Time for change at the top
Stuart Hess
December 19 2006 at 09:12AM South Africa captain Graeme Smith has said his team "need to start showing a bit of character in the Test format" after the first Test triumph by an India side in this country.
A glum Smith said the 123-run defeat was "hurtful" for all the team, adding that they would have to improve a "hell of a lot" before the second Test, which starts in Durban on Boxing Day.
The top-order batting is a massive concern no matter that, as Smith insisted on stating continuously on Monday, it was a problem that afflicted both teams during this match.
The fact is South Africa lost this first Test by a big margin, so the onus is solely on them to find a means to improve that aspect of their team.
Herschelle Gibbs's two dismissals came after atrocious shot selection, while Smith himself stumbled about with little elegance during his two visits to the crease.
With an inexperienced player at number three, the South Africans can ill-afford to make the kind of calamitous starts that have become the norm recently in Tests.
A strong message has to be sent by the national selectors. For if they could dump Boeta Dippenaar from the one-day side after three poor performances, then surely they must do the same with Gibbs now, who has had a string of poor performances with the bat going back nearly two years. In fact, it has been 30 innings since his last hundred, during which time he has managed just five scores over 50.
National selection convener Haroon Lorgat, who on Monday said that Titans left-arm spinner Paul Harris would be called into the squad for the Kingsmead Test, added the make-up of South Africa's opening combination would be discussed in the next few days. "We will have to talk hard about what our alternatives are at the top of the order," said Lorgat.
With no further changes being made to the squad on Monday, the only two alternatives are Jacques Rudolph and possibly moving AB de Villiers back to opener.
Frankly, the latter shouldn't even be a topic of the conversation, because as talented a player as De Villiers is, he has been shunted about the batting order far too much for one so young. He should be made to stay at six, and Rudolph should rather be restored to the opening berth.
On Monday, the only South African batsman to have shown any application in this Test, Ashwell Prince, fell agonisingly short of a fifth Test hundred.
After Mark Boucher's dismissal to the 15th ball of the morning, Prince finally found in Shaun Pollock a colleague ready to carry the fight to the Indians, and for a little more than an hour the pair held the tourists at bay.
Pollock played some enterprising strokes, but the failings of the top order meant the task in front of them was simply too large.
After Pollock's departure, Prince went in search of his century with some gusto, carving Vikram Singh to all parts of the ground as he came to within three runs of the landmark.
He was out charging leg-spinner Anil Kumble, but his five-and-a-half hour vigil was a clear example to his team-mates as to how to go about constructing a Test innings, something the other members of the top order have certainly forgotten.
India's performance after their capitulation in the one-day series deserves credit. Much like the Australians did last season when they lost the "438" match, the Indians re-gathered themselves, and they came out fighting here.
Their captain, Rahul Dravid, said that while they anticipated a fiercely aggressive South African team, they were not going to copy their opponents' methods of attack.
"We don't have guys that can bowl at 150km/h all the time, or who are big guys, so we have to concentrate on our strengths.
"Those include swinging the ball and bowling in the right areas, and that's what we did in this game," he said.
Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, an energetic and fiery character in the mould of Andre Nel, deservedly grabbed the honours as the match's most influential player, with match analysis of 8-99, and has put himself squarely in the sights of the South African batsmen for the rest of the series.
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AuthorTopic: What the South African papers said. (Read 528 times)
March 30, 2006, 07:55:28 PM