext of security concerns,” manager Naveed Akram Cheema growled at his team’s arrival press conference at OR Tambo International Airport on Monday.

Cheema is the managing director of the Water and Power Development Authority and the chairman of a host of other parastatals, so it’s perhaps not surprising that he insisted on giving a political answer to what was a cricketing question.

But be that as it may, Pakistan will face an uphill challenge taking on the South Africans at home.

Captain Misbah ul-Haq acknowledged that, saying his team will have to adapt quickly to conditions here, having last played in anything similar when they won a one-off Test against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo in September 2011. Earlier that year, they won a two-Test series in New Zealand.

“It’s really difficult for a team that does not play a format on a regular basis, but we’ll have to work hard and adjust as a group. Against the number one team, in South African conditions, we will have to play well for it to be game-on. We know it will be tough, but we will have to adapt to conditions. But this Pakistan team has a lot of youngsters who have really performed well and they love to take on a challenge. It’s time for them to come up with good performances and go one step ahead in their careers,” Misbah said.

Though Pakistan seemingly have a bowling attack that is capable of storming the Proteas’ castle, their biggest challenge will be scoring enough runs. Their batsmen, so impressive in sub-continental conditions, might not even make it across the moat when they come up against the bounce, swing and seam of Steyn, Philander and Morkel.

“It’s a quality bowling attack and we will have to bat well. It’s a real challenge when you’ve just come here from the sub-continent and whenever we’re abroad in countries like New Zealand and South Africa, we have to practise hard for the bounce and pace,” Misbah said.

Pakistan handled James Anderson, probably the closest bowler to Dale Steyn in world cricket, reasonably well in the UAE last year, but they will not have seen Vernon Philander before.

“The way Philander bowls, swinging the ball and hitting the seam, he will be a real factor with the new ball and it’s not surprising he takes so many wickets,” Misbah mused. “But in Test cricket you need to get the basics right, you need to stick to the basics against a bowler like him.”

The Pakistan attack is one of the best balanced in world cricket, with two right-arm quicks in the tall Umar Gul and Ehsan Adil, a left-arm giant in the seven-foot Mohammad Irfan, a pacy left-arm swing bowler in Junaid Khan and quality slow bowlers in off-spinner Saeed Ajmal and left-arm orthodox Abdur Rehman.

“The attack doesn’t have much experience here, only Umar Gul has played in South Africa, but if they adapt to the conditions then this attack can get the wickets we need. Especially Junaid, I think he will love to bowl here and Irfan too if he can get the ball in the right positions. Saeed Ajmal will be a factor if there is turn and bounce,” Misbah said.

Dav Whatmore, the former Sri Lanka and Bangladesh coach who played for Australia, is now with the Pakistan team and he warned against his bowlers getting too hyped up.

“In terms of fighting fire with fire, I’d like to see our skills do the talking more. The aggression part of the bowling should be shown with skill.

“It will be difficult for our batsmen over here, generally there’s higher bounce and more pace, but if the guys get over that, then it’s pretty good batting conditions, like Australia. If the youngsters get over the initial difficulties, then they could capitalise,” Whatmore said.

The Pakistanis open their tour with a four-day match against an SA Invitation XI starting in East London on Friday and Misbah said the likely Test team will play.

But the conditions in the sleepy Indian Ocean city will be very different to the charged-up atmosphere at the Bullring when the first Test starts at the Wanderers the following Friday (February 1).

The safety of the Pakistan team might then be in serious doubt.

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The last rites took a while, but the summer of ’13 still ended on the most triumphant of notes for South Africa as they completed an innings-and-18-run victory over Pakistan at Centurion and a 3-0 sweep of the series.

It’s just the third time South Africa have claimed a whitewash in a series of at least three Tests, the other two instances being the great Springbok team of 1969/70 that hammered Australia 4-0 and the impressive 5-0 clobbering of the West Indies in 1998/99, when the tourists had such greats as Brian Lara, Curtley Ambrose and Courtney Walsh in their ranks.

The Pakistan second innings came to an end just before 5pm on Sunday on 235 all out, the last pair of Rahat Ali and Mohammad Irfan having frustrated the South Africans for 45 minutes.

Pakistan were in a good state at lunch as Azhar Ali and Imran Farhat batted with defiance and positivity to take them to 87 for two, but Dale Steyn and Rory Kleinveldt reduced them to 176 for six by tea.

Steyn finished with four for 80 and Kleinveldt and Abbott took two wickets each. Considering it was a dead rubber game and South Africa were missing two key cogs in Jacques Kallis and Morne Morkel, it was an emphatic statement of their intent to truly dominate Test cricket.

“It’s been a very special summer at home and this result is very important. We wanted to step up, we were a bit uncertain about what to do on the first day, but we took on the challenge of batting. It would have been easy to be soft in this Test and not totally commit to the cause, but if you’re 10% off your game at this level, then you’re not going to produce a performance,” captain Graeme Smith said.

“It shows we’re hungry and we have a real pride in our performance. There was maturity and professionalism. We’ve had a few injuries, but to see the new guys come in and step up shows that there’s a good environment and platform for them to perform.”

None more so than Abbott, who owned the third best match figures ever on debut for South Africa of nine for 68. South African cricket’s house is clearly in order on the field considering how well debutants have done recently.

Three of the last four pace bowlers – Vernon Philander and Marchant de Lange being the others – have taken a five-wicket haul in their debut Test, while Faf du Plessis and Dean Elgar both have centuries to their name.

Kleinveldt is the odd seamer out, but he bowled well at Centurion and eventually had some reward when he picked up the wickets of Misbah ul-Haq (5) and Asad Shafiq (6) midway through the second session.

Azhar and Farhat had added 54 for the third wicket and South Africa were in need of a breakthrough after lunch.

And it came, as ever, from Steyn, although this time it was a run out.

Farhat had turned left-arm spinner Robin Peterson to fine leg and Azhar was looking for a second run, but was turned back and couldn’t make his ground from just two metres down the pitch as Steyn fired in a superb bullet throw straight over the stumps.

Quite how the lower-order wagged so enthusiastically – Sarfraz Ahmed (40), Saeed Ajmal (31), Ehsan Adil (12) and Rahat (22) didn’t really mind how the runs came – baffled many, but victory was never in doubt.

Pakistan had begun the day on 14 for one and Azhar and Younis Khan survived for the first half-hour, before the opener and Farhat added 48 for the third wicket to take the tourists to lunch and cut the deficit to 166 runs.

The match situation was right down the obdurate Azhar’s alley and the 28-year-old batted for nearly three hours and faced 110 balls in scoring his 27.

Farhat, in contrast, once again looked keen to tee it up and struck five fours in his 43 off 91 deliveries.

Philander and Abbott were both probing, but the pick of the bowlers in the morning was Steyn, who had bowled nine overs for 22 runs and taken both wickets.

He removed Mohammad Hafeez with the first ball of the innings on the second evening and added the scalp of Younis for 11 on Sunday.

Steyn struck with a beautiful late away-swinger, Younis reaching for the ball to try and play it to mid-on, getting the outside edge and sending a comfortable catch to Smith at first slip.