Skip to main content

Watch: David Miller scores the fastest T20 international hundred

In the second of out feel good series. We look back on David Miller scoring a 35-ball hundred against Bangladesh. A look back on better times.

We can bowl, but can we bat?



They made heavy weather of it, but the Proteas as expected defeated Zimbabwe 3-0 in the ODI series. The bowling was imperious. Whoever was asked to bowl bowled well. Dale Steyn was ramping it up at 150 kph. Kagiso Rabada was Rabada. Lungi Ngidi was who we are beginning to acknowledge he is. Imran Tahir took a hat-trick and Tabraiz Shamsi showed he is a competent back up to the great man. Andile Phehlukwayo continued to take wickets and go at around six to the over. Which is generally what you ask of your fifth bowler. That is the bowling. The batting wasn't a disaster, but it was not encouraging. It took until the third ODI for a top six batsman to get to fifty. There were mitigating circumstances. The first ODI, the chase was less than 150, and in the second, the pitch was not, shall we say, ideal. But there are always mitigating circumstances. This was a show out series. A chance to strengthen your claim for a world cup spot, with the event proper less than a year away.

No one showed up with the bat. Aiden Markram has had a start in basically every ODI he's played in but no fifties. Heinrich Klaasen showed in the first and the third ODI that he is indeed the muscle of the team. A bruiser in the middle order. But his failure in the second game, combined with his lack of shine in Sri Lanka on turning pitches do leave questions bout his ability when there is a little bit more finesse required unanswered. As a back-up wicket keeper, he will without doubt go to the world cup. But it is getting harder to believe he is the answer to any question which South Africans have been asking. With the retirement of AB de Villiers, there is indeed a spot basically up for grabs in the top six, and it seems everyone has developed butter fingers., unable to catch the chance to become that final cog in the wheel. With that in mind, can anyone explain what the thinking behind letting Faf du Plessis bat in the final ODI was? Admittedly, he is coming back from a lay-off, but it's a six week layoff, Not a six month one. This series should have been about providing opportunities to less experienced players to stake their claim. We finish this series with serious questions about our batting depth. Questions which I fear, in a year's time, we aren't going to like the answers to.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: Hansie Cronje slaps Shane Warne all around the Wanderers

As one of the greatest cricketers in history, Shane Warne has generally had the upper hand when it came to most battles, but on this fateful day at the Wanderers, it didn't matter what he bowled, he had to fetch it in Row Z.   

Theunis de Bruyn might not be very good

The last time Theunis de Bruyn was in the subcontinent, he scored a fourth innings hundred in Sri Lanka. A fourth innings ton in the subcontinent buys you a lot of time, especially in tours to the sub-continent. The reason is pretty simple, the fourth innings of a game is when the pitch is at it's most decrepit, Asian pitches generally take turn sooner than non-subcontinental pitches, so it does reason that if you score a ton in the fourth innings in Asia, you must by definition be some sort of genius level player of spin.  That is the only reason Theunis de Bruyn is on this tour. We would not be in favour of dropping him after just the one Test, but his dismissal in the first innings, a big booming cover drive against Ravindra Jadeja, with light fading and the day nearly done, was both reckless and unnecessary. Yes, batting is about scoring runs, and as such if balls are in slots which  players identify as their strong zones, they should feel within their rights to have a go

The all-rounder conundrum

On the surface, it appears that South Africa is basically all the way there with regards to creating and playing a good T20 team. They have a batting line-up with match-winners all the way down, and if this season's IPL is any indicator, they may have the best fast bowling pairing in the world in Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje. Throw in the first change talent of Lungi Ngidi along with (possibly) the ageless spinning talent of Imran Tahir, and, as they say in the South, baby you got a stew going. The one issue which the national team does have, however - and this was somewhat accentuated by the retirement of JP Duminy - is a reliable fifth bowler who doubles up as the all-rounder. It's not so much that we don't have options in the fifth bowler set up, we do, it's more that each of them has something that other would ideally have more of, and yet neither of them quite represent the full package in a way which would really be ideal. Now, it should be noted that South Afr