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With the Proteas’ season officially starting with the first of three one-day internationals against Zimbabwe in Kimberley this morning, coach Ottis Gibson has made all the right noises about his focus only being on the visitors.
But the rest of South Africa will be obsessing about what his team needs to get right over the next 16 one-dayers to be genuine contenders at the World Cup in England next year. Gibson shared five things he’d like to see come together over the next eight months:
Senior players must show up
To win the World Cup, you’re going to need a strong core of senior players as well as some of the exciting younger players we’ve identified and, ultimately, what we need is that group of players to catch form. It’s like anything, you have to peak at the right time to have a real impact at the World Cup.
Looking at the cricket that we’ve played over the last while, one of the things is I don’t think we’ve had the volume of runs we would have liked, so we need our best players to be in form and take responsibility for the runs that we’re going to need to win. We know that, going into England, guys will bat a lot in situations up front where the ball might do a little bit earlier on – especially if you play a day game that starts at 10am – than later on in the afternoon. The guys at the top of the order might end up having to face a lot of balls to get into it, and the thing for us is not to panic under pressure, knowing that we have a very strong engine room in the middle order; guys who can clear the ropes.
All-rounder spots still available, but Morris’ fitness is key
From our all-rounders’ point of view, we’ve identified a couple of all-rounders. [Andile] Phehlukwayo has played a lot of games and [Wiaan] Mulder’s a very good young player. Robbie Frylinck’s got an opportunity in the T20 format and Chris Morris has been away because he’s battled with injuries. We know that, if he’s fit, he’s an X-factor player for us, so we’re hoping that he can stay fit this year because he can become quite an important figure for us. Vernon Philander is still in the picture as well. Those are the all-rounders and we’d like to see how they stack up this season. Even if they don’t get an opportunity in the next two games, they need to understand they’re still in the picture and franchise form could still feature in getting them a World Cup spot.
Rabada-Ngidi partnership must grow
[Kagiso] Rabada and [Lungi] Ngidi as a partnership worked very well in Sri Lanka, so that’s something we’ll try to nurture to make it stronger. It’s good to see Dale Steyn back, and then we’ve got two quality spinners [in Imran Tahir and Tabraiz Shamsi]. We’ve seen India dominate one-day cricket in the past 12 months with two wrist spinners and we have two spinners who are of similar quality, which is exciting for us.
Fielding is non-negotiable
One of the things we can do much better certainly is fielding. We’ve got quite a few guys nursing sore shoulders. The World Cup could come down to a run-out, so we need to make sure that we’re as good a fielding group as any other fielding team in the world. Over the next eight months, we want to make ourselves into one of the best fielding groups in the world. We also want to practise position-specific fielding to effect run-outs and take our catches because it could come down to a brilliant catch or getting a guy to be in the right place to do something spectacular to win us a game.
Clarity of roles is crucial
It’s going to be important for guys to be clear what their roles are and what their value is to the team, so they can to execute. We’ll create the opportunity for guys to play the role that they are most likely to play at the World Cup. So we’ll keep guys practising and playing the roles they’ll be playing at the World Cup so that, when it comes, we’re not really asking the guys to do something they’ve not done before.
