The pace and manner of Gary Kirsten’s rise to the status of World Cup winner remains one of the more remarkable coaching stories of the past 25 years.
Nominated from part-time consulting obscurity and then hastily appointed to the biggest job in the world, head coach of Team India, he was being hoisted onto the shoulders of the players at the Wankhede Stadium on April 2, 2011, as a national hero.
A few short months later he was taking over the reins of his home country, persuaded to try to reproduce the magic, Midas touch. His first assignment was a three-Test series — against India. Cricket, among all sports, is especially good at irony.
More of the same wasn’t lost on Rob Walter, who stepped aside as SA’s white-ball coach to return to New Zealand, the country which had offered him his first big coaching break a decade ago, only to face many of the same SA players he had been working with just a few months ago in his first assignment with the Black Caps.
Yet more irony came in the composition of the Proteas squad with at least seven first-choice players missing, a situation he had become accustomed to in his two years in green and gold.
His successor, Shukri Conrad, boldly declared that all the best players would be compulsorily available for selection under his regime. Not so. And Walter’s new team duly inflicted a whopping 21-run defeat on Conrad’s second-stringers.
The Triangular T20I series now reaching its conclusion in Zimbabwe provides exactly the sort of testing ground for Conrad’s new-look squad as Walter had for a year.
Walter’s team lost games to Ireland and a series to Afghanistan, which upset everyone and they pointed the finger of blame at the coach. The criticism, often unfair and uninformed, contributed to Walter’s decision to leave.
There may have been a hint of jingoistic populism in Conrad’s promise of full-strength teams but there is far more to be gained by playing Lhuan-dre Pretorius and Dewald Brevis in the top order than Aiden Markram and David Miller. Same with Kwena Maphaka, Rubin Hermann and Nqaba Peter.
Conrad, just like Walter last year, needs to find the balance between broadening the base of cricketers with international experience and still winning — hence, presumably, his selection of 36-year-old Rassie van der Dussen as captain and the inclusion of 35-year-old Reeza Hendricks.
Van der Dussen is a smart choice as the squad’s elder brother. Smart, experienced and empathetic, he commands natural respect. He is also, unusually for a professional sportsman, largely egoless: “I’m keen to keep contributing but I’m not the sort of guy to keep playing when there’s younger players below me who deserve to be in the team,” he said before the tour.
Two days ago Van der Dussen said the Proteas would now be treating the remaining two games against New Zealand as part of a three-game series in which they are one-nil down. Today’s match is their final league game before Saturday’s final with hosts Zimbabwe already eliminated.
For all the mixing, matching and rotating of the squad, Conrad always has a plan — or plans. It will take time for him to find his feet in the white-ball formats, especially T20, but he decides quickly which players he likes and which are not his “sort” of cricketer.
That was plainly evident in the meticulous way he managed the route to the World Test Championship final. The focus from the outside was on the many excellent selection decisions he made. Had the campaign not been so gloriously successful, more attention may have been paid to some of the players who fell, or were left, by the wayside.
We can watch and ponder what his ODI and T20 strategy may be over the next two months with tours to Australia and England, in both formats, in August and September. But we have already witnessed his plotting for the future with the selection of spinners Senuran Muthusamy and Prenelan Subrayen, both 31, for the second Test against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. Both have played a lot of cricket and are well above average batters.
SA’s next Test cricket takes place in Pakistan and India in October and November. They should probably make sure their diaries are clear.
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