Boucher indecision not helping anyone

South Africa won their first Test series at home since beating Bangladesh in 2008 after two dominant displays at Centurion and Newlands, plus being taught a lesson at Kingsmead in Durban (again).

Jacques Kallis silenced his ever-present band of critics, who, like an ex-partner dating your best mate, are always too near for comfort. Sure, he was lucky not to be caught at the beginning of his innings, but after banging his second Test double-century, who cares? Great players, and Kallis is one of those, profit from the misfortune of the opposition.

Vernon Philander showed at Newlands that he isn’t a one trick pony when it comes to getting batsmen out. Whispers have been made that he could only do the job on green-tops, but after his Newlands performance against Sri Lanka, he showed that he has the necessary skill to pose problems to batsmen on unhelpful surfaces.

Jacques Rudolph’s return to the team has been disappointing but he can count himself lucky that another man, Ashwell Prince, hasn’t scored a Test century since March 2009 and hit only three 50s in 27 innings since that hundred against Australia when he opened the batting. Prince was definitely messed around by the selectors, but Rudolph got his spot on the basis of not having had the opportunity to fail as much.

Another man who had an axe hanging over his head at the start of the series, which hasn’t gone away but only crept ever closer, is Mark Boucher. 95 runs in six digs at 15.83, with 65 of those in the first innings at Centurion, has left his place in the side precarious, or at least it should be.

He didn’t have a poor series with the gloves, snaring 17 catches and a stumping but he did drop two sitters, one of which cost SA 100 runs in Durban. His keeping has never been the problem essentially (apart from dropping Michael Atherton in 1998 off Allan Donald – that one made me squirm). He isn’t a Kamran Akmal, the definitive poster boy for a concrete-handed gloveman, but it’s his batting that’s not measuring up.

Considering the Protea’s schizo batting line-up, Herculean one innings and meek as a young boy stung on the bottom by a bee approaching a chair the next, the importance of having a reliable source of runs at No. 7 has never been more paramount.

Last season he scored 141 runs in seven innings at 23.50. That means in 10 Test matches (a pitiful amount for a team that is supposedly one of the best) over the last two seasons he has notched up a combined total of 236 runs in 13 innings at 18.15. Doesn’t make great reading does it?

Boucher has strong support within the team’s leadership clique it can be imagined, from the outside looking in. He played with both head coach Gary Kirsten and bowling coach Allan Donald, played under assistant coach Russell Domingo when he was at the Warriors and apart from Jacques Kallis, is the most experienced Proteas player in history. He has always been a part of the furniture (virtually) at Test level, like a known lazy-boy sitting in one’s lounge. While his relationships with those in ‘power’ may have spared him for now, the question needs to be asked, who is next in line?

The selectors don’t seem to know either, with AB de Villiers set to keep in the ODIs and no one on the domestic circuit given a whiff of his Test spot. Heino Kuhn seemed to be the man for a while, but has since been banished back to the Supersport Series. Others are out there, such as Dane Vilas, Daryn Smit and Thami Tsolekile V2.0, but we won’t know how good they really are until they are given a chance.

Boucher will most likely travel with the team to England and Australia. Perhaps the series in New Zealand, testing conditions for a wicket keeper where the ball moves in the air after it passes the wicket, could be the place to blood a new face?

Either way, Boucher turns 36 on December 3, and unless he manages to show some Kallis-esque appetite for runs as his career winds down, maintaining his position in the team if he isn’t performing with the bat would do more harm than good for the Proteas’ future prospects. Either he steps up, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility, or the selectors need to do what they get paid for, and make a change.