But what if you’re the one who turns your rivals’ runs into money? Eric Simons, South Africa’s bowling coach, said at a press conference in Delhi, where his team’s campaign against Sri Lanka gets underway on Saturday, “I think we’re going to witness a high-scoring event and terrific pitches. When it comes to bowling, you’ll need every part of your system to be functioning properly.
Not one of the persons you anticipate seeing at a bus stop in the heart of Mumbai is Sachin Tendulkar. But there he was on Thursday (October 5), grinning brightly as he watched the immense jumble of vehicles and pedestrians that begins before sunrise and lasts far after dusk on the streets of one of the busiest cities in the world.
That is to say, a younger, leaner, and more properly coiffed Tendulkar, who beaming into a hot and muggy afternoon from a poster stuck to the bus shelter’s wall. Whatever he was promoting was less important than the message he sent: you are in India, where runs, not rupees, are the chosen currency of cricket. A huge billboard featuring an impossibly dapper Virat Kohli near the airport made a similar recommendation: bat correctly here, of all places, if you want to stay in the game.
Who could reasonably disagree if two of cricket’s best batters make that claim? The argument was demonstrated by England’s feeble batting in the men’s World Cup opener on Thursday in Ahmedabad, and more forcibly by the Kiwis’ irate response at the crease.
And if some of the crucial components need to be repaired? The task for South Africa, and consequently Simons, is to figure out how to enable the machine to produce the kind of performance it could have been capable of had Anrich Nortje and Sisanda Magala not been forced to withdraw from the competition due to back and knee issues. Magala’s 19.07 is South Africa’s lowest ODI average in 2023, while his 18.00 strike rate is the best. However, the greatest blow seems to be the loss of Nortje’s aggression, which bristles as plainly as his cartoon moustache.
“Intimidation is one of the things Anrich delivers. The more the opposition talks about specific batters or bowlers, the more you are in their thoughts and ahead of them in the game, according on how many meetings I’ve sat in. Anrich would have come up in conversation.
Should Kagiso Rabada, who matches Nortje in presence and is more seasoned than the other quicks on the team, begin grooming his own moustache while Nortje is away? He’s a crucial part of our team, Simons added. He has a lot of experience and is well-respected by the opposition. Not only is it crucial for him, but also for us, that he bowl at his peak.
In South Africa’s quest for glory, prodding Rabada toward that point will play a crucial supporting role. Only Stuart Broad, who fired down 756.1 more overs than Rabada, has taken more wickets among fast bowlers in the format since his Test debut in November 2015—nine more. The only ODI pace bowler to have taken more wickets than Rabada throughout his career is Trent Boult. Boult has taken eight more wickets since Rabada’s first ODI in July 2015, according to stats. But compared to Rabada, he has bowled 69.4 fewer overs.
It may seem like a small, nit-picky distinction, but it helps to distinguish between Rabada, the best Test bowler, and his slightly less mortal ODI version. He has only participated in one ODI World Cup, which was in 2019, when South Africa had its worst tournament showing by dropping five of its eight completed games. Rabada’s average performance of 11 wickets from 78 overs at 36.09 has to be viewed in that light. He is not defined by it.
Simons stated, “Kagiso wants to be the greatest he can be. “It happens at every practice, game, and conversation we have. He and I talked extensively about the strategies we would employ at the execution in India. It involves constant mobility, learning, and improving each day relative to the previous one.
Simons likes to get specific: “This is a World Cup, but the more we focus on the fact that there’s a match on Saturday, and it’s going to be 300 balls, and you’re going to bowl however many overs, and break it down to this moment rather than what happened in the past and what might happen in the future, the better it is.”
There’s always Gerald Coetzee, a bruiser with a large swath of naked, frequently violently curled upper lip where his moustache might be, if all that subtle refinement isn’t enough to fill the Nortje gap. There is no question that he will receive a punch to the nose at some time, according to Simons. “That is the focus of this game, especially in India. The crucial factor is how you handle it.
During South Africa’s home ODI series against Australia last month, Coetzee bowled 27.3 overs in four games and claimed six wickets at a 35.66 average, but he didn’t appear as powerful as statistics makes him sound. Simons noted that despite his physical strength, he also possessed intelligence: “It was a terrific learning experience for him to come up against Australia, a highly aggressive batting line-up. We can infer from the fact that he overcame it and emerged with ideas and strategies that he is a very intelligent cricket player.
You believe Simons can persuade South Africa’s bowlers to straighten up and fly right. He started out as a fast bowler but developed into an all-rounder and is now one of the more intelligent instructors in the game. For someone who only played in 23 ODIs and no Tests, he has carved out a career that wouldn’t have looked logical.
He is well-known for serving as India’s bowling coach during the 2011 World Cup. In a dressing room full of people who couldn’t read a Duckworth/Lewis sheet well enough to ensure the batters at the crease knew they needed to score one more run than they did to avoid the tie that eliminated the team from the 2003 World Cup, he was South Africa’s head coach. This fact is less commonly remembered.
Simons remarked that working for India was “a very different animal” from his current position.
However, ten of South Africa’s fifteen players have participated in the IPL, giving them a collective advantage that non-Asians did not had in other World Cups held in the subcontinent. As a result, the South Africans “have tremendous experience of India, what it’s like to be here – not just the conditions but the hotels and the travel, and what’s involved with that”
Of course, winning what South Africa has so far proven to be unwinnable required more than that: “A lot of it is things the men know and understand. It deals with World Cup participation and how to maintain composure under pressure while concentrating on the process, which you guys undoubtedly detest us stating so much.
“If we have a clear plan, then all we have to worry about is execution, is one of my main coaching mantras. If your plan is unclear, both the actual doing and the execution will stress you out. Therefore, the better off we are, the better.
The South African-born explorer Mike Horn, who was also a member of India’s 2011 victory, was used by Simons as an example: “His message to the Indian team was, ‘If I don’t prepare I die, so what stress are you guys talking about?'” Planning is essential.
In the run-up to South Africa’s Test series victory in England in 2012, Horn was on hand and assisted Graeme Smith’s team by leading them up a mountain in Switzerland. The team’s greatest fast bowler from the 2015 World Cup, Kyle Abbott, was removed from the starting lineup on the eve of the semifinal match against New Zealand due to crude CSA board meddling, and he was unable to put the South Africans back together.
Even the coaching staff’s most imaginative conjurings cannot account for everything. However, this is different: in India, runs are valued more than rupees. Sachin is aware of it. Likewise, Virat. Importantly for South Africa’s cause, Simons shares this opinion.
India
