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Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – In the claustrophobic and especially fast-moving environment of Twenty20 cricket, the best and most ambitious teams tend to show unwavering aggression, commitment and nimbleness in the field.
Part of the secret to being the proverbial “machine”, after all, is to look sprightly and hungry as a collective.
In an arena quite obviously tailor-made for explosive individual feats, the complementary aspect of accomplished fielding is the one area where “teamwork” still gets the purest opportunity to reveal itself.
Killer diving, lethal throwing, clinical and supremely alert backing-up … they are part of the package, and sometimes key, yet under-appreciated influencers of results in ding-dong encounters.
In a process that arguably began in earnest in the Hansie Cronje captaincy era, and with the indefatigable Jonty Rhodes as the standout beacon, South Africa basked in decent periods of acknowledged supremacy in the fielding area in limited-overs cricket.
Then Herschelle Gibbs grabbed the baton, and the positive “virus” quickly infected the likes of AB de Villiers, too.
Players like these have been the torch-bearers, their fire tending to spread through the ranks, lifting the in-the-field standards of virtually all around them.
And yet, watching the Proteas succumb to India at Gros Islet in their ICC World Twenty20 opener on Sunday – a result leaving them with a must-win against rookies Afghanistan three days later – only increased my suspicion, in recent months, that a bit of that fielding potency as a unit has snuck off into a corner somewhere.
It probably doesn’t help that South Africa presently carry a few “big units” in their ranks – some of whom happen also to be among their most brilliant, most valuable and most proven performers, and are also, in one or two cases, falling unavoidably foul of the creeping ravages of age.
That is something we, and the team, must live with.
But the addition to the ranks on Sunday of all-rounder Rory Kleinveldt – “He has had a few issues with his weight,” is the way Cricinfo diplomatically put it in their player profile of him – may only have fuelled perceptions that there a few too many buffaloes in the current side and a decreasing stock of whippets.
So it is ironic that in a 36-year-old may lie a potential balance-restorer for the remainder of this event (one would like to assume that South Africa have duly advanced to the Super Eight, come the early hours of Thursday morning, our time).
But I believe it is a not unimportant reason why Herschelle Gibbs – yes, mercurial, irritating, likeable, inconsistent, mortal and immortal Gibbs – must re-enter the picture, probably at the expense of Loots Bosman.
The latter’s batting attributes are more suited to the world’s faster and truer pitches: not these generally niggly, gripping Caribbean surfaces of slow death where you cannot play through the line with ease or confidence and funny little 100km/h seam bowlers come into their wobbly, off-cutting own.
Crease-wise, you can never be sure these days whether Gibbs will “turn up”, of course, but he has a history of relishing global limited-overs jamborees and memories of his “six sixes” destruction job on the Netherlands’ Daan van Bunge on West Indian soil at the 2007 World Cup-proper remain pleasantly fresh.
But the best thing about Gibbs is that, if his batting is now less than a “constant”, his fielding remains very much that: absolutely top-drawer, in fact.
He can restore some sparkle and energy to the team there, and it is necessary.
Cape Town – In the claustrophobic and especially fast-moving environment of Twenty20 cricket, the best and most ambitious teams tend to show unwavering aggression, commitment and nimbleness in the field.
Part of the secret to being the proverbial “machine”, after all, is to look sprightly and hungry as a collective.
In an arena quite obviously tailor-made for explosive individual feats, the complementary aspect of accomplished fielding is the one area where “teamwork” still gets the purest opportunity to reveal itself.
Killer diving, lethal throwing, clinical and supremely alert backing-up … they are part of the package, and sometimes key, yet under-appreciated influencers of results in ding-dong encounters.
In a process that arguably began in earnest in the Hansie Cronje captaincy era, and with the indefatigable Jonty Rhodes as the standout beacon, South Africa basked in decent periods of acknowledged supremacy in the fielding area in limited-overs cricket.
Then Herschelle Gibbs grabbed the baton, and the positive “virus” quickly infected the likes of AB de Villiers, too.
Players like these have been the torch-bearers, their fire tending to spread through the ranks, lifting the in-the-field standards of virtually all around them.
And yet, watching the Proteas succumb to India at Gros Islet in their ICC World Twenty20 opener on Sunday – a result leaving them with a must-win against rookies Afghanistan three days later – only increased my suspicion, in recent months, that a bit of that fielding potency as a unit has snuck off into a corner somewhere.
It probably doesn’t help that South Africa presently carry a few “big units” in their ranks – some of whom happen also to be among their most brilliant, most valuable and most proven performers, and are also, in one or two cases, falling unavoidably foul of the creeping ravages of age.
That is something we, and the team, must live with.
But the addition to the ranks on Sunday of all-rounder Rory Kleinveldt – “He has had a few issues with his weight,” is the way Cricinfo diplomatically put it in their player profile of him – may only have fuelled perceptions that there a few too many buffaloes in the current side and a decreasing stock of whippets.
So it is ironic that in a 36-year-old may lie a potential balance-restorer for the remainder of this event (one would like to assume that South Africa have duly advanced to the Super Eight, come the early hours of Thursday morning, our time).
But I believe it is a not unimportant reason why Herschelle Gibbs – yes, mercurial, irritating, likeable, inconsistent, mortal and immortal Gibbs – must re-enter the picture, probably at the expense of Loots Bosman.
The latter’s batting attributes are more suited to the world’s faster and truer pitches: not these generally niggly, gripping Caribbean surfaces of slow death where you cannot play through the line with ease or confidence and funny little 100km/h seam bowlers come into their wobbly, off-cutting own.
Crease-wise, you can never be sure these days whether Gibbs will “turn up”, of course, but he has a history of relishing global limited-overs jamborees and memories of his “six sixes” destruction job on the Netherlands’ Daan van Bunge on West Indian soil at the 2007 World Cup-proper remain pleasantly fresh.
But the best thing about Gibbs is that, if his batting is now less than a “constant”, his fielding remains very much that: absolutely top-drawer, in fact.
He can restore some sparkle and energy to the team there, and it is necessary.
