SOUTH AFRICA'S BRAINLESS CRICKET

 Dear Cricket fans,

AB DE VILLIERS

         Facing their first serious hurdle at the Cricket World Cup, the Proteas as they some how got called after previously being the Springboks, had to make 308 to beat India. It was a formidable task but not impossible.

         They had almost a cricket team of expert coaches and consultants to advise them so you would have expected, at the very least, that they would have done nothing stupid.

         That’s where you would have been wrong, terribly wrong.

         They batted as if most of them had not got a brain between them.

         Opener Quinton de Kock started with a wild swing at a ball that could easily have had him caught behind the wicket. After a few innocuous shots he sent a soft one into the hands of the opposition and was gone for seven.

         Mr Reliable Hashim Amla, one of the best batsmen in the world in all formats, skied a short ball onto the leg side where he was caught on the boundary for 22. Somebody of his experience should have seen that trap a mile off.

         Faf du Plessis, in at three, who has been out of form lately, played sensibly with wickets falling around him. At 55 off 71 balls he had a brain storm, ran down the pitch and gave the Indians an easy catch.

         Captain AB de Villiers, the top ranked One Day International batsman in the world in 2014, also showed his lack of sensible thought. After a couple of narrow run out escapes he evident believed his speed made him invincible. One risky run too many and he was out for 30 when his team so badly needed a big innings from him.

         JP Duminy, who made a century in the previous match admittedly against lowly Zimbabwe, played possibly the most brainless shot of all. With his score at only six he decided on the most risky shot in cricket – a reverse sweep. As a left hander he was playing the shot as if he was right handed.

         The result was the last of the Proteas' recognised batsmen was back in the pavilion.

         David Miller, one of the top six, who had come in just before Duminy, followed his captain’s bad example and was run out for 22.

         That was effectively the end of the Proteas scoring because the last five players, you couldn’t call them batsmen as the commentators do, made a total of only 28 runs.

         How the South Africa selectors expect to win a world cup with so many players who can’t bat I don’t know. They badly need at least one good all rounder who can bat and bowl reasonably well.

         As it was in this game they relied on Wayne Parnell to fulfil this role. His bowling was hammered for 85 runs at almost 10 an over, nearly twice as many as the next worst bowler. His solitary wicket didn’t alter the fact that his figures were shocking.

         He made 17 not out off 28 balls when the game was already lost. But if he is the best all rounder the Proteas have got it will take a miracle for them to win the Cup.

         To cap this match of brainless play the Proteas were fined 10% of their match fee with captain De Villiers being penalised 20% for badly overrunning the three and a half hours allowed for a side fielding to complete their overs.  

         The Proteas' 130 thrashing was by far their worst performance at a World Cup and the first time they have ever been beaten by more than 100 runs.

         So what was the point of all those advisers? Where were they when the Proteas batsmen lost their minds?

Where were they when the Proteas, named after a hardy wild flower, faded so badly?

         Apart from the Head Coach Russell Domingo they had fielding coach Adrian Birrell; specialist bowling coach Allan Donald; specialist spin bowling coach Claude Henderson as well as former South African batsman Gary Kirsten who was the coach of the World Cup winning Indian team four years ago. He was there as the batting consultant.

THE A TEAM FEATURED IN THE TIMES

         You would think they had enough experts to keep any team on a winning high. But no they had to add retired Australian batting star Mike Hussey as the finishing consultant, whatever that is.

         My suggestion is that this think tank team should play in the next match with some of the best of the Proteas to make up the numbers and we’ll see if they are any good on the field because in the Indian game they were as useless off it as the Proteas were on it.

         Watch out for the West Indies on Friday Proteas. You might have beaten them easily shortly before the World Cup started, but if Chris Gayle and some of their other hard hitting batsmen get going there will be no room for any more mindless cricket.

         Your avid cricket fan

         Jon, who would very much like to see De Villier’s prediction that “We’ll win the World Cup” turned into fact. But on the showing during the India match it will be very much against the run of play unless there is a superhuman improvement.

    

HOW S.A. CRICKET ROBS ITS FANS & SPONSORS

         Surely South Africa’s cricket supporters as well as its sponsors

Justin Ontong

have a right to expect that its best team should be fielded for all international matches.

         But that’s not happening. Our cricket authorities seem to think that it’s perfectly acceptable to pick any old team regardless of its strength, particularly when it comes to the shorter forms of the game.

         Take the current three match T20 series against the West Indies. The visitors fielded their strongest eleven while our selectors headed by the unimpressive Andrew Hudson left out most of our best batsmen and bowlers.

Top run makers like Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers, possibly the best batsman in the world in the shorter forms of the game, were “rested” whatever that means.

 Our leading fast bowlers Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel were also consider in need of a rest.

Steyn with Player of a Series
Trophy

We were so blasé about the opposition even though the West Indies were the 2012 T20 World Cup winners that our cricket experts evidently felt that our second team or was it our third team would easily beat them.

It’s supposed to be an honour to play for your country but our cricket selectors are cheapening it and making it pretty worthless.

Our teams get weakened even further by what appears to be a need to fulfil a racial quota. This results in certain players like batsman Farham

Behardien

Behardien, who are clearly not of international standard, getting picked time and again because they are of the right non-white colour.   

South Africa lost the first two matches of the current series and as I write the third match due to be played today has been reduced to an even bigger farce because the selectors have decided to rest Faf du Plessis, the captain in the first two games who was also by far our leading run scorer with a century in his last outing – no mean feat in just 20 overs.

The captaincy for this last match has been given to Justin Ontong, who shouldn’t even be in the team based on his playing record. He has not managed to reach 50 once in any of the 43 matches he has played for his country. As a bowler he has been equally pathetic with just one T20 wicket, one in Tests and nine in one day games.

         Fortunately for him he gets in on being the right colour. That takes precedence over ability in many spheres of South Africa life and is a sure recipe for mediocrity. It’s also the reason why South Africa’s chances of winning the up coming World Cup One Day tournament in Australia and New Zealand are practically nil.

         (See my Post Cricket in Black and White)

Cricketers who represent their countries have days, if not weeks between their international matches, yet our Protea players seem to be given more matches off for a rest than they actually play.

It’s cheating the public. They want to see their idols in action not sitting in the stand. But above all they want to see their team winning, not being beaten when they know their country could have fielded a much better side.

It’s time they started showing their disapproval by staying away from the grounds. The sponsors too should threaten to withdraw their support unless the best available team (allowing for injuries) is picked at all times.

This kind of robbery needs to be given OUT immediately as it has no place in any game which depends on the support of thousands of fans.

Yours disgustedly,

Jon

P.S. The weather report is that today’s match is likely to be washed out by a thunder storm that is predicted for Durban. That’s the best thing that could happen as the game will be a washout whatever happens.

       

Cricket's 20/20 minnows getting raw deal

Dear Haroon Lorgat, Chief Executive of the International Cricket Council,

         You and the rest of your Council are bowling underhand googlies to the minnows of cricket. You can’t get more unfair than that?

         The Twenty 20 World Cup needs to be revamped completely.

         You opened this year’s tournament in Sri Lanka with a match that was complete rubbish because the teams were so mismatched. And spectators and millions of TV watchers around the world still had to look forward to another seven of these one sided games. 

         As the hosts Sri Lanka set the ball rolling with a pathetic match, which was hardly a great advertisement for this version of the game. They thrashed Zimbabwe by something like 80 runs in the format of the game where even the very best sides seldom score 200 in an innings.

This was followed by one humiliation after another for the lesser teams.

         Zimbabwe got an even bigger thumping in their second match when South Africa reached their meagre 93 without losing a wicket. So they found themselves knocked out completely when some teams hadn’t yet played a match.

Brendon Taylor & AB de Villiers

         Brendon Taylor Zim’s best batsman, his side’s wicket keeper and skipper made a duck against Sri Lanka and a miserable 3 facing South Africa. The Zimbabwe Herald described the batting as downright kindergarten stuff.

New Zealand beat Bangladesh by 59 runs. Ireland scraped together 123 for seven wickets, which was easily passed by Australia for the loss of just three wickets.

         Afghanistan showed a glimmer of hope for the underdogs against India. But deplorable catching let them down and they lost by 23 runs. In their next match against England the wheels came off completely with England hammering 196 for a win by 113 runs.

         You can imagine how these losers must have felt. Sorry I don’t think you can, otherwise you wouldn’t have put together such an unequal contest.

         The huge areas of vacant stands testified to how wrong you have got it. And for us TV watchers it was equally depressing seeing cart horses in the same races as high priced thoroughbreds.

         You start with four sections each consisting of two high power teams and one rabbit and they have to play one another in their sections to decide which eight go on to the next round. And as the rabbits have virtually no chance of winning, all they can realistically expect is to have their already poor self esteem crushed even further before being put on a plane home, when the tournament hasn't even reached the halfway stage.

         Is this really the best way to encourage the growth of cricket in the countries where it is still in its infancy?

         Why not have two parallel tournaments, one for the eight top ranked teams and the other one for the eight best minnows. This would introduce an element of real competition in all the matches and make it far more likely that all the games would be worth watching.

         And more importantly it would allow the members of the lesser teams to come away with their pride intact and a determination to go on promoting the game in their respective countries.

The International Rugby Board’s, Sevens World Series has got the right idea. It has a Cup Final with finals for lower level trophies so that teams of different standards have a reasonable chance of avoiding having to return home empty handed.

         Regards,

         Jon, MD of the Sports Ideas Factory, whose only knowledge of cricket is that a Chinaman is a ball that goes through the chink between the stumps.

P.S In the picture of South Africa’s captain AB de Villiers (in green) consoling Brendon Taylor, the Zim captain looks on the verge of tears like all of us. These matches were a crying shame and a blot on the game.