How good are we?

By Duncan Newton Keal

At the completion of the test series between India and South Africa, a series touted as being the ‘world championship’ of Test cricket, I can not help wondering how good South African really is.

When the Proteas made history by beating Australia, in Australia, many heralded it the rise of a new super power, goodbye Aussies and hello South Africa. As history shows this was short lived as we were convincingly beaten in the return series. Since then South Africa, playing at home, came from behind to draw against England before losing the second Test in India and remaining number two in the world.

As far as I am concerned the current South African side is the most talented South African side in my memory. As I am currently going through my quarter life crises I can not compare them with the greats of the pre-isolation era. However, while the early, mid, and late 1990’s was a time filled with great characters of the game and many of my childhood heroes, and thus I am likely to be biased to that era, one can not deny the shear strength of the current team with its core of experienced world class players and the infinite potential of younger players.

Considering the calibre of players at their disposal I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Proteas are guilty of under performing in the recent past.

If I was asked to describe the South African Test team at present the word which would spring to mind would be inconsistent. In the home series against the Australians there were two poor performances and one brilliant one. The English series was different, two draws which we should have won, however history will tell that England pulled off a fighting draw and the much vaunted South African attack could not land the knockout blow.

Once again a series of mixed performances. Most recently the Indians, a clinical performance and a few days later, despite the monumental efforts of one man, a pretty piss poor performance. Excuses can be made, but one can not deny the fact that the Proteas have failed to win a major test series in the past twelve months.

The great teams of the past, the one which comes to mind being Steve Waugh’s Aussies, made a habit of winning. They were consistently good. No matter how far out of the game they seemed one always got the feeling they were not beat, give them half a chance and they would be back on top. In short the great teams are the consistent teams.

I believe the current group of players have the ability to take the Proteas to greatness, the top of world cricket, and this time keep them there. However in order for this to happen some senior players need to take on more responsibility, perhaps not preoccupying themselves with becoming the best batsman in the world, while younger players need to start repaying the faith which the coach and selection committee (not sure what it is referred to as now?), well those folk who select the squads, have shown in them over time. The Proteas need to become more consistent, making winning a habit, until they do this they are not deserving of the number one spot in the world.

Currently pretending to teach English in the land of the rising sun and being surrounded by ignorant baseball lovers spends much time coming up with brilliant thoughts on various sports, in particular his true loves cricket and rugby.