Balls to the ODI Wall in Cairns
And scratching the Nqaba itch
South Africa might become the first team to score 500 if the batsmen are able to live up to Shukri Conrad’s assertion that there isn’t much difference between the T20 and ODI formats. If they score at the rate they managed in the second T20 they should get there easily. Temba Bavuma and his team have a big ask ahead of them.
“There’s not too much of a mental re-set, the formats are so close together. We’ve got five new faces and a different leader in Temba, another all rounder in Wiaan Mulder, Keshav is still a champion spinner. You’ve just got more time to score more runs and take more wickets. But the intensity with which you play, I don’t think that changes at all,” Conrad said soon after the final T20 which Glenn Maxwell won off the penultimate ball with just two wickets in hand.
He also confirmed that the eyebrow-raising selection in the second game, which saw four specialist bowlers selected with Kagiso Rabada batting at number eight, was necessarily ‘brave’ in order to beat a team like Australia. He’s always been open about his desire for allrounders at Test level – Wiaan Mulder was re-treaded as a number three to fit into the XI along with Marco Jansen – but the same does not apply in the shortest format.
“Stats tell us that number eights in T20 cricket only face seven or eight balls on average and KG’s strike rate is pretty good. The top six batters are your main players and they need to get the job done,” Conrad said. But all rounders in T20 cricket are like sleeping tablets for coping with jetlag. You don’t necessarily have to use them, but they provide reassuring peace of mind…just in case.
Bavuma has been using his since arriving five days ago, a week ahead of the first ODI in Cairns on Tuesday: “They have certainly helped, almost there, the 3:00am wake-ups have been getting later by an hour each day,” he said after a solo batting session against half a dozen local net bowlers. The rest of the squad had been offered, and taken, the day off but the Proteas captain is a conscientious cricketer and knew he needed an hour of bat-on-ball. The Barrier Reef will have to wait. Probably for another lifetime.
An unexpected but familiar face showed up for the final T20. Head coach of the Queensland Bulls in the Sheffield Shield and Brisbane Heat in the Big Bash, former Proteas allrounder, Johan Botha, who was granted Australian citizenship in a lightning fast four years after emigrating and playing BBL for the Adelaide Strikers.
The impression in his home country was one of desperation – was he really ‘so’ keen to forsake his motherland to become an Aussie? No. “It was more a case of the team needing me to play as a local,” he said with a grin. Asked on air with ABC radio during the innings break whether he had divided loyalties, he replied: “Absolutely not. I’m behind South Africa one hundred percent,” he replied in an accent unchanged an iota since he left. “Many things change, but that’s not going to be one of them,” he chuckled.
In the absence of the broken-handed Graeme Smith Botha captained South Africa to Australia’s heaviest ODI series defeat on home soil in 2009 when the Proteas won 4-1, clinching the series on Australia Day at the Adelaide Oval to douse an ebullience of national fervour. His figures were a remarkable 2-28 from 10 overs. “One of the proudest days of my international career,” he says, irrepressible grin returning.
The second of his two children was born in Australia and he concedes that both of them are ‘completely Australian’ but “when you play for your country for 12 years you can’t just switch sides.” Three wickets apiece for Dale Steyn and Makhaya Ntini helped dismiss the hosts for just 222 in that game with Botha strangling hopes of a revival. Hashim Amla (80*) and AB de Villiers (82*) finished the job with 12 overs to spare. Albie Morkel had earlier delivered innings of 40 from 20 and 21 balls to win at the MCG and the SCG, scoring rates which were a long way ahead of their time.
I finished the day by scratching an itch: Nqaba Peter. Actually, we chatted for 40 minutes rather than me scratching him. The 23-year-old leg-spinner from East London has fascinated me since emerging from ‘nowhere’ two years ago to a place in the Proteas squad via ‘top wicket-taker’ in the CSA T20. Where was ‘nowhere’? How did it happen? It’s top stuff.
The conventional approach on this forum would be to put my chat with Nqaba behind a paywall. I’d still rather maintain the current format. But, dear readers, they charge like wounded buffalo for a coffee in this country and my budgeted loss for the tour would benefit from a few Americanos. Even better, a monthly subscription is only one £4 coffee… Nqaba will be with you soon.