Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer

Potchefstroom – It was bleak and blustery in the North West town as this was penned, but Herschelle Gibbs should have been here. He really should have been here.

Forget for a moment the not irrelevant fact that the good-time lights of Potch are, with respect, a little dimmer than they may be at some of the cricketer’s known favourite off-duty haunts. (Which might not be a bad thing, given present circumstances.)

But no, Gibbs should have been here primarily because the three ODIs against Bangladesh, which began with the fixture at Senwes Park, represented a really succulent final opportunity, pre-Australia, for Gibbs to confirm his right to an ongoing place in South Africa’s limited-overs plans.

His Test days are almost certainly over, we know that. The 34-year-old doesn’t quite fancy it around the ears or nipping off the seam as much as he used to, and JP Duminy is next in line – almost bashing at the door with an axe, in fact -- for a batting spot in the presently jealously bolted five-day line-up.

But it has been hoped in Cricket South Africa circles, and rightly so, that Gibbs would persevere successfully enough in ODIs to make it through to a swansong World Cup on the Subcontinent in 2011.

He tends to do well there, after all. Of his 20 ODI centuries in 234 appearances, five of them, and innumerable other weighty knocks, have come in those parts of the planet.

It is a paradise for the instant-cricket flat-track bully and, on his day, the swashbuckling right-hander can still blitz the ball way, way off the park almost like no other: ask an array of nations, from lofty Australia through to lean Holland.

Provide stability

The Proteas’ one-day team is in transition, and it needed to be after the 0-4 humiliation in England. It cried out for new blood, but whenever that requirement arises, you also need a few old-stagers to stick around and provide stability.

And then there is the matter of boundary-hitters: the reshaping SA side, simply, lacks them. Or, to put it another way, doesn’t currently have as many, right down the order, as it once did.

On a good day, even if their frequency is subsiding, Gibbs is your Mr Fixit in this department, and then some.

Not surprisingly, maybe, he has been in a bit of a no-man’s land of late; it has been difficult to gauge, on form grounds, whether his international CV can, in fact, continue to be fattened as far ahead as to 2011.

He has not managed a century in 10 ODIs, and scores of 44 and two in his last two against the even more impoverished Kenya certainly represented a missed opportunity. Which made his banishment from the Bangladeshi games all the more detrimental from his point of view, even before we begin to consider saddening external factors.

The venue here, after all, formerly known as Sedgars Park, has traditionally been a very happy hunting ground for him against minnow nations.

Ill-fated

In 2002, when last these teams met in Potchefstroom, Gibbs went wild in all the right ways: his 153 came off just 131 balls with 17 fours and three sixes. It was one of those “gee, you should have been there” matches.

It is also where, at the otherwise ill-fated 2003 World Cup for South Africa, he clubbed 87 not out off 66 balls against Kenya. A heady, heady brew.

So if Gibbs has been skating on fairly thin ice form-wise, here was a perfect opportunity to get into a good space, as they say, for the Aussie trip.

Only Gibbs is not in a good space. We know that for certain now – even if there’d been plenty of ammunition for conjecture before - after CSA, revealingly publicly, informed that he would be “required to attend an alcohol rehabilitation course”.

So it is officially in the public realm that he has been spinning out of control, even if you might have already put two and two together quite assuredly in your own minds.

He has been reaching with undue zest for the jar, and it is not one marked “cookies”.

Gibbs is an enigma, wrapped in a contradiction. He is a compass that either ensures good courses or goes crazy; a GPS, to use more modern lingo, that is alternately focused and orderly like his wardrobe at home and then ziggy-zaggy haywire.

For all those who impatiently and maybe maliciously spit that he is quite the opposite of a role model, I can tell you that when his planets are in a reasonably serene line, there are no sports stars who eclipse him for putting a radiant smile on a hospitalised child’s face: that I have had the goose-pimply pleasure of seeing with my own eyes.

I cannot believe his “issues” are insurmountable. He may not have reached a point of no return. If he had, you would not see him so often at the local gym, working feverishly and obsessively – yes, even incredibly recently – to keep his body in good nick.

He may well still be his country’s best and most reflex-blessed fielder, for crying out loud!

Crossroads in his life

Some people want CSA to unceremoniously tear up his contract. They say, and there is no disputing it, that he has been a naughty boy umpteen times before. Well, some crowd-pleasing sportspeople are like that for their entire careers.

Circumstances, I would suggest, are slightly different for Gibbs at this point. He has reached the most challenging crossroads in his life - because the whole world now knows he has.

I think we should wish him well at this difficult and critical time. I know I do.

Cricket still needs him. A lot of people in cricket still want him.

C’mon, Hersch, off-drive a demon or two, irretrievably.

Get with the CSA lifeline. Get with their recommended course of action …