Worry lines extend from Mohali to Nagpur
Russell Domingo, South Africa’s coach, is intimate with transformation. In 2006, as a coach of Warriors, a domestic cricket franchise, he had witnessed his lowest point of his professional career. On a dark Wednesday, he had heard 8,000 angry fans screaming their heads off at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth after Warriors were shot out for 65, and lost yet another game.
Early next morning, around 7am, Domingo got a phone call. It was the local radio station with fans asking him some angry and uncomfortable questions. It stirred up Domingo into action. Next season, he got a new captain Davey Jacobs, made changes in the team’s culture, and mentored a team that had last won a title in 1992 and was considered a bunch of no-hopers to several championship titles. So it wasn’t a surprise to many in South Africa when he graduated to a coaching role of the national cricket team, a job that he has done very successfully thus far.
The first real surprise has come on this tour. Not because they have lost but the way they have lost. If 2006 was his first moment of reckoning as a coach, 2015 could well be Domingo’s sternest test yet. It’s the lack of clarity of thought that has surprised, an accusation that must hurt Domingo the most.
Just when he might have thought that luck was turning his way, especially after rains saved his team from a plausible loss in Bangalore, South Africa have been delivered a sucker punch ahead of the Nagpur Test. Dale Steyn, the man who had blown away India when they met at the same venue a few years ago, is a non-starter due to a groin injury. A most cruel blow, considering the venue. It’s perhaps the nature of the soil there that has prevented the Nagpur curators from churning out vicious turners.
Subsequently, it is one venue where South Africa could have hoped of pulling something special. For that they needed a fit and furious Steyn. Instead, they now have dialled up Merchant de Lange, Titans fast bowler who last played a Test in 2012.
It’s been a strange sleepwalking Test tour. Even before the Tests could start, they had deified R Ashwin so much that it was almost jarring and hinted at a diffidence of character. The stripping of pride had first started in the one-dayer at Chennai on a track that saw some spin. Nothing dramatic, but it was enough to throw them off and raise hope in the Indian camp.
Even though there wasn’t much time to influence the pitch in Mumbai and it led to the alleged spray at the curator from Ravi Shastri, Indians knew what to do with the Test pitches. They weren’t expected to snarl pre-tour like some of the Australian teams have done in the past but their touring parties have been quietly confident before.
A quality that was lacking this time around. If the batsmen had any plan prepared against the Indian spinners, they have done well to hide it. We have come to expect thorough planning, and above all clarity of thought from touring Proteas. That’s been missing here. They needed someone to turn up and turn it on. Usually, it’s been a fast bowler like Steyn. Last time around, at Nagpur, he had mesmerised the Indian fans with his art, terrorised the batsmen with his skill, and shoved India out of the way.
The Indians hadn’t known what hit them. The batsmen shouldered arms to in-cutters, they poked at his outswingers and if they managed to do neither, he harassed them with bouncers and Yorkers. He might not be the bowler he was having turned gentler in the recent months but his bowling style would have still suited the Indian surfaces the best. The pitchers here needs someone who can get the ball to kiss the surface, skid off it, not lose too much pace after landing to do some damage. It needs Steyn more than Morkel, who is a good wingman than the lead.
Marchant of pace
South Africa’ coach Domingo knows it. And he listed out the qualities in de Lange that he thinks can work in India. “Marchant’s biggest strength is pace, If the ball does start to reverse swing his pace through the air brings him into the contest.” But here is the catch. “Even though his performances back home have been a bit inconsistent.”
And here is the hope against hope. “Even though he is inconsistent, we do know that as an impact player he can turn the game around in one spell. Guys that can bowl at 150 kmph are always going to be good value.”
Domingo’s career as a coach ever since that dark Wednesday in 2006 has been all about planning and being prepared but it’s fair to say that he has slipped up on this tour. However, he knows his team can recover for the past offers hope.
“We have done it before. We have a lot of inexperienced players who haven’t played in India before so hopefully they will have learnt their lessons from these two matches. I wasn’t there on that (last) tour but I remember South Africa being 2 for 6 and Kallis getting 160 and Amla getting 250 to give team a comfortable win. The side in general has good memories from the particular venue (of Nagpur).”
In the past, he has overseen mental transformations of a team that had got used to losing and it will be quite an achievement if Domingo, and his captain Amla, manage to repeat that in the here and now.
