Imran Tahir: A chance at a new start

Finally, all the paperwork and red tape has been cleared and Imran Tahir is set to be a Protea.

This is big news. Why so, you may ask? Because why, as hulle se op die Oos Rand, his international career presents a challenge, not only to himself to justify the hype, but also to the greater South African cresting fraternity.

You see South Africa is a country where defensive and conservatives abound. This is true of anything from our sport, to our music, to our perception of the mavericks in our midst. South African cricket, especially in the post-apartheid era, has not been immune to this. We produce plenty tall, fast, mean, seam bowlers. And because their brief is very simple — straight seam and tease the line outside off-stump — we prepare wickets to their benefit and egg them on.

What we don’t do well are spinners. Specifically, tricky, attacking, expensive spinners. As the fortunes of Paul Adams showed, we cannot support and plan around attacking wicket-taking spinners. We much prefer slow, floater bowlers to spin wizards. Nicky Boje, Paul Harris, Pat Symcox and Johan Botha. Botha is a reluctant addition to that list as his abilities as a leader and on-field strategist make up for the lack of attacking intent in his bowling.

All the men listed above were brilliant when one needed a holding job, less so when wickets were needed and the ball was old. Sure, they had the odd stunner, but unlike say an Anil Kumble, they could not be relied upon to take match-winning wickets for you when your pace machine sputtered. Some will say SA could only work with what they had, but I disagree with this. Paul Adams, and I champion him because he is the single greatest symptom of our malaise, is just 33.

That’s right, we’ve been persisting with glorified end holders while a man with 134 Test wickets at 32.87 and 29 ODI wickets at 28.10 was left out of the national frame from the age of 27. Can you imagine if we had at that stage sat down with “Gogga” and worked out a plan for him. field settings, overs to be bowled, batsman to target etc. Given our luck with genuine world-class spinners in the past few years, would he not have been worth persisting with? Harris, Symcox and Boje between them have taken 171 ODI wickets and 240 Test wickets. Very telling, that.

Imran Tahir, with his 547 first-class wickets at 24.93 each and 140 limited overs wickets at 22.74, represents a chance to undo this. A chance to start a new chapter for South Africa and its relationship with spin bowling. Will we learn from the past? Will we sacrifice a genuine wicket-taking threat at the altar of economy and scoring 12 runs off 50 deliveries to save a Test?