Cricket South Africa must not allow their succession plan to be clouded by panic, writes Alasdair Fraser.
It’s been a winter of discontent for Proteas fans with Faf du Plessis’ men finishing in the bottom half of the 10-team tournament.
Many South Africans had looked forward to the 2019 Cricket World Cup. The national team featured in the top four of the ODI world rankings and had enjoyed several convincing bilateral series wins over the past two years. This did not translate, though, at Cricket’s global showpiece in England and Wales.
The Proteas’ brains trust is likely to undergo a serious overhaul in the coming months. But does the team need to be changed? No.
With a tour to India on the horizon and England touring the Republic over the summer, we need Faf du Plessis to steer this Proteas ship to calmer waters. Better management needs to be appointed and local coaches such as Mark Boucher have been bandied about as a suitable replacement to carry the Proteas forward
Bouch and several issues need to be sorted out, though. The end of the franchise system is a big one looming on the horizon. From April next year CSA has tabled a decision to move back to a provincial competition structure. What transpires remains to be seen, as our player pool will be sorely tested over the coming 24 months.
The root cause for the recent disastrous World Cup campaign has been a declining standard of first-class and limited-overs cricket in South Africa. A handful of fringe Proteas players signed Kolpak deals, which has contributed to the weakening of the game at the highest level.
The obvious knee-jerk reaction to this World Cup campaign has been to clear out the team, but if you look at Australia they have managed to keep the core of the squad after last year’s low point in Australian cricket.
The Baggy Greens were dominant throughout the tournament with Mitchell Starc leading the wickets column and both David Warner and Aaron Finch plundering runs with the bat. They changed their management team, and although they lost an ODI series at home to South Africa late last year, they built a well-prepared outfit that were highly competitive in England.
Our local cricket has some talented youngsters coming through the ranks, but as we have seen at the World Cup, the players have not responded to a level of pressure not seen in our domestic game for the past few years.
The alarm bells were ringing after the two-Test defeat to Sri Lanka – the first time since readmission that South Africa had lost a home Test series to a sub-continent country. A far cry from the Graeme Smith era.
The Proteas management is stale. The management of SA cricket is stale. We have some wonderful talent that is slowly simmering away. All stakeholders need to formulate a plan at all cricketing levels, so that a shared vision over a five- or 10-year can sustain South Africa standing as a powerhouse in world cricket.
I hope the next management team harness and nurture the talent that is coming through the ranks, but I wish it was as simple as picking a new coach.
Photo: Cricket World Cup/Twitter
