Rob Houwing

Cape Town – Ebullient health at Test and first-class level; definite signs of decline as a one-day force.

Heard that before, in terms of general summary of the state of South African cricket? You probably did only a few weeks ago, after the Proteas revealed a split personality in England, where they won the Test series, breaking a 43-year duck there, but were humiliated 4-0 in the ODI matches.

The phenomenon has quickly reared its head again, however, courtesy of the extended spring visit by a strong, motivated Sri Lanka ‘A’ side which ended at the weekend.

In many ways, the performances by the South African “second string” – ideally, the intended next-in-line players for the Proteas team – mirrored what happened in the English summer.

SA ‘A’ did very well to win the three-match unofficial “Test” series 1-0, but surrendered the follow-up one-dayers by a worrying 4-1 margin.

The outcome adds weight to national coach Mickey Arthur’s contention that the ‘A’ side not only requires more game-time but a full-time coach as well.

Batting depth, in particular, appears not to be a problem in a broad national context at present – the young South Africans won the series of four-day matches primarily on the grounds of strong performances in this department.

Particularly to the fore were Andrew Puttick (444 runs in the three games at 111), and Arno Jacobs (250 at 83), both of whom registered two centuries along the way.

Few opportunities

A little regrettably for these two, the entire South African Test batting line-up is a bit of a closed shop at present – especially assuming Jacques Kallis bounces back forcefully from his rare England disaster – with JP Duminy waiting patiently as next man in should a vacancy occur.

It would probably be unfair for either Puttick or Jacobs, for instance, to jump Duminy in the queue as the diminutive left-hander gets few opportunities of his own to score heavily at present, given his more “towel-over-shoulder” presence in Graeme Smith’s senior Test squad.

In the one-day matches, the big SA ‘A’ batting “mover” was Gulam Bodi, whose 303 runs in four appearances came at 75.75 and a strike rate nudging 90 – it was exactly what the doctor ordered for the dashing boundary-hitter as he seeks to add to his mere two ODI caps for the Proteas.

Whether it is as an opener or not, this crowd-pleaser must be accommodated somewhere, as South Africa contemplate the looming visits of weak Kenya and Bangladesh – perfect opportunities to get some fresh faces bedded down in a side not nearly as well-staffed in hurricane “finishers” or six-smackers as it used to be.

But the one-dayers against Sri Lanka ‘A’ also revealed that the country’s all-round bowling depth isn’t what it should be.

Averages don’t lie and, of the supposedly front-line SA ‘A’ bowlers, all of them sported economy rates in excess of five runs to the over – not the sort of stuff to suggest there are too many faces immediately knocking down the door to replace bowlers embarrassingly bludgeoned by Andrew Flintoff and company in the English ODIs.

Not chosen

There were glimpses, it seems, of what is to come from the SA Under-19 captain Wayne Parnell, who took seven wickets and averaged acceptably well under 30 – remember that the left-armer from the Eastern Cape is still only a couple of months into his 19th year.

Few other seamers truly put their hands up although Lonwabo Tsotsobe, another left-arm customer, grabbed 12 wickets at 19.33 in the “Tests” and was not chosen for the one-dayers.

Sadly the big spring loser has been Thandi Tshabalala, the little Eagles off-spinner who took South African cricket by storm when he first burst onto the franchise scene with his refreshing willingness to toss the ball up rather than just spear in it monotonously.

This is his fourth first-class season and it has started disastrously: he claimed 4/277 at a burdensome average of 69.25 in two of the “Tests” against the spin-wise Sri Lankan tourists, and went for 138 runs, wicketless, in 21 overs in the one-dayers.

These are not the sort of statistics to shake up the off-spinning incumbent in the Proteas’ ODI side, Johan Botha, one of few South African bowlers to fare reasonably well amidst the England debacle.