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Rob Houwing
Throw around the “oh, it was only West Indies” dampening view as much as you like: I believe the Proteas clearly demonstrated in their Caribbean series triumph that they are likely to seize back, not long from now, status as ICC leading-ranked side in Test cricket.
Heavily distracted like so many others by the soccer World Cup of late, every time I nevertheless watched coverage of their 2-0 victory in the three-Test series, which brought the curtain down on a gruelling two-month visit for several players, I was struck by the intensity and urgency with which Graeme Smith and company went about their business.
Make no mistake, this West Indies team remains largely gormless and awful, unfit to tie the proverbial bootlaces of those who made them such a fearsome outfit in the late 1970s and 1980s.
But if you’re the heavily favoured side, as the Proteas clearly were on their well nigh hiding-to-nothing mission, you’ve still got to hand out that hiding and it is precisely what they did, even if they were always going to struggle to complete a “sweep” courtesy of the pathetic, detrimental-to-the-code featherbed at St Kitts for the middle Test.
There are plenty of questions still to answer and holes to fill in terms of South Africa’s ODI game, despite the parallel levels of success in the Caribbean, but if the Test side has problems they are mostly of the notably pleasant kind.
It is a smooth-firing and well-balanced unit and ought to stay that way, frankly, for the next few months at a very minimum.
Indeed, I envisage the Proteas returning to No 1 by early January, once the third and final Test of a tasty home series with India (the only team presently ahead of them on the rankings ladder) has been completed over the traditional New Year period at Newlands.
Australia, of course, are breathing closely down South Africa’s necks in third, but they entertain England – a country feeling pretty chipper about their cricket generally at present -- in an Ashes series at roughly the same time, and also come head to head with India (away) a bit before that.
The Indians have lost in all four Test series they’ve played on our soil, and boast only one match success, when that animated paceman Sree Sreesanth caught South Africa rather cold in the first Test of the last series at the Wanderers before the Proteas struck back forcefully.
I see no special reason to suggest normal service will not prevail, after a tough enough scrap, especially as Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel (the latter suddenly landing the ball wonderfully routinely on a tickey!) are now opening up quite a gap on any pretenders as best regular new-ball force in world cricket.
Another pleasant poser on the bowling front is Johan Botha’s emergence in Barbados as a wicket-taking factor to significantly threaten Paul Harris’s mantle as senior spinner.
The latter averaged a bloated 71.60 (five wickets for 358) in the West Indies, comfortably outdone even by the home side’s Sulieman Benn and Shane Shillingford in that specific area.
For all that, Harris’s main task tends to be to bottle up an end with a fairly heavy workload while the faster men strike in salvoes at the other – and despite his battle for scalps the left-armer’s economy rate stayed well within the three-runs-to-the-over mark.
Keep in mind that South Africa played this entire series without their young first-change seamer Wayne Parnell and in his absence the evergreen Kallis, in Barbados, wound the clock back many years to sometimes bowl at the sort of pace he used to in his development years with Western Province when he was sometimes entrusted with the cherry at its most gleaming.
At one stage in the slightly tetchy Kensington Oval Test he came within spitting distance (perhaps I shouldn’t have said that?) on several occasions to hitting the 150km/h mark and bowling bouncers able to clear the stand-up height of the Andries Bekker-like Benn, a player who unusually riled a few senior Proteas over the past few weeks.
With Smith putting a personally stuttering one-day series behind him to average 61.83 at the top of the order and Kallis, AB de Villiers and Ashwell Prince positively imperious in the middle slots – bad news for the time being for JP Duminy – the Proteas didn’t even need Alviro Petersen and Hashim Amla, the occupants of positions two and three, to be at their best.
I had suspected Amla was due for a correction of sorts after his run of astonishing achievements prior to this Test series, and have no doubt the bounce-back will come sooner rather than later.
Petersen has not yet made an opening spot his own, keeping people like Dean Elgar not too far from contention, but has still only played four Test matches (average 34 at present) and fully warrants another stab at the job, I think, when the Proteas play Pakistan in a short series next in the neutral United Arab Emirates.
If the collective machine isn’t broken, why expend too much energy trying to “fix” it?
Rob is Sport24's chief writer
Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.
Throw around the “oh, it was only West Indies” dampening view as much as you like: I believe the Proteas clearly demonstrated in their Caribbean series triumph that they are likely to seize back, not long from now, status as ICC leading-ranked side in Test cricket.
Heavily distracted like so many others by the soccer World Cup of late, every time I nevertheless watched coverage of their 2-0 victory in the three-Test series, which brought the curtain down on a gruelling two-month visit for several players, I was struck by the intensity and urgency with which Graeme Smith and company went about their business.
Make no mistake, this West Indies team remains largely gormless and awful, unfit to tie the proverbial bootlaces of those who made them such a fearsome outfit in the late 1970s and 1980s.
But if you’re the heavily favoured side, as the Proteas clearly were on their well nigh hiding-to-nothing mission, you’ve still got to hand out that hiding and it is precisely what they did, even if they were always going to struggle to complete a “sweep” courtesy of the pathetic, detrimental-to-the-code featherbed at St Kitts for the middle Test.
There are plenty of questions still to answer and holes to fill in terms of South Africa’s ODI game, despite the parallel levels of success in the Caribbean, but if the Test side has problems they are mostly of the notably pleasant kind.
It is a smooth-firing and well-balanced unit and ought to stay that way, frankly, for the next few months at a very minimum.
Indeed, I envisage the Proteas returning to No 1 by early January, once the third and final Test of a tasty home series with India (the only team presently ahead of them on the rankings ladder) has been completed over the traditional New Year period at Newlands.
Australia, of course, are breathing closely down South Africa’s necks in third, but they entertain England – a country feeling pretty chipper about their cricket generally at present -- in an Ashes series at roughly the same time, and also come head to head with India (away) a bit before that.
The Indians have lost in all four Test series they’ve played on our soil, and boast only one match success, when that animated paceman Sree Sreesanth caught South Africa rather cold in the first Test of the last series at the Wanderers before the Proteas struck back forcefully.
I see no special reason to suggest normal service will not prevail, after a tough enough scrap, especially as Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel (the latter suddenly landing the ball wonderfully routinely on a tickey!) are now opening up quite a gap on any pretenders as best regular new-ball force in world cricket.
Another pleasant poser on the bowling front is Johan Botha’s emergence in Barbados as a wicket-taking factor to significantly threaten Paul Harris’s mantle as senior spinner.
The latter averaged a bloated 71.60 (five wickets for 358) in the West Indies, comfortably outdone even by the home side’s Sulieman Benn and Shane Shillingford in that specific area.
For all that, Harris’s main task tends to be to bottle up an end with a fairly heavy workload while the faster men strike in salvoes at the other – and despite his battle for scalps the left-armer’s economy rate stayed well within the three-runs-to-the-over mark.
Keep in mind that South Africa played this entire series without their young first-change seamer Wayne Parnell and in his absence the evergreen Kallis, in Barbados, wound the clock back many years to sometimes bowl at the sort of pace he used to in his development years with Western Province when he was sometimes entrusted with the cherry at its most gleaming.
At one stage in the slightly tetchy Kensington Oval Test he came within spitting distance (perhaps I shouldn’t have said that?) on several occasions to hitting the 150km/h mark and bowling bouncers able to clear the stand-up height of the Andries Bekker-like Benn, a player who unusually riled a few senior Proteas over the past few weeks.
With Smith putting a personally stuttering one-day series behind him to average 61.83 at the top of the order and Kallis, AB de Villiers and Ashwell Prince positively imperious in the middle slots – bad news for the time being for JP Duminy – the Proteas didn’t even need Alviro Petersen and Hashim Amla, the occupants of positions two and three, to be at their best.
I had suspected Amla was due for a correction of sorts after his run of astonishing achievements prior to this Test series, and have no doubt the bounce-back will come sooner rather than later.
Petersen has not yet made an opening spot his own, keeping people like Dean Elgar not too far from contention, but has still only played four Test matches (average 34 at present) and fully warrants another stab at the job, I think, when the Proteas play Pakistan in a short series next in the neutral United Arab Emirates.
If the collective machine isn’t broken, why expend too much energy trying to “fix” it?
Rob is Sport24's chief writer
Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.
