At face value, and scorecard value, SA’s warm-up game against a Cricket Australia XI has gone rather well. Rassie van der Dussen and Theunis de Bruyn, thought to be competing for the No 3 spot in the batting line-up before the squad departed, were both in the runs on Sunday and may have done enough to earn a place each in the middle order.
Van der Dussen made 95 from 184 balls while De Bruyn delivered a rather different sort of innings with 88 from 86 balls, including 11 fours and two sixes. The former had been even more determined to grind out “traditional” Test runs in the first innings with 27 from 81 balls, while De Bruyn whacked a six and four during his breezy, run-a-ball 13.
Despite the current England team reinventing the way Test cricket is played after 140 years of a largely conservative approach, it isn’t for everyone. First, you need to be good enough to score at six runs per over. Second, you need the backing of your captain and coach to sell your wicket cheaply from time to time. And third, you need to be playing 16 or 17 Tests per year so you can afford a couple of low scores in the knowledge that your next chance is just a couple of weeks away.
Nonetheless, it does seem obvious that any visiting team’s chances of success in Australia in recent years have increased exponentially the more they are prepared to be brave and counterattack. Old-fashioned Test cricket, demanding an attritional approach of patient defence, has almost always led to doom and defeat in Australia, especially in recent years. At least if it is the team’s collective approach.
India’s dramatic and memorable series win there two years ago featured Cheteshwar Pujara playing “punchbag” at one end for more than 12 hours during the series, drawing as much fire as possible from Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, while Rishabh Pant and Washington Sundar, among others, launched daring counteroffensives at critical moments, making plain that fear of failure was not an issue. And just as importantly, neither was the fear of success as they came closer and closer to becoming the first Indian team to win Down Under.
Perhaps Van der Dussen sees himself in the Pujara role in the forthcoming series starting at the Gabba in Brisbane on Saturday. And perhaps De Bruyn believes he has nothing to lose and will back himself to take on the most experienced attack of all time — Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood and spinner Nathan Lyon present the only foursome in history to play together with more than 200 Test wickets each. If so, we should be in for some compelling viewing.
Dean Elgar must be SA’s rock of stability. He will not be dictated to and has more than enough experience and ability to keep the scoreboard moving without extravagant risk. His opening partner, Sarel Erwee, will first have to weather the Australian verbal storm before finding his feet on his first encounter against them. He is SA’s most unconfrontational top-order batsman since Andrew Hudson. He might make that work in his favour, but significant runs from him will be a bonus.
And what of Temba Bavuma? The vice-captain has not played a first-class match for more than six months and was rested for the Lions’ two four-day matches before departure for Brisbane. The reason, we were told, was an understandable need to take a break from the game after the trauma of the T20 World Cup debacle. But then he did not bat in the first innings at the Allan Border Field. We were told it was a “precaution” because of the elbow injury which ruled him out of the tour of England.
There is a lot that doesn’t add up. Was Bavuma physically fit to play for the Lions? Was he fit to board the plane for Brisbane? Was his “old” injury less serious than Ryan Rickelton’s two-year-old ankle injury which precluded him from selection but which has allowed him to keep wicket and score two centuries in the games which Bavuma was rested for — and another 99 two days ago in the Cricket SA One-Day Cup?
If there are double standards at play, that’s not unusual in any sport, in any country — although SA’s selectors are more hamstrung by administration than most others. They have occasionally been quite smart about the deception required for public consumption. On this occasion, however, it would seem only right and fair — not least to Bavuma himself — to be transparent about his fitness and not to compromise his reputation and career by going above sensible protocols in order to have him in the starting XI in Brisbane on Saturday.
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