CricketZA

It was a long and at times torturous season for Theunis de Bruyn as he lost his national contract, got dropped from the national team and had his future Director of Cricket, Graeme Smith basically undress him on global television for his dismissal on the fifth day against India. His domestic form was not poor, it just wasn't very long. Injury reduced his participation to three First-Class games were he scored 183 runs at an average of 36.7. Still, despite this he was still very upbeat about his chances for representing the national team in the future. as he told The Citizen  It was just one of those seasons and I have no answers to the questions why? But we need to put the situation in perspective with what is currently going on: we can’t even play cricket now, businesses are closing and it’s a crazy time. We can only hope this pandemic unites the nation and then we can stand up and rebuild. So, we need to take all that on board for perspective,’ De Bruyn told the  Citizen...

It's something of a meme, but Faf du Plessis has a reputation for being the most alpha human being to ever don a Protea jersey. You can see why too. His first Test match: Scored an unbeaten hundred to see out an unlikely draw in Adelaide. His First World Cup: Nearly gets into a fist fight with Darryl Tuffey. Nearly gets suspended after Mintgate, and has to bat in a Day/Night Test: Boom a Test match hundred. du Plessis has a reputation for being something of a tough guy in cricketing circles. Not in that "thuggish brute" sense, where you're basically calling someone dirty; more in the sense that when the going gets Faf, the Faf get going. He's cricket's Chuck Norris is what I am trying to say. On a different, but very related note, the gold standard for an elite batsman is an average of 50. South Africa's number 3 and 4 combined average 50. Once South Africa lose an early wicket, it becomes very apparent that they will very quickly be losing two more beca...

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 ...